Poverty and Female heads

of the household
• One of the major global challenges of the new
millennium is growing urban poverty among
women. Worldwide, there is a high correlation
between women’s lack of control over resources,
their poverty, and lack of full citizenship.
• Unequal patterns of ownership between men
and women contribute substantially to this
condition. Lack of rights to tenure or ownership
renders many women unable to protect
themselves, and prevents access to credit
through lack of collateral, thus reinforcing the
control that men traditionally have over the
household and its dependants.
• more women than men are falling into the
poverty trap under the existing discriminatory
socio-cultural norms and practices. The lack of
employment opportunity, discrimination in
employment and the notion that women’s
income is secondary and complementary
• It have led to a sharp rise in the proportion of
women among the poor. The most vulnerable
are the divorced, separated, abandoned and
widowed women, who are heads in a sizeable
number of households
• “. Are woman-headed households invariably over-represented among
poor households? According to IFAD, “Female-headed households
dominate the poverty statistics
• ..
Three reasons determine female head of households are poor

First, female- headed households in general have

more dependents and thus have higher non-
workers to workers ratio compared to other
households.
Second, female heads typically work for lower
wages and have less access to assets and productive
resources compared to men owing to gender bias
against women.
Third, women typically bear the burden of
household chores that result in time and
mobility constraints compared to male-heads. In
other words, female heads must shoulder the
burden of economic support and household
chores, which leaves them with lesser time for
leisure compared to male head
feminization of poverty
• The feminization of poverty refers to the fact that
women represent a disproportionate share of the
world's poor
• Feminization of poverty describes a phenomenon
in which women represent top-heavy percentages
of the world's poor.[1] UNIFEM describes it as "the
burden of poverty borne by women, especially in
developing countries".[2
• This concept is not only a consequence of lack
of income, but is also the result of the
deprivation of capabilities and gender biases
present in both societies and governments. This
includes the poverty of choices and
opportunities, such as the ability to lead a long,
healthy, and creative life, and enjoy basic rights
like freedom, respect, and dignity.
• Women's increasing share of poverty is related
to the rising incidence of lone mother
households. The term feminization of poverty
itself is controversial and has been defined in
many different ways.
• The term “feminization of poverty”
originated in the United States in the late
1970s, when it was discovered that the
fastest growing type of family structure
was that of female-headed households
(Pearce, 1978
• Moreover, because of the high rate of poverty
among these households, their increase was
reflected in the growing numbers of women
and children who were poor. By the mid-1980s,
it was believed that almost half of all the poor
in the U.S. lived in families headed by women in
various stages of the life-cycle.
• Empirical studies found that women who
head households have greater constraints in
obtaining resources and services in housing
and agriculture. Because women have less
access to land, credits, capital, and jobs with
good incomes, and because they are likely to
have dependent children, they are
disadvantaged and more vulnerable to
poverty.
•More than one billion people in the
world today, the great majority of
whom are women, live in unacceptable
conditions of poverty, mostly in the
developing countries
three contributing factors

• 1) the growth of female-headed households,

• (2) intra-household inequalities and bias
against women and girls, and
• (3) neoliberal economic policies, including
structural adjustments and the post-socialist
market transitions
• There is now a considerable body of evidence on
the relative income levels, household structures
and work patterns of male versus FHHs.
• There is some evidence of a link between female
headship and poverty, but the relationship is by no
means straightforward and there are considerable
methodological and conceptual difficulties
surrounding studies of this issue.
• Female-headed households are a heterogeneous
category and may include relatively well-off
women. There are now more sophisticated
analyses of female headship which disaggregate
this category into subgroups, such as those
determined by lifecycle stage, marital strategies
or labour deployment.
•
• Different subgroups are more likely to be
vulnerable to poverty than others. The
characteristics of these subgroups vary
considerably between contexts depending
on a number of factors, including the
extent of social support available and the
degree of social legitimacy accorded to
different types of FHHs