Poverty Number 13, January 2008

International Poverty Centre

Gender Equality

2 International Poverty Centre

F R O M T H EE D I T O R

Dag Ehrenpreis

Poverty in Focus is a regular publication of theInternational Poverty Centre (IPC). Its purposeis to present the results of research on povertyand inequality in the developing world. Supportis provided by the Swedish InternationalDevelopment Cooperation Agency (Sida).

EditorDag Ehrenpreis

International Advisory Board

Desktop PublisherRoberto Astorino

Front page: Photo by Radhika Chalasani, IFAD.A local savings and credit group meetingin Powerguda village, Andhra Pradesh, India.Women have taken a leading role in promotingsavings in tribal communities. The woman withthe book is keeping records of savings and loantransactions

Editor’s note: IPC is grateful for the supportby Naila Kabeer, both as editorial planningconsultant and lead article author, and forthe inspiring ideas by Miranda Munro,representative of the UK Department forInternational Development (DFID) in Brazil.Thanks also to all the authors for generouslycontributing their intellectual products withoutany monetary remuneration.

IPC is a joint project between the United NationsDevelopment Programme and Brazil to promoteSouth-South Cooperation on applied povertyresearch. It specialises in analysing poverty andinequality and offering research-based policyrecommendations on how to reduce them.IPC is directly linked to the Poverty Group of theBureau for Development Policy, UNDP andthe Brazilian Government’s Institute for AppliedEconomic Research (IPEA).

IPC Director (acting)Terry McKinley

International Poverty CentreSBS – Ed. BNDES, 10º andar70076-900 Brasilia DF Brazil

povertycentre@undp-povertycentre.orgwww.undp-povertycentre.org

The views expressed in IPC publications arethose of the authors and do not necessarilyreflect the views of IPC, IPEA or UNDP.

Oscar Altimir, CEPAL, Santiago de ChileGiovanni A. Cornia, Università di FirenzeNora Lustig, Universidad Iberoamericana, MexicoGita Sen, Indian Institute of Management, BangaloreAnna Tibaijuka, UN Habitat, NairobiPeter Townsend, London School of EconomicsPhilippe van Parijs, Université de Louvain

A s with overall equity concerns, gender equality is important for both intrinsicand instrumental reasons. It has a bearing on family harmony and on wellbeing

in many dimensions. It involves policy-making with respect to society as a whole,i.a. education, labour and financial markets, economic and political empowerment,institutions, and economic growth.

The prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals are both directly andindirectly improved by enhancing gender equity. Thus, there are close links betweenthe reduction of both gender inequalities and multidimensional poverty. The empiricalevidence suggests that developing countries with less gender inequality tend to havelower poverty rates.

Gender inequality represents an untapped source for stimulating economic growth andpromoting social development. This is particularly true in the developing world, wherewomen are often systematically deprived from having equal access to social services aswell as to physical and social capital. Hence, empowering women by improving theirliving conditions and enabling them to actively participate in the social and economiclife of a country may well be the key for long-term sustainable development.

This issue of Poverty in Focus highlights the importance of improving gender equity forpro-poor growth and improved wellbeing of poor families, with references to recentresearch literature and sharing of important and policy-relevant results.

Naila Kabeer leads with a summary of current knowledge about the relation betweengender, labour markets and poverty, explaining why there are no easy generalisationsabout the poverty implications of women’s paid work.

Gita Sen approaches poverty as a gendered experience that has to be addressedwith due consideration to its various impacts, responses and policy implications.

Joana Costa and Elydia Silva underline the burdens of gender inequalities for societyas a whole and show how paid work by women reduces overall poverty and inequality.

Denis Drechsler, Johannes Jütting and Carina Lindberg focus on the links between gender,institutions and development; better data can help improve policy analysis.

James Heintz considers the ‘feminisation of labour’ that sees women concentrated inlower quality, more precarious forms of paid work, increasing household vulnerability.

Ruth Alsop and Paul Healey find that gender inequality is a major barrier to economic growthand poverty reduction, calling for bold policy action to challenge social institutions.

Andrew Morrison, Dhushyanth Raju and Nistha Sinha summarise a World Bank study showinga robust relationship between gender inequality and poverty; poor women’s paid workplays a key role in getting their families out of poverty.

John Sender presents data indicating that when women in rural Mozambique havegreater autonomy, daughters are less likely to be neglected; rural wages provide anescape route from poverty for a new generation of women.

Ranjula Bali Swain and Fan Yang Wallentin use evidence from India that microfinance maylead to increased empowerment, self-confidence, respect and esteem for women.

Irene K B Mutalima reports on the experience of microfinance in Africa and warns thatgender concerns often take a secondary role to the financial sustainability of thecredit instititutions.

Marcelo Medeiros and Joana Costa examine the claims of a ‘feminisation of poverty’ makingthe distinction between static levels and dynamic change, and argue that currentpoverty measure underestimate the real levels of women’s poverty.

Sylvia Chant also finds that the scant data on intra-household inequalities preventcertain knowledge about the ‘feminisation of poverty’ and that the focus should beon women’s privation beyond incomes.

This collection of articles should contribute to a better understanding of the importanceof recognising the crucial role of gender inequalities as barriers to economic and socialdevelopment, and thus of undertaking policy and institutional reforms that will moreeffectively reduce poverty and social injustice.

Poverty in Focus January 2008 3

The pro-poor potential of labour-intensive growth is based on therecognition that labour power is theprimary asset at the disposal of the poorand hence labour markets the keytransmission mechanism through whichthe benefits of growth can be distributedto the poor.

However, it is also premised on a numberof implicit, often unexamined, assumptionsabout the ease with which the poor cantransform their labour into paid workand paid work into improved levels oflivelihood, security and accumulation.

A gender analysis of labour and labourmarkets suggests that this ‘transformation’process not only cannot be taken forgranted but that it is also far moreproblematic for women than for menbecause of the existence of variousgender-related constraints.

These constraints relate to social normsand values which govern the genderdivision of labour in production andreproduction in different regions ofthe world. In general, these tend toassign primary responsibility for thereproduction and care of the familyto women and overall decision-makingauthority to senior males, but allowconsiderable variation in the roles andresponsibilities assigned to menand women in the productiveefforts of the family.

Some regions have stricter constraintsthan others, curtailing women’s mobilityin the public domain and confiningthem to the domestic domain andreproductive responsibilities. Women’slower than average rates of labour forceparticipation in South Asia and MENAreflects widespread adherence to thenorms of female seclusion in theseregions; see the charts on pages 4 and 11.

Primary responsibility for care workcreates a close interdependencybetween women’s activities and familywellbeing. It explains why there isgreater life course variation in women’slabour force participation than men’s,particularly in more formalisedeconomies and occupations wheresuch responsibilities cannot be easilycombined with economic activity.It explains why those who continue inpaid work through their reproductiveyears are most likely to be found informs of self-employment or piecework that allow greater flexibilityin the use of time. And it also explainswhy women’s income, when they work,is more likely to be allocated to thewelfare of their children.

