WUNRN
Direct Link to Full 48-Page Report:
POVERTY
& SEXUALITY: WHAT ARE THE CONNECTIONS?
Overview
and Literature Review, September 2010, SIDA
Executive Summary
Few studies and reports examine the relationship between poverty and the denial
of sexual rights. However, an emerging literature by researchers, activists and
organisations shows that in many cases, poor people are more vulnerable to
abuses of sexual rights, and that such abuses can entrench poverty. Much of
this literature is by Southern authors, and much consists of grey literature,
organisational reports, and occasional considerations of the connections in
pieces of writing for
which poverty sexuality interconnections are not the main focus. Nowhere is the
evidence drawn together in systematic fashion. This paper brings this evidence
together.
This overview and literature review illustrates the necessity for economic
policies and poverty reduction efforts to take account of sexuality. If they
don’t, they risk exacerbating exclusions and inequalities, and becoming less
effective. It is hoped that this paper will support the work of donors, policy
makers and activists in the areas of economic policy and poverty reduction, as
well as in struggles for sexual and economic justice more broadly.
The key messages emerging from the evidence are outlined below.
Denial of sexual rights can contribute to poverty. People with
non-conforming sexualities may be excluded from social and economic participation,
or included on adverse terms. People who do not fit gender stereotypes, people
living with HIV/AIDS, divorcees, single women, sex workers, lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender people (LGBT), and others may face family pressure,
bullying in schools, discrimination by health services, rejection by employers,
and stigma from communities on which they depend to take part in informal
economies. People with conforming sexualities may also pay a price in material
terms, such as girls who undergo genital mutilation, women who marry into
unequal relationships, or men who marry into relationships where they are
expected to be the breadwinner.
Poverty can make people more vulnerable to abuse of sexual rights. Under
Sharia law in Northern Nigeria, poor people are more likely to be charged with
and convicted of sodomy and illicit sex, as well as other crimes, than more
middle class people. Reports from the Philippines, Zimbabwe and Cote D’Ivoire
show that where family members have non-conforming gender expressions or sexual
relationships, their families are more likely to reject them if they are not
bringing in an income.
However, this is not always the case. Some richer people are more
constrained in terms of expressing their sexuality for fear of jeopardising
their inheritance or reputation. And some people who break rules around
sexuality may gain in material terms – for example a girl who stays in school
instead of marrying young, or a man who takes care of his health instead of
demonstrating his masculinity through risky sexual behaviour. Some Kothis (a
feminine male identity in South Asia) report that their gender identity can
have a positive impact on their economic status due to opportunities to sell
sex.
Either way, sexuality and economy are interconnected. Most economic systems
are heteronormative – i.e. structured around a particular model of heterosexual
relationships.1 Exchanges in the informal economy depend on relationships
of trust – and people with non-conforming sexualities may not be trusted by the
wider community. They may instead have to rely on each other, forming economic
subcultures in survivalist mode. Reports from Latin America, China,
Philippines, and South Africa, show how people have to present themselves as
attractive according to gender stereotypes in order to work in particular
sectors such as service industries and sales. Some employment de facto requires
their employees to be supported by a partner (usually wife) who takes care of
the domestic and reproductive labour. Rights and benefits such as health
insurance may be available to married partners, but not other kinds of
partners.
International development programming can reinforce these heteronormative
structures, such as the World Bank supported ‘Family Strengthening and Social
Capital Promotion Project in Argentina’ (2001 – 2006), which assumed a
heterosexual nuclear family providing unpaid family labour as a solution to
poverty. Some aspects of this programme were progressive, such as encouraging
women’s participation in the labour market, and men’s participation in domestic
labour. However, this kind of programme premised on family strengthening
increases pressure on people to marry and/or stay within heterosexual family
set ups – something which might make life more difficult for women facing
domestic violence, or LGBT, or anyone who is not happily married.
Ways forward:
• More research into the interconnections between sexuality and poverty. Understanding
of these linkages remains limited. More research is needed, including action
research by poor people with stigmatised sexualities themselves.
• Sexual rights struggles engaging with economic realities. Much sexual
rights work by organisations in the South is already engaging with the economic
challenges faced by their members – such as ‘Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe’
providing emergency shelter, and running income generation and skills training.
Such initiatives can help, however, skills training will not change the
homophobia of employers, customers and lenders, or the heteronormative
structures of the economy. Thus struggles for justice and rights more broadly
must continue, and sexual rights activists need to be supported with capacity
building such as in economic literacy and participatory budgeting skills to
enable them to analyse economic policies and budgets, and identify and
challenge economic injustices.
• Poverty reduction efforts and economic policies engaging with sexual
rights. Poverty reduction programmes and economic policies need to be
analysed for heteronormativity, to make visible the underlying assumptions
about relationships and family forms, and to examine if they are excluding
certain groups, or reinforcing unequal and oppressive relationships. Poverty
reduction efforts must address the needs of people with stigmatised
sexualities, including targeting specific initiatives
to these groups. International donors need to examine their own policies and
practices from these angles, and to start a dialogue with partners on these
issues.
1 Heteronormativity is the institutionalisation of the idea that only
heterosexuality is normal, and only particular kinds of heterosexual relations
are normal, eg. within a gender unequal marriage between people of the same
class and ethnic group etc.