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GAP WIDENING BETWEEN RICH & POOR - COUNTRIES & WOMEN

Please see 2 parts of this WUNRN release on women and poverty. Consider the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the gap between research, reports, and high level policies, vs.the realities "on the ground" for poor women and girls.

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UN Women - http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/women_poverty_economics/

WOMEN, POVERTY & ECONOMICS

Women bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s poverty. Statistics indicate that women are more likely than men to be poor and at risk of hunger because of the systematic discrimination they face in education, health care, employment and control of assets. Poverty implications are widespread for women, leaving many without even basic rights such as access to clean drinking water, sanitation, medical care and decent employment. Being poor can also mean they have little protection from violence and have no role in decision making.

According to some estimates, women represent 70 percent of the world’s poor. They are often paid less than men for their work, with the average wage gap in 2008 being 17 percent. Women face persistent discrimination when they apply for credit for business or self-employment and are often concentrated in insecure, unsafe and low-wage work. Eight out of ten women workers are considered to be in vulnerable employment in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with global economic changes taking a huge toll on their livelihoods.

The current financial crisis is likely to affect women particularly severely. In many developing countries where women work in export-led factories, or in countries where migrant women workers are the backbone of service industries, women’s jobs have taken the greatest hit. The International Labour Organization estimates that the economic downturn could lead to 22 million more unemployed women in 2009, jeopardizing the gains made in the last few decades in women’s empowerment.

In many countries, however, the impact goes far beyond the loss of formal jobs, as the majority of women tend to work in the informal sector, for example as domestics in cities, and do not show up in official unemployment numbers. Economic policies and institutions still mostly fail to take gender disparities into account, from tax and budget systems to trade regimes. And with too few seats at the tables where economic decisions are made, women themselves have limited opportunity to influence policy.

UN WOMEN'S APPROACH

Advancing women’s economic security and rights has always been a core UN Women priority. UN Women supports women to reshape conditions at both ends of the economic spectrum — from boosting women’s participation in economic policy-making to supporting efforts to provide women and their communities with practical skills needed for securing sustainable livelihoods.

In more than 40 countries, for example, UN Women supports national and local initiatives to include gender perspectives in budgeting processes, and to collect and use sex-disaggregated data in public policy formulation to ensure that macro-economic policy frameworks address women’s priorities. UN Women also works to strengthen women’s rights to land and inheritance, increase their access to credit and decent work, and empower women migrant workers as well as home-based workers.

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http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/gap-widening-between-poorest-countries-and-others/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110329/wl_nm/us_un_poverty

Gap Widening Between Rich & Poor - Women

Reuters - 29 March 2011

A poor family is shown in  front of their home in a slum in Colombo, Sri Lanka,  March 28, 2011. REUTERS/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds

By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS, March 29 (Reuters) - The wealth gap between the least developed and other countries has widened in recent decades and will go on doing so unless their basic weaknesses are tackled, a report for the United Nations said on Tuesday.

"In short, the 'least developed' condition has tended to generate 'less' development," even though most of the countries concerned had registered some economic growth, said the report by a group of nine "eminent persons."

A total of 48 nations, more than two-thirds of them in Africa, are classified by the United Nations as Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The rating is based on several criteria including per capita gross national income of less than $905.

The panel, headed by former Malian President Alpha Oumar Konare and former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, studied the impact of an action program on LDCs launched at a U.N. conference in Brussels in 2001 for the ensuing decade.

Its recommendations are to be considered by a new conference in Istanbul from May 9-13, which will adopt a new program for the next 10 years.

"We have come to the conclusion that despite some progress on the economic and social front, the gap between the LDCs and the rest of the world, including the low middle income countries, is widening," the 43-page report said.

It blamed this on poor education, health and nutrition, limited infrastructure, dependence on fragile agricultural sectors and a limited range of exports.

"Unless we address the structural weaknesses that make these countries 'least developed,' we will not reverse their increasing marginalization," which would lead to "a future that we, as a global community, cannot afford," the report said.

It said the average per capita income in the least developed countries had fallen from 18 per cent of the world average 40 years ago to 15 percent by 2008. The gap would widen in future if present trends continued, it said.

The panel said part of the responsibility for improving the situation lay with the LDCs themselves, which should negotiate better prices for their raw materials, fight corruption and seek the return of stolen assets.

But it also said foreign aid was a "fundamental ingredient." Donor countries should scale up their aid to the LDCs to 0.15 percent of their gross national income by 2013 and to 0.2 percent by 2015.

Among other goals should be to grant duty- and quota-free access for LDC exports, further reduce the countries' official bilateral and multilateral debt, and double their farm productivity and school enrollment .

The United Nations has already said it wants to halve the number of LDCs by 2021. Since 1970, only three countries have made it out of the group -- Botswana, Cape Verde and the Maldives.