Edited by Caroline Sweetman Oxfam Focus on Gender
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Edited by Caroline Sweetman Oxfam Focus on Gender Contents Editorial 2 Caroline Siveetman Passing the buck? Money literacy and alternatives to credit and savings schemes 10 Helen Pankhurst Challenges for integrating gender into poverty alleviation programmes: lessons from Sudan 22 Abdal Monium Khidir Osman Alive and kicking: women's and men's responses to poverty and globalisation in the UK 31 Jo Rowlands Women's oral knowledge and the poverty of formal education in the SE Peruvian Amazon 41 Sheila Aikman Poverty, HIV, and barriers to education: street children's experiences in Tanzania 51 Ruth Evans Gender, poverty, and intergenerational vulnerability to HIV/AIDS 63 Mohga Kamal Smith Resisting austerity: a gendered perspective on neo-liberal restructuring in Peru 71 Maureen Hays-Mitchell Gender budgets: what's in it for NGOs? 82 Debbie Budlender 'Engendering' Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs): the issues and the challenges 88 Elaine Zuckerman Resources 95 Compiled by Ruth Evans Publications 99 Journals 99 Electronic resources 99 Organisations 100 Videos 101 Conferences 102 This book converted to digital file in 2010 Editorial Caroline Sweetman illions of dollars and working days macro-level neo-liberal restructuring, have been expended over the past poverty reduction strategies, gender budgets, B50 years in the cause of the education, HIV/AIDS, and globalisation 'development' of countries in Africa, Latin and poverty in the North. Together, they America, Asia and the Pacific. The alleviation give new insights into the impacts of of poverty is the primary concern of many, gender-blind development policies from but not all, organisations working in the the macro- to the micro-levels. Gender development sector. Some, notably the equality forms an integral part of develop- international financial institutions, including ment, and must be mainstreamed into all the IMF and the World Bank, have focused poverty alleviation programmes and primarily on promoting economic growth development initiatives. at macro-level, in the belief that increasing wealth at national level will, in the medium- Understanding poverty term, alleviate poverty throughout entire populations. Grassroots poverty alleviation First, how do we define poverty? strategies fit into this vision as shorter-term Individuals and organisations informed by activities, to complement appropriate different understandings of development macro-economic policies. In contrast, some have very different definitions and under- development organisations - often NGOs - standings of poverty. Narrow definitions disbelieve that wealth will ever trickle focus on economic want to a greater extent down to women or men in poverty; they than broader definitions, and lead to a see community development initiatives programme of action which focuses on seeking to support people in poverty as wealth creation without much emphasis on part of an alternative development social context. Broader definitions emphasise approach. the connections between economic want The writers of the articles here examine and social - and sometimes political - the complex links between poverty and marginalisation or exclusion. This exclusion inequality between women and men. They is seen as both a symptom and a cause of show how gender inequalities impact on economic want. men, women, and children's experiences of The Oxford Dictionary of Current poverty, and demonstrate the importance English (1995) gives a broad definition very of integrating gender analysis into every simply: poverty is described as 'want of the aspect of development initiatives. The necessities of life'. What the 'necessities of articles cover a range of issues including life' are actually deemed to be is obviously Editorial highly subjective. However, a useful list focus of debate and dispute (Marcoux 1997; comes from the Beijing Platform for Action, King and Mason 2001). However, even in which poverty is described as follows: sceptics admit that a general trend towards 'Poverty has various manifestations, the 'feminisation of poverty' is 'real and including lack of income and productive growing' (Marcoux 1997,4). resources sufficient to ensure a sustainable More generally, statistics like this need livelihood; hunger and malnutrition; ill to be used with care. First, it is difficult to health; limited or lack of access to education estimate the number of women in poverty and other basic services; increasing morbidity because of biases in the way statistical and mortality from illness; homelessness analysis is carried out. As stated, poverty and inadequate housing; unsafe environ- statistics tend to look at households, rather ments; and social discrimination and than at the individual women and men exclusion. It is also characterized by lack of within households. They also use narrow participation in decision-making and in definitions of poverty, focusing on civil, social and cultural life. It occurs in all economic want, typically measured through countries - as mass poverty in many income or consumption. Second, quantitative developing countries and as pockets of data oversimplify complex issues. They poverty amidst wealth in developed cannot explore the social context of countries' (UN 1996, para. 47). economic want, which is all-important in understanding the significance of the data - not only to women themselves, but to Exploring men's and development policymakers. They also mask women's experiences of wide variations in women's experience of poverty poverty. While they are useful rallying cries for international activism, they can also Both women and men in poverty would alienate development workers who find recognise the key elements in the description they are facing a very different reality on of poverty given above. However, it is the ground (El-Bushra 2000). widely held that women's experience of poverty is quantitatively and qualitatively Female-headed households can be different from that of men. How true is counted, and there has been much debate this? on the extent to which this status correlates with poverty (Chant 1997). In most societies, Do poor women outnumber poor men? women living without a man are more Women are widely believed to outnumber likely to lack some of life's basic necessities. men in the ranks of the poorest people on This is due to multiple demands on their earth. Because poverty measures focus on time which limit the time they can spend in households, not individuals, accurate productive activities, as well as social figures are impossible to obtain. In 1995, the norms which govern their behaviour in the UN Human Development Report estimated public sphere, and gendered prohibitions that of the 1.3 billion people in poverty, on certain kinds of work. Most institutions 70 per cent were women (1995, 4). In the which determine the economic and social same year, UNIFEM stated that 'women environment in which women and men in constitute at least 60 per cent of the world's poverty live are unlikely to allow anyone in poor' (1995, 7). These high figures have poverty to shape their decision-making. been quoted often because of their obvious Men in poverty are clearly excluded from power in persuading development participating equally in decision-making at policymakers of the need to address gender international and national levels, and this inequality. But they have also been the has a profound impact on how they live now, and their chances of escaping poverty Not all female-headed households are in the future. Yet the majority of men in economically needy relative to those poverty are able to participate with their headed by men. In fact, the context in peers in formal decision-making bodies at which a woman has chosen, or been forced, the community level. If there is no male to head a household is all-important in household head, women's participation in determining whether or not she is poor. these bodies may be difficult or impossible. Some women married to abusive men may In addition, social norms governing the opt to leave if they have an independent sexual division of labour may mean that a income. In addition, since poverty is not household with no adult men is not able to only a lack of economic necessities, women take advantage of the full range of heading households could be seen as less livelihood opportunities. In farming disadvantaged socially than wives who are communities in parts of sub-Saharan forced to continue living unhappily with Africa, for example, some parts of the abusive or cruel men. cultivation process cannot be undertaken by a woman, and access to credit and other Is poverty 'different' for women? inputs is targeted at men. Land sometimes Poverty is qualitatively different for women has to remain fallow, leading to destitution than men. Poor men face social and economic for women and their dependants. AIDS is exclusion from government bodies and aggravating this situation in many African other institutions which shape their lives, countries, since it leads to dramatic on the grounds of their poverty. Women demographic change, in which female- are excluded twice over from public headed and child-headed households are institutions, on the grounds of sexual becoming common. In this issue, Mohga discrimination as well as poverty. The fact Kamal Smith discusses how poverty that public institutions are male-dominated intersects with gender stereotyping and means they are likely to reflect men's discrimination to make young girls priorities and interests, assuming these to disproportionately vulnerable to infection, be shared by both sexes. whilst elderly women carers who become In addition to this exclusion in the household heads face ostracism because of public sphere, women in poverty have to stigma when they care for their sick cope with the effect of their relative lack of children and grandchildren. power in the household. A poor man's In the very different context of poverty experience of exclusion from decision- in Northern Europe, women heading making is likely to end once he crosses the households face a greater likelihood of threshold of his home.