WUNRN
Palestinian
Women Research and
1.2
The Invisibility of Poor Women in Official or Conventional Statistics
There is no doubt that the problem in official statistics
is one of approaches, measures, and definitions used in determining poverty,
leading in the process to the under-reporting of impoverished women and
consequently to their marginalization and invisibility. The question here is
where are the Palestinian women who make up close to 50 per cent of the
population, the majority—if not the overwhelming majority—of whom are
characterized as poor? In other words, why are poor women invisible? The
“invisibility” of impoverished Palestinian women in official reports lies
partly in the absence of a systematic sex-disaggregated data and gender-aware
approaches. More importantly, the problem of poor women’s official invisibility
lies in the very definitions and concepts used in assessing poverty and
measuring the line(s) of poverty and the very assumptions which underline such
measures and definition.[i][i]
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[i][i] Although the ILO Report (2005) cited in this study provides more gender-related information, both the ILO and the World Bank reports base their definitions of the unit of analysis (the household) and income on the definition provided by the PCBS.
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Women and Poverty in the Palestinian
Authority:
A Review of the Literature
Dr. Nahla Abdo
Palestinian Women Research and
Women and Poverty in the
Some Conceptual and
Methodological Notes
Introduction
A brief review of feminist
and/or gender-based research on poverty suggests that poverty is not a neutral
term, but rather a gendered reality in which poverty is unequally distributed
between men and women and generally impacts more women than men.
Feminist researchers also agree “feminization of poverty” is globally
widespread but more acute in agrarian or rural areas; however, women’s poverty,
its scope and depth, is underreported, if not excluded from official or
conventional data (Agarwal 1989; Razavi 2000; Bibars 2001). The major problem
identified by researchers concerning official data on poverty in the
marginalization or absence of poor women is identified as being the result of
the approaches, definitions, and measures used in producing data on poverty.
Such approaches create a wide gap between official accounts—reports stamped with
bureaucratic approval—and reality, between poor women’s representation and
their lived experiences (Goldberg and Kremen 1990; Moghadam 2004; Sakiko 1999;
Ruspini 2000; Zuckerman 2002; Øvensen 1993; Hammami 1997; Johnson 1997).