These constraints mean that womenface greater difficulties than men intranslating their labour into paid work.Moreover, they also face greaterdifficulties in translating their paidwork into higher incomes, a reflection ofgender inequalities in the resources thatmen and women bring to the labourmarket. Gender norms and practicestend to exacerbate the effects of scarcityso that poor women enter the labourmarket with lower levels of health,nutrition, education and skills than poormen and with fewer productive assets.Gender differentials in pay and workingconditions partly reflect these genderdifferentials in capital and capabilities.

Yet, women’s disadvantaged positionin the labour market also reflects thecombination of active discrimination andunconscious biases that they encounterfrom other market actors. Unfoundedbeliefs about women’s aptitudes, skillsand dispositions, assumptions that allwomen have mothering responsibilitiesand widespread adherence to theideology of the male breadwinner on

Gender, LabourMarkets and Poverty:An overview

by Naila Kabeer,Institute of Development Studies, Sussex

Gender analyses of labourmarkets suggest that it ismore difficult for womenthan men to escapepoverty through paidwork and higher incomes.

Women face variousconstraints related tosocial norms and valuesthat govern the genderdivision of labour inproduction andreproduction.

Yet, women have beenentering the labour marketin increasing numbersat all age groups.

This has led many toquestion the unfair divisionof roles and responsibilitieswithin their homes.

The rising number offemale-headed householdspartly reflects anunwillingness tocontinue accepting theinjustice of the situation.

4 International Poverty Centre

implications of increasing rates of femalelabour force participation for the povertyof women workers and their households?And how does this phenomenon squarewith claims about the growing‘feminisation of poverty’1?

Cross-country regression analysis of therelationship between economic growthand gender equality indicate thatwomen’s labour market participationplays an important role in mediatingthis relationship but not automaticallyor in expected ways.

For example, a World Bank researchreport in 1999 suggested that higherlevels of economic growth have beenassociated with improvements in genderequality as measured by women’ssecondary level education and lifeexpectancy relative to men and by thelegal recognition of women’s rights.However, this positive effect only kickedin for countries that had achieved lowermiddle income levels. For countriesbelow this threshold, increases in percapita GNP had little effect.

In addition, the report found thatcountries with majority Hindu andMuslim populations, which largelycorrespond to the MENA region andSouth Asia, reported lower than averagelevels of gender equality.

As we noted, these are regions with lowerthan average levels of female labour forceparticipation than others. However, itshould be noted that increasing levels ofboth economic growth and female labourforce participation have failed to‘normalise’ gender differentials in lifeexpectancy in the East Asian economiesof China, South Korea and Taiwan.

In India, the most adverse sex ratiosamong children are reported by someof its fastest growing states.

Gender discrimination in access to healthcare and increasing resort to sex selectiveabortions are leading to increasinglevels of excess female mortality amongchildren, to male-biased sex ratios at birthand contributing to what Amartya Sencalls the phenomenon of ‘missing women’.

The World Bank report also explored theeffects of gender equality on economicgrowth, adjusting for the possibility ofsimultaneous causality. They found that,controlling for male education, increasesin female secondary education ledto increases in economic growth. Onceagain, however, there was a threshold tothis effect: it only occurred in better offcountries in which female secondaryeducation represented at least 10 per centof the population.

The study suggested that this absenceof a relationship between gender equalityand economic growth in poorer countriesprobably reflected the fact that returns toformal education in less developed,primarily agrarian economies were likelyto be restricted. Educational qualificationstend to be used in these economies asa primary screening mechanism in thecompetition for scarce formal sectoremployment, with gender acting as afurther form of screening, giving menpreferred access to these jobs.

Different kinds of gender discriminationmay come into play when womenbecome the preferred labour forcein the course of labour-intensiveindustrialisation. The relationshipbetween gender equality and economicgrowth in semi-industrialised, export-oriented lower and middle incomeeconomies has been explored byStephanie Seguino. She found that,

Source: Global employment trends for women by S. Elder and D. Schmidt.Employment Strategy Paper No. 8, 2004 Geneva: ILO. @

the part of employers, state officials andtrade unions, regardless of the realityon the ground, all serve to assigningwomen to less well paid jobs or payingthem less than men. The consequencesof such behaviour shows up in findingsthat gender differentials in wages cannotbe explained away by differentials ineducation, skills, experience or locationin the labour market. There is anunexplained residual which reflectsgender discrimination.

Women have been entering the labourmarket in increasing numbers at all agegroups. The employment elasticity ofgrowth in recent decades has been higherfor women than men in most regions ofthe world as shown in the table. Thisposes interesting questions.

If labour markets are indeed the keytransmission mechanism through whichthe benefits of economic growth aredistributed to the poor, what are the

Countries withhigher levelsof gender inequalityin wages reportedhigher levels ofeconomic growth.

Poverty in Focus January 2008 5

controlling for male secondary education,female education was positivelyassociated with economic growth. It alsomade a stronger contribution over timethan did male education.

She also found that countries with higherlevels of gender inequality in wagesreported higher levels of economic growth.This relationship held, even when thegender wage gap measure had beenadjusted for educational differentials.

Labour-intensive growth in thesecountries was the product of specialisationin the manufacture of commodities withhighly price-elastic demand so that profitlevels reflected the ability to keep labourcosts low. The preference for womenas the primary labour force in theseindustries reflected the existence of agender wage gap, even for more educatedworkers. This phenomenon has beendubbed ‘the comparative advantageof women’s disadvantage’.

Has the preference for female labourin processes of globally-competitive,labour-intensive industrialisation ledto a gradual improvement of women’sposition in the labour market, as modelsof the labour market would predict?Support for this hypothesis is to befound in evidence from cross-countryregression analysis that increased tradeand FDI net flows have led to a fall ingender wage gaps, mainly among lowerskilled occupations and hence amongthe working poor.

However, there are a number of reasonswhy this cannot be taken as prima facieevidence of reductions in female poverty.

First of all, cross-country findings arenot always consistent with in-countryfindings. Time series data tells us that thelast 40 years since economic take off inthe East Asian economies of Taiwan andSouth Korea have seen women’s wagesand income levels grow in absolute terms,but the overall gender wage gap remainslarge. It began to decline in the 1990s withthe passage of gender equality legislationin Korea but has widened in Taiwan wherethere has been no equivalent legislation.And as we noted, rising female incomeshave not eradicated discriminationagainst daughters.

1. See below, pages 24-27.2. See below, page 26.

Secondly, reductions in gender wagegaps cannot, on their own, tell us a greatdeal about either female or householdpoverty. Women and men do notgenerally participate in the labourmarket as individual earners but asfamily breadwinners. It is difficult togeneralise about the poverty of eitherwithout taking account of the existenceand extent of all contributions tohousehold income.

If, as seems to be the case in someregions, women have gained access tolabour markets in a period when malewages have declined sharply or maleemployment is declining or stagnating,the positive income effectof women’s access to paid work islikely to be offset by the loss or declinein male earnings.

Nor is it clear that increased access topaid work by women will translate intoimprovements in family wellbeing ifwomen’s increased workloads in themarket are not accompanied by acommensurate increase in men’sshare of unpaid domestic labour2.

The overwhelming evidence from acrossthe world suggests that this increasehas not occurred and that the mainburden of adjustment has fallen onpoorer working women who cannotafford to pay for domestic help. Somehave coped by increasing their workinghours, with adverse consequencesfor their own wellbeing. Others haverelied on their older children, usuallydaughters, to look after youngerchildren, often at the expense of theformer’s educational prospects. Stillothers have taken their children towork with them in fields, roadsidesand market place.

1991-1995 1995-1999 1999-2003

Male 0.30 0.34 0.29

Female 0.40 0.44 0.33

GDP growth 2.9% 3.6% 3.5%

Global employment elasticities by sex

Source: The employment intensity of growth: trends and macroeconomic determinants by S. Kapsos.Employment Strategy Paper No. 12, 2005. Geneva: ILO. @

Women’s increased access to paid workhas also allowed many to question theunfair division of roles and responsibilitieswithin their homes. The rising numberof female-headed households in manyregions of the world partly reflects theirunwillingness to continue acceptingthe injustice of the situation. It is thisphenomenon that has given rise to claimsabout the ‘feminisation of poverty’but there is no necessary associationbetween female headship and poverty.

A better indicator of female poverty—and of continuing female disadvantagein the labour market—relates to theeconomic situation of female-maintainedhouseholds, those which rely solelyor primarily on female earnings. Thereappears to be strong evidence fromstudies of Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica that these households areoverrepresented in the ranks of the poor.

Female heads of these households worklonger hours and earn less on averagethan households largely reliant on maleor joint incomes. At the same time, theirgreater control over their incomes maytranslate into higher levels of investmentin their children.

There are no easy generalisations aboutthe poverty implications of women’s

paid work.

N. Kabeer: Marriage, motherhoodand masculinity in the global economy:reconfigurations of personal and economiclife, IDS Working Paper No. 290, 2007. @

N. Kabeer: Mainstreaming gender equalityin poverty eradication and the MilleniumDevelopment Goals, CommonwealthSecretariat, IDRC and CIDA, 2003. @

6 International Poverty Centre

Policy discussions about theinteractions between poverty and genderinequality have tended in the last twodecades to use the idea of the feminisationof poverty to explain differences betweenmale and female poverty in a givencontext, as well as changes over time.Typically, this approach has fed theperception that female-headed households—however defined¯tend to be poorerthan other households. Recent empiricalwork has, however, cast doubt on thisgeneralisation and sent analysts of genderand poverty back to the drawing board.

It is clear now that, not only is theempirical generalisation inaccurate,but that a single-minded focus onfemale-headed households narrowswhich households we focus on andhow we understand what goes onwithin them. Focusing on female-headedhouseholds is of course much simpler,since this avoids having to address themessy complexities posed by genderrelations within households, or theways in which development policies andprogrammes affect them. But it is clearlyinadequate to the task.

Viewing poverty as a genderedexperience allows us to broaden thescope of analysis to include all poorhouseholds¯however headed. It alsodirects us to a wider range of issuesbeyond simply asking whether womenor men are poorer in income terms. Theseinclude the ways in which poverty ismade a gendered experience by normsand values, divisions of assets, work andresponsibility, and relations of powerand control. Gendered experiencesinclude (i) the differential impacts ofpoverty on girls versus boys, and womenversus men within the household;(ii) the gendered ways in which poorhouseholds and their members respondto poverty; and (iii) the gendered impact

of the design and implementation ofanti-poverty policies and programmes.

Understanding how gender relationswork to define the experience ofprogrammes requires focusing on:

Who gets or has access to resources;How roles and relationships of work,responsibilities, cooperation, sharingor conflict define both women’s andmen’s living and working conditionswithin households;How structures and programs of thestate and other actors, e.g. the privatesector and civil society, reinforce ortransform those roles andrelationships; andHow normative frameworks affectingdifferential entitlements andresponsibilities are challenged orreinforced by policies and programmes.

The generalisation that girls and womenbear greater work burdens andresponsibility for the care of humanbeings through unpaid work withinhouseholds is well grounded empiricallythrough numerous time-use andqualitative studies. However, theexperience of care work variesprofoundly between poor versus non-poor, rural versus urban, or landed versuslandless households. Evidence from theNational Sample Survey in India showsthat care work in the poorest ruralhouseholds is likely to include mainlyfuel and water gathering, while insomewhat better-off households,it includes the care of livestock andkitchen gardens, or fodder collection.In households that are even better off,women are also more likely to engagein activities such as embroidery andsupervision of household workers.

The care work done by women and girlsin the poorest households tends

by Gita Sen,Indian Institute of Management Poverty as a Gendered

Experience:The policy implications

The poverty experience isgendered by the differentialimpacts on women and men,girls and boys, and by theirdifferent responses.

This should be consideredmore in the design andimplementation ofanti-poverty policiesand programmes.

For poor women, time isoften the most valuableresource; it is so muchtaken up by caring workthat they can remain caughtin a vicious circle of poverty.

Collecting more gender-based data can improvethe functioning of socialpolicies and helpensure the reductionof gendered poverty.

Poverty in Focus January 2008 7

therefore to be extremely time- anddrudgery-intensive, but critical tohousehold members’ ability to sustainbasic daily consumption. As a result, itdrastically limits women’s choice ofcompatible income earning opportunities,their ability to take time off forgovernment programmes, socialexchanges or minimal leisure, and theirpossibilities for acknowledging their ownneeds for rest, recuperation or health care.

The gendered impact of poverty not onlydistinguishes between women and men,but also differentiates how care workburdens and responsibilities areexperienced by different women.Evidence suggests that, where suchburdens are reinforced by strong gendernorms that define the ‘good’ womanas self-sacrificing, poor women inparticular are likely to receive much lessacknowledgement of—or attention to—their needs for nutrition or health care,not only by other family members buteven by themselves.

Poor households cope in a variety ofways, some of which are gendered.In doing so, they react not only toinsufficiency of incomes but alsoto insecurity and risk. As householdincome rises above poverty levels, riskmanagement often dictates behavioursthat appear more appropriate to lowerincome levels, at least until the newhigher level becomes more secure.Well known are such responses asincreased time spent on work, reducedconsumption levels, increases in debt,debt-peonage, migration, and fosteringin or out of household members.Less understood are such strategiesas maintenance of socio-economicnetworks through ceremoniesrequiring consumption, spreading riskand borrowing potential by takingon multiple jobs, desertion orabandonment of the family, and selectiveeducation or rationing of health careamong family members.

At least three of these responses aregendered, although with variationsacross cultural and economic contexts.While men may take on more paid work,partly to buy items such as tobacco andliquor, women often face difficult timeallocation choices between paid and

unpaid work with home-made or freelygathered consumption items like food,clothing, and fuel. These tensions areoften resolved by sacrificing the leisure,play-time, or education of daughters,who are expected to take on additionalcare work including kitchen tasks,foraging, and looking after siblings,as well as other responsibilities.

Another gendered response is desertionor abandonment of families, a strategyoften used by poor men to escape theresponsibilities of contributing tohousehold consumption, particularlywhen their partners or spouses becomepregnant. A third phenomenon noticedparticularly in South Asia is selectiveeducation and health care with sharplylower entitlements for women andgirls relative to men and boys. Suchdifferentials in entitlements are reinforcedthrough gendered norms and valuesthat permeate across the economicspectrum.While they tend to be lower inintensity for better-off households, theydo not completely disappear.

The gendered impacts of povertyand of household responses toimpoverishment are often missed inthe design of anti-poverty policies andprogrammes. Women’s responsibilitiesfor care fundamentally affect theirability to participate in socialprogrammes, in labour markets,and to derive benefits from householdresources. For poor women, time is oftenthe most valuable resource, and poorwomen’s time is so much taken up bycaring work that they can remain caughtin a vicious circle of poverty. Even worse,social policies often profit from thisgendered division of work and itsassociated norms, thereby reinforcingthe gendered norms and roles that areat the root of women’s poverty andwithin-household inequalities.

Putting mothers ‘at the service ofthe state’ represents a convenientmarriage of new social policies builton downsizing and decentralising thestate while ensuring ‘community’responsibilities—largely women’s—for the success of programmes. Recentexamination of conditional cash transferprogrammes through a gender lensreveals that they can make significant

additional demands on poor women’stime if designed in this way. Althoughwomen may be willing to pay this ‘timetax’ in order to improve their children’shealth, nutrition or education, it isnonetheless a costly burden and mayinvolve other hidden sacrifices andburdens. The hidden gendered cost ofprogrammes also raises questions aboutprogramme sustainability.

How can these insights be used forprogramme assessment? The collectionof more gender-based information canbe a way to improve programmefunctioning, e.g., the Observatorio deGenero y Pobreza as a complement to theOportunidades programme in Mexico.Such information can be used tounderstand better the way in whichthe care economy and gendered povertyare affected by and affect social policies.Programme development based on suchinformation can help to ensure thatgendered responsibilities for care arenot reinforced, as these are at the coreof gendered poverty.

Such approaches can be complementedby programmes to transform masculinistnorms and behaviours in relation to carework and responsibilities. Schools,public education, child and adolescentprogramme should focus gendereducation not only on girls but alsoon boys and young men. Consistentattention has to be paid to violenceagainst women and girls withinhouseholds which is often triggeredby women’s not meeting male demandsin relation to food, keeping the houseclean, taking care of children, sexualityor reproduction. Such changes inanti-poverty programmes may requireas a pre- or at least a co-requisite,the transformation of mindsets withingovernment bureaucracies towardsgreater awareness of the genderedconsequences of policiesand programmes.

M. Molyneux: Mothers at the Serviceof the New Poverty Agenda: Progresa/Oportunidades, Mexico’s conditionaltransfer programme, Social Policy andAdministration, 40 (4): pp 425–49, 2006. @

G. Sen & C. Sen: Women’s Domestic Workand Economic Activity: Results from NationalSample Survey, Economic and PoliticalWeekly, April 27, 1985, ppWS49-55.

8 International Poverty Centre

Women face barriers to enterthe labour market; if theyfind a job, their earningsare lower than those of men.

Reducing gender inequalitiesimplies benefits not only forwomen but also for men,children and the elderly,for both poor and rich.

Simulations show thatremoving entry barrierswould have a much strongerimpact on growth, povertyand inequality than endingwage discrimination.

Paid work for womeneffectively reducespoverty and inequality.

Gender inequalities are present inmany ways in the labour market. Tworelevant indicators of these inequalitiesare the ratio between female and maleparticipation in the paid workforce andthe ratio between female and malehourly wages. These indicators reflectthe fact that women face barriers toenter the labour market and, when theyfind a job, their earnings are lower thanthose of men.

The gender gap indicators among urbanadults in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, ElSalvador and Mexico are shown in thechart below. In each of these countries,the rate of economic activity amongfemales is below 62 per cent while themale rate is higher than 84 per cent.The ratio between female and malelabour market participation is not morethan 0.6 in Chile and Mexico. The femalehourly wage is around 80 per cent ofthat of males for all countries, exceptArgentina with a ratio of 92 per cent.

The disadvantages faced by women in thelabour market have negative economicconsequences for the society as a whole.The elimination of the various barriers theyface would result in an increase in theirearnings and consequently an increasein the income of the households. It mightalso result in the economic empowermentof women, economic growth and thereduction of poverty and inequality.Therefore, reducing gender inequalitiesimplies benefits not only for women butalso for men, children and the elderly, andfor the poor as well as the rich.

It is difficult to know exactly whatwould be the impact on society ofa reduction of gender inequalities.However, some techniques allowestimates of what society would gainwith less gender inequality. Simulatingwhat would happen to poverty, socialinequality and the total level of incomein society gives an idea of the directionand magnitude of what would happenif the gender gaps in participation andwages were eliminated.

In order to draw scenarios withoutgender bias in the labour market ofthese five Latin American countries, weconstructed counterfactuals based ontwo separate static simulations. The firstone calculates what might happen if wesuppose women enter the labour marketto the same extent as men. In otherwords, the assumption is that the barriersto women’s entrance in the labourmarket are the same as those for men,while ignoring any changes in thegender wage gap.

In the second simulation we keepparticipation rates constant andeliminate the gender wagediscrimination. In other words, weeliminate the gender discrimination byassuming that women with the same

by Joana Costa and Elydia Silva,International Poverty Centre The Burden of Gender

Inequalities for Society

Poverty in Focus January 2008 9

characteristics as men receive the samewages and salaries.

Each of these simulations generates anew level and distribution of income insociety. This allows us to estimate theirimpact in terms of economic growth,poverty and inequality. The resultspresented here must be consideredwith the caveat that these simulationexercises are essentially partialequilibrium effects. Nonetheless,they provide important empiricalevidence that gender inequalitiesact as barriers to pro-poor growth.

The simulated gender gap indicatorsare very different from the real ones,as shown in the lower part of the charton the previous page. Applying the maleparticipation structure to women resultsin an increase of female labourparticipation rate in all five countries.Only in Mexico was the increase notenough to approximate the femaleeconomic activity rate to the male one.

Moreover, without wage discrimination,the earnings of women would increasesubstantially in all five countries.Actually, in Argentina, Brazil and Mexicothey would even be higher than thoseof men because, on average, workingwomen in these countries are betterqualified than men. In a few words, itmeans that it is not the characteristicsof women but gender discriminationthat put females in a worse positionin the labour market.

To avoid difficulties related to the choiceof a specific poverty line we made oursimulations for different lines andmeasures of poverty; the substantiveconclusions always converged. The resultsshown in the chart above are based onthe impacts on poverty incidence for theinitial poverty lines defining the 20 percent poorest households in each country.

Eliminating barriers to participationwould have a much stronger effecton poverty than ending wagediscrimination. If women faced nobarriers to enter the labour market, theincidence of poverty would be reducedby at least 25 per cent in Argentina andBrazil and by as much as 41 per cent inChile. On the other hand, if only wage

discrimination was eliminated, the fall inpoverty incidence would vary from 1.1per cent in Chile to 10 per cent in Brazil.

While the simulation of no wagediscrimination shows little impact oninequality, the participation simulationhas a strong effect. There would be areduction by around five per cent in theGini inequality measure of the familyper capita income for the five countriesif women increased their labour marketparticipation to the level of men.

Reducing gender inequality would alsopromote economic growth. The growthof the mean income level would varyfrom 6 per cent in Brazil to 11 per centin Chile and El Salvador if there wereno differentiated gender barriers toenter the labour market; and from2 per cent in El Salvador to 8 per centin Brazil without any genderdiscrimination in wages.

Most important of all, this growthwould be very pro-poor since it has animportant impact on poverty.In the outstanding case of Chile, inthe simulation of no barriers toparticipation, the relation betweengrowth and poverty would be aroundone to four, that is, for each percentagepoint of growth due to improvedgender equity there would be a

decrease of four percentage pointsin the incidence of poverty.

Although these figures are not exactand must be used with caution, theiroverall direction and magnitude canhardly be disputed. At least twoimportant conclusions arise fromthese simulations.

First, gender inequalities in the labourmarket represent a burden to theentire society, not only to women.A reduction of gender gaps in wageand participation can result in highereconomic growth as well as reducedpoverty and inequality.

Second, the reduction of the discrepancybetween the female and male economicactivity levels has more impact in thesethree areas than the reduction of thegender wage gap.

Gender discrimination among paidworkers is important but it seems thatincreasing the female participation inthe labour market would be a priorityin order to have faster and strongereffects in the reduction of povertyand inequality.

J. Costa, E. Silva and M. Medeiros:The Growth Equivalent of ReducingGender Inequalities in Latin America.IPC Working Paper, forthcoming.

10 International Poverty Centre

Gender equality represents anuntapped source when it comes tostimulating economic growth andpromoting social development. This isparticularly true in the developing world,where women are often systematicallydeprived from having equal access tosocial services as well as to physicaland social capital. In fact, increasedgender equality promises significantreturns. Apart from being an importantgoal in itself, empowering women byimproving their living conditions andenabling them to actively participate inthe social and economic life of a countrymay well be the key for long-termsustainable development.

According to the World Bank’s WorldDevelopment Report 2000/01, closingthe gender gap in schooling would havesignificantly increased and sometimesmore than doubled economic growth insub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and theMiddle East and North Africa. Despiteinternational declarations on genderequality, as examplified by theMillenium Development Goals, onlyfew countries have actually achievedgender equality in primary andsecondary education. The differencesare even more pronounced in highereducation. In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, for example, girls onlymake up half of the number of studentsin tertiary education.

Equally alarming are labour marketindicators, which clearly highlight thatcountries do not adequately use theiravailable human resources, in particularthose of the female population. In manydeveloping countries, women’seconomic activities are marginalised tothe informal sector, small-scale farmingand/or domestic work. Cases in point areSouth Asia and the Middle East andNorth Africa: in both regions only

around 20 per cent of all wageemployment outside agriculture isheld by women.

As illustrated by these figures, womenface serious inequalities in manyregions of the world. Althoughdiscrimination against women hasmultiple facets, most research in thisarea exclusively focuses on examininga) the economic status of women;b) women’s access to resources such aseducation and health; and/orc) the political participationand empowerment of women.Less attention, however, is given tosocial institutions that impact on genderequality such as informal family laws,cultural traditions and social norms.In order to address this importantinformation gap, the OECDDevelopment Centre introduced theGender, Institutions and DevelopmentData Base (GID-DB) in March 2006.

The data base suggests a frameworkthat groups twelve individual socialinstitutions indicators into fourmain categories:

i) Family Code, including informationon marriage customs (age of marriage,inheritance practices, and existence ofpolygamy) and decision-making powerwithin a household (parental authority,repudiation);

ii) Physical Integrity, capturing violenceagainst women through traditionalpractices such as female genitalmutilation or other attacks (e.g. rape,assault, harassment);

iii) Civil Liberties, measuring the extentto which women can participate in sociallife (e.g. moving freely in public withoutthe obligation to wear a veil or beescorted by male relatives); and

by Denis Drechsler,Johannes Jütting and Carina Lindberg,

OECD Development CentreGender, Institutionsand Development:Better data, better policies

Enabling women to activelyparticipate in social andeconomic life may well bethe key for long-termsustainable development.

Gender inequalities are stillhuge in most developingcountries both in educationand in labour markets.

They are generated bysocial institutions such asinformal family laws, culturaltraditions and social norms.

A new international database provides systematicempirical evidence onthe socio-economicstatus of women.

Poverty in Focus January 2008 11

iv) Ownership Rights, indicating thequality of women’s most basic economicright—to hold property, whether in theform of bank loans, land, or othermaterial assets.

The GID-DB covers a total of 161countries and has been compiledfrom various sources. It combines ina systematic and coherent fashion thecurrent empirical evidence that existson the socio-economic status of women.The social institutions variables have allbeen coded (on a scale from 0 to 1, where1 indicates full discrimination) in order toallow for cross-country comparisons.

The impact of restrictive social normson women’s social and economicdevelopment is easy to imagine:even if economic opportunities mightexist, restrictive social norms willprevent women from taking advantageof them. Women neither lack interestin paid work nor are they shortof entrepreneurial ideas, but whensociety and family members discouragewomen to engage in economicactivities, it is not easy to pursue aprofessional career.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the majority ofwomen work in the agricultural sector,but patriarchal traditions often denythem the right to own and manage the

land they cultivate. Some countriesin the Middle East and North Africarequire women to have male companywhen leaving the house, making itdifficult for them to attend educationalfacilities and engage in businessactivities independently. The region’sbanks and lending institutions alsooften ask female clients to obtain theirhusband’s permission or co-signaturebefore granting them a credit. In someinstances, social norms such as femalegenital mutilation or any other type ofviolence against women—within oroutside of the household—not onlyviolate women’s basic human rights,but they seriously impair their healthstatus and future chances in aprofessional career.

Preliminary analyses using the GID-DBclearly indicate the relevance of socialinstitutions for understanding theeconomic role of women. There arestrong indications that high inequalityin social institutions is associated withlower rates of female participation inthe labour market. What is more, thecommon assertion that economicgrowth alone will eventually accomplishgender equality seems too simplistic:growth is often a necessary, but far fromsufficient condition for improving thestatus of women. This is a robust resultof an in-depth econometric analysis

regressing female labour forceparticipation on growth, socialinstitutions and a set of controlvariables such as access to educationand health.

Information on restrictive socialinstitutions and their impact onwomen’s social and economicdevelopment is vital to understandgender equality. Better data areurgently needed to design meaningfulpolicies that can address the rootcauses of gender equality. A schoolbuilt exclusively for girls might seemto be an important step towardsachieving gender equality. But if socialnorms prevent girls from attenting thisfacility, the school does little to improvethe status of girls and women.

Social norms that impact on genderequality are hard to observe and evenmore difficult to measure and quantify.The GID-DB is a first attempt to introducesocial institutions into the debate, but itcannot provide a comprehensive accountof all traditions and cultural practicesthat affect the role of women.

In view of these challenges, the OECDDevelopment Centre is currentlyconstructing an Internet platformthat will allow people to report theirexperiences and share their perceptionsof social norms that impede genderequality. This initiative, Wiki-Gender, willprovide an open resource for peopleinterested in finding out more aboutgender equality around the world.It will allow users to modify andimprove data provided therein, invitingthem to challenge existing informationand to provide new entries that willincrease the common knowledge base.

Only then will we have a betterunderstanding of the manifold waysin which social institutions affectwomen’s development and canconstruct policies that effectivelyaddress the current situation.

J. Jütting, C. Morrisson, J. Dayton-Johnson,and D. Drechsler: Measuring Gender(In)Equality: The OECD Gender, Institutionsand Development Data Base;Journal of Human Development,forthcoming, March 2008. @

Note: The explanatory variable uses the arithmetic average of all sub-sectors of social institutions;

a value of 1 (0) indicates the highest (lowest) level of inequality in social institutions.

12 International Poverty Centre

Fundamental and far-reachingchanges have taken place in the worldeconomy over the past several decadesthat have had a profound impact on thelives of women and men.

Two key aspects of the transformationare (i) the heightened and growingdegree of global economic, social andcultural integration—i.e. the process of‘globalisation’—and (ii) a shift in policystance towards deregulated markets,privatisation, a smaller role for the stateand a relatively narrow focus onreducing inflation.

These changes impact employment andpoverty outcomes for women and men.Gender dynamics are central to thisdiscussion. Whether households stayout of poverty in this changing globalenvironment may hinge on whetherwomen participate in the labour force andhave access to decent paid employment.

Women’s measured labour forceparticipation has been increasing in manyregions around the world, a processsometimes described as ‘the feminisationof labour’. However, these global changeshave a fundamental impact on theallocation of labour time and economicresources in the household. Moreover,employment opportunities are unequallydistributed, with women concentrated inlower quality, more precarious forms ofpaid work. Taken together, all these factorshave enormous implications for thevulnerability of households, the risk ofpoverty and achieving sustainable humandevelopment. Therefore, the analysis mustincorporate a gender perspective wheninterpreting how global policy changesimpact employment and poverty.

Gender relations determine the ways inwhich market and non-market work isorganised. Women often have primary

by James Heintz,Political Economy Research Institute,University of Massachusetts Amherst

Poverty, Employmentand Globalisation:A gender perspective

responsibility for unpaid, non-markethousework and caring labour. Thisconstrains their choices in terms oflabour force participation and theiraccess to paid employment, both formaland informal. The allocation of time tonon-market as opposed to market worklimits the household income that womencontrol directly. Furthermore, with moretime allocated to non-market work,women frequently have less paid workexperience or have to interrupt theiremployment, factors which oftentranslate into lower earnings.

Gender segmentation is endemic inlabour markets around the world, withwomen often concentrated in low-paid,unstable and poor-quality employment.Wage labour markets might not be theonly, and often not the most important,market exchange relating to these formsof employment. For instance, quasilabour markets exist in which workerssell a product or service, but within aset of dependent relationships that limittheir authority over the employmentarrangement. Examples includesub-contracted production, or home work,in which workers produce or assemblegoods for a set of specification givenby the work provider within a longersupply chain.

Often social benefits and protection areabsent for these types of precarious andinformal employment, raising theeconomic risk that women working inthese activities face, as they are undertakenoutside the ambit of labour legislation.

This type of labour force segmentationreduces women’s earning potential. Withlower expected earnings, investment infemale education is frequently neglected.

Similarly, perceived lower earningpotential of women reinforces the gender

Globalisation and neo-liberalpolicies impact the genderdynamics of employmentand poverty outcomes.

With ‘feminisation of labour’women are concentratedin lower quality, moreprecarious forms ofpaid work; householdvulnerability is increasing.

Access to paid employmentdoes not always translate intocontrol over a portion of thehousehold’s income.

It is critical to incorporatethe gender dimension intothe growth-employment-poverty nexus.

Poverty in Focus January 2008 13

division of labour within the household,since the opportunity cost, in terms offoregone income, of specialising inunpaid care work is lower for womenthan for men.

Women who specialise in providingunpaid care work face enormouseconomic risks. Such specialisation notonly lowers their earnings potential andreinforces dependencies on a male‘breadwinner’. Often women do not havethe same access to social protections,such as pensions for old age, therebyincreasing their risk of falling into poverty.

The gender division between marketand non-market work, the unequaldistribution of employment opportunities,and women’s lower earnings potentialreinforce established gender dynamicsat household level. For example, women’sinfluence over the distribution ofresources and labour within the householdis weakened when opportunities to earnincome through employment are limited.Increasing women’s access to paidemployment has the potential to changegender roles and household dynamics,depending on the resilience of gendernorms in society and the type ofemployment to which women have access.

The relationship between paid marketwork and prevailing gender relationsis complex. Access to remunerativeemployment does not always translateinto control over a portion of thehousehold’s income. Similarly, labourmarket participation may involve costsas well as benefits. These factors influencethe extent to which women’s access toemployment alters gender dynamics.

Labour supply decisions are oftendetermined at both household andindividual levels. Women’s labour forceparticipation has been shown to increasewith economic crises and policies thattrigger labour displacement, jobinstability and higher rates ofunemployment. Women also increasetheir labour force participation inresponse to sustained structuralunemployment. For instance, researchinto the determinants of women’s laboursupply in post-apartheid South Africahas shown that women’s labour forceparticipation responded to increases in

household joblessness, thereby placingfurther upward pressure on the country’saverage unemployment rate.

Structural changes that threatenhousehold living standards alsodemonstrate the impact of establishedgender norms on men. Not all menoccupy identical positions withinthe global economy. Many men areemployed in precarious activities withlow earnings. In addition, racial andethnic identity frequently circumscribesthe economic opportunities available toboth men and women.

Growing earnings inequality, an erosionof the quality of paid work, or greaterjoblessness disproportionately affectsthose in more unstable forms ofemployment. The entire household—men, women and children—becomessusceptible to poverty. Such pressuresaffect men who have been socialised tothink of themselves as ‘breadwinners’. Inparticular, established gender roles maycause men to see the deterioration inemployment as a personal failing,instead of a systemic economic problem.

The coping strategies adopted at thehousehold level in response to negativeeconomic shocks underscore theimportance of taking these dynamics intoaccount when considering the linkagesbetween growth, employment andpoverty. For countries with well-developedsocial welfare systems, government policiesmitigate these negative consequences.However, for countries without publiclysupported systems of social protection,households and communities become asafety net of last resort.

An additional link exists between paidemployment, non-market work andhuman development. The ability totranslate access to paid employment intonew capabilities, greater freedom andimproved investments in childrendepends on the nature of relationshipswithin the household and the process bywhich decisions are made concerning theallocation of labour time and economicresources. Indeed, increased genderinequalities, even in the short-run,can have long-term consequencesfor economic growth and humandevelopment. Therefore, it is critical to

incorporate the gender dimension intothe growth-employment-poverty nexus.Otherwise, the picture will not be fullyunderstood and the implementation ofan effective development strategywill be compromised.

The two ‘feminisations’—of labour andof poverty—do not provide an adequateframework for understanding theconnections between employment andpoverty risk. For example, the ‘feminisationof labour’ may be a response to, insteadof a cause of, increases in precariousemployment around the world. Similarly,the gendered dynamics of poverty arecomplex and also have implications forthe well-being of children and men.

Therefore, poverty risk cannot bereduced to simple indicators, such asfemale headship. Instead, we need aframework for linking employment andpoverty, which takes into accountgendered interactions at three levels:(1) the household level; (2) at the levelof intra-household dynamics; and (3) theindividual level. Only by analysing theemployment-poverty nexus at each ofthese three levels, will an adequateanalysis be produced.

Despite this call for a more complexanalysis of the connections betweengender relations, employment andpoverty, one fact remains clear:women’s paid employment is anessential factor determining the riskof poverty that families face.

Women’s employment contributesto total household income; women’sparticipation in the labour marketcan affect intra-household bargainingoutcomes, conditional on decision-making processes and who controls theincome; and access to employment hasimportant implications for individualfreedoms, capabilities and dignity.

Exactly how women’s employmentaffects social and economic wellbeing willdepend on the institutional context andthe specific prevailing gender relations.

J. Heintz: Globalization, Economic Policyand Employment: Poverty and genderimplications. ILO Employment StrategyPapers, Geneva 2006:3. @

14 International Poverty Centre

Analysis indicates that investmentsin gender equality can accelerateeconomic growth and poverty reduction.However, despite increasing interest inthe growth effects of inequality and aresurgence of concern over genderdiscrimination, there is little to suggestthat gender differentiation is consistentlyor effectively addressed in growth policyformulation or implementation.

The evidence suggests that genderinequality and women’s limited capacityto respond to economic opportunityinhibits growth via three main channels:

Education affects women’s capacityto make effective choices aboutemployment, family planningand investments in children.Labour market participation impactsproductivity, income and savings.Institutions govern women’s assetuse, time burden, and intra andextra household bargaining positions.

There are serious limitations in currentanalysis resulting partly from lack ofdata and partly from the difficulties inexamination of complex information.Creating better data and improvinganalysis are obviously priorities forwell informed growth policy. In additionthough, and even prior to betterinformed policy development, thereis sufficient proof currently availableto begin the process of addressing thedetrimental growth and poverty effectsof gender inequality.

Gender discrimination in labour, land,credit and technology markets is acommon phenomenon. There is a wealthof evidence showing that: women haveless choice about and lower returns toengagement in labour markets; fewerwomen ‘own’ land or access otherproductive assets; women’s choices areconstrained by an opportunity structure

that limits their choice in relation tothe State, markets and society. Thiscombination of factors perpetuateswomen’s reduced capacity to move outof poverty and contribute to growth.It points to key policy and programmeoptions for women’s economicempowerment, viz.: addressing thegender gap in human capital; reducingwomen’s time burdens; providingopportunities and incentives for women’sequal employment outside of thehousehold and promoting genderresponsive budgeting.

Women’s education levels correlate withwages and per capita income. Higherearnings potentially also increasehousehold savings and investment forgrowth. Women’s level of education,bargaining power within households,economic status and control overhousehold resources are all strongdeterminants of fertility and the humancapital outcomes of their children—all ofwhich have a positive effect on growth.

The link between investment in humancapital and growth is not news, but whatthe evidence indicates is that moreattention to reducing gender inequality ineducation, and across different types ofeducation—including health education—will result in significant growth effects.

For a variety of reasons educationremains high on the agenda of manygovernments, so education will continueto be a key factor in equalisingrelationships between men and womenand in giving women access to incomeearning opportunities. As educatingfemales makes good economic sense,growth policy can continue to supportefforts towards equal educationalopportunities, particularly in terms ofpost-primary education for girls where thehighest returns to investment are found.

Gender Equality andEconomic Growth—for poverty reduction

by Ruth Alsop and Paul Healey,Department for International

Development, UK

Investments in genderequality can accelerateboth economic growthand poverty reduction.

Gender discrimination iscommon in labour, land,credit and technologymarkets; it needs to bespecifically addressed.

Reducing the time burdenof women enables them toengage in paid employment,improve the productivity offarm labour or increaseentrepreneurial activity.

Gender budgeting mehodscan be applied to better targetgovernment expenditures tomaximise their impact ongender inequality.

Poverty in Focus January 2008 15

It is widely believed that reducing thetime burden of non-paid or domesticlabour is critical for women’s economicempowerment. Policies designed topromote growth have failed to elicit theexpected market response from womenin part because women are time-poorand locked into activities for which thereis little or no substitute labour.

Commonly classified as tasks belongingto the reproductive sector, these activitiesessentially involve reproduction andmaintenance of the future and currentlabour force and include activities suchas fetching water, cooking, collectingfirewood, childcare. Across the worldwomen take greater responsibilitythan men for maintaining domesticenvironments, child care and non-casheconomy activities.

Reducing the time burden of womenenables them to engage in paidemployment, improve the productivity offarm labour or increase entrepreneurialactivity. Key interventions that would—in addition to reducing drudgery—freewomen to make the choices aboutengaging in activities with a more directcontribution to growth include:

targeted infrastructure such as roads,wells, energy that improve access,reduce time burdens and/or increaseease of use of domestic servicesreducing the cost of existinginfrastructure and domestic servicesto increase usage, and childcareschemes, which are often essentialfor labour market participation byreducing time burdens.

Patterns of gender equality generallyimprove as economies grow, diversifyand mature. The transition to marketeconomies creates employmentopportunities for women across sectors.At higher overall income levels,manufacturing and service sectorstend to support more gender equality,as do higher levels of urbanisation andeducation. More open and competitiveeconomies are less tolerant of certainsorts of discriminatory practices, which ineconomic terms represent an inefficientuse of human resources.

Many countries have ratified internationalconventions supporting women’s equal

participation in the labour force. Yet, anumber of these countries have notestablished policies and practices whichreflect these conventions and providelittle in terms of the welfare provisionthat would aid women’s entry andparticipation in the labour market. Whilewage and labour inequalities remain ineven the most sophisticated economies,employment discrimination is moremarked in poorer countries, suggestingthat this is an area of promising actionto address the effects of genderinequality on growth.

Women and men enter the labour force aseither employees or as entrepreneurs. Keyareas for policy and practice—addressingboth forms of engagement—includeformalising the informal sector, ensuringequal pay and benefits, giving equalaccess to business assets, and providingnatal and maternity welfare support.Equality in the terms of employment ofwomen and rules governing women’scapacity to develop as entrepreneursis of particular importance for povertyreduction in countries in whicheconomic growth is taking off througha transition to a market based economy.

The barriers women face whenestablishing and managing businessesare common and limit growth. Women-run businesses are frequently unableto respond to emerging economicopportunities, as regulations relating tothe right of women to own assets andoperate businesses in their own nameprevent them from doing so. Informalbarriers and costs, such as much greaterexposure than men to official harassment,enforcement of ‘nuisance taxes’ and socialrules governing women’s behaviour andbargaining position, limit the free andequal operation of asset and productmarkets for women.

Action can also be taken to better targetgovernment expenditures to maximisetheir impact on gender inequality.Gender budgeting integrates genderanalysis into economic policy, offeringthe opportunity to reduce genderinequality and improve expendituresthat target growth promoting initiatives.

Common to both better analysis andeach of these action areas is the simple—

but surprisingly poorly addressed—issue of the determinants of genderinequality. Gender inequality is rootedin beliefs and norms of male/femalebehaviour and all evidence points to thefact that formal institutions—legal andregulatory—as well as informal ones—social and cultural—are weighted againstwomen’s equal participation in privateand public life, including markets.

Formal institutions comprise legislationand regulations. Informal institutionscomprise customary law and socialnorms. Both govern gender relations andbehaviour, as well as women’s ownershipof and access to productive assets.

Getting the formal legal and regulatorystructure right is critical, but enforcementby the state is often undermined bycustomary law and norms. Manycountries have passed or are in theprocess of putting in place legislationand policies that seek to equalise genderrelations. However, it is common practicefor traditional social institutions tooverride these formal, state imposedinstitutions in the household, in themarket and in relation to the state.

Changing culture, particularly the powerrelationships and behaviour that culturedefines, is a sensitive issue for donorsand most governments. However, changein some social institutions may be pre-requisite to gender equality.

States seeking to enhance women’scontributions to growth have proved thatthey can take action towards this end byproviding a formal enabling environment.When well monitored—and governmentfunctionaries and citizen provided withincentives—such efforts have provided aframework for social change.

The growth effects of gender inequalityindicate that governments can no longerafford to dismiss social institutions asbeyond their remit or too difficult tomanage in practice or for analyststo ignore as explanatory variables.

Gender Equality and Growth. Evidenceand Action, DFID, UK, 2007;

R. Alsop, M. Bertelsen and J. Holland:Empowerment in Practice: From Analysis toImplementation. The World Bank, 2006. @

16 International Poverty Centre

The relationship between theincidence of poverty and the levelof gender equality as measured byvarious alternative indices suggests thatdeveloping countries with higher genderequality tend to have lower povertyrates. The chart presents a scatter plotof poverty headcount ratio (for the $2 perday poverty line) and gender equality, asmeasured by the female-to-male ratio ofsex-specific Human Development Indicesfor a set of 73 countries circa 1997. Theinverse relationship between genderequality and poverty shown in thisscatter plot is quite robust to othermeasures of poverty and other measuresof gender equality.

Bivariate correlations, of course, cannotestablish causality. One could easilyargue, for example, that increases inwealth drive increases in genderequality—rather than the other wayround—since discrimination may becomeincreasingly costly to firms in developedeconomies with tighter labour markets.In fact, cross country correlations andeven more rigorous regression analysisare unlikely ever to allow us to establishdefinitive relationships between genderequality and poverty; the simultaneitiesare too great and we do not havesuitable econometric instruments tosolve this problem.

It is considerably easier to examinethe links between gender equality andpoverty at the household level. It is oftenthought that female-headed householdsare more likely to be poor than male-headed households. Empirical evidenceon this score, however, is mixed.One review of 61 studies on headshipand poverty found female-headedhouseholds to be disproportionatelyrepresented among the poor in only38 cases; another finds that therelationship between female headship

Developing countries withlower gender inequality tendto have lower poverty rates.

Less gender inequality inresources such as educationand access to employmentcan reduce the likelihood ofa household being poor.

Female labour forceparticipation, in particular,plays a key role in cushioninghouseholds from the impactof macroeconomic shocksand keeping them outof poverty.

Other major factors aregender inequality in access toland titles and, as a result,to credits. Microfinance canreduce gender inequalityand poverty.

and poverty is strong in only two outof ten countries examined.

One reason for these mixed results is thatit is not easy to define headship. Studiesapply a variety of techniques includingdefinitions of headship used by nationalsurveys, self-reported headship status bysurvey respondents, and definitions basedon contributions to household income.

There is also substantial heterogeneityamong female-headed households.Depending on the country and region, thepopulation of female-headed householdsmay be primarily composed of elderlywidows, divorced women, single womenwith children, or women whose husbandsare migrants. Some of these groups, suchas the elderly and widows, are morevulnerable to falling into poverty thanothers, such as women who receiveremittances from migrant husbands.

Why might female-headed households bemore likely to be poor than male-headedhouseholds? A study from Brazil examinesthree possible explanations: (1) feweradults have positive income, (2) the labourincome of principal earners is low, and(3) the dependency ratio is high. The studycomes to the conclusion that the lowlabour income of the principal earnersis the primary reason why female-headedhouseholds in Brazil are poorer.

Simulations show that if the earnersin female-headed households had theaverage incomes of earners in male-headed households, their average percapita expenditure would be higher thanthat of male-headed households. This isprimarily because female-heads are morelikely to participate in the labour marketrelative to male-heads.

Are female-headed households morelikely to be chronically poor than male-

by Andrew Morrison,Dhushyanth Raju and Nistha Sinha,

The World BankGender EqualityIs Good for the Poor

Poverty in Focus January 2008 17

headed households? That depends on thedifferences in their respective abilitiesto adopt and manage risk. Empiricalanalysis of poverty dynamics showsthat household heads’ education,household demographics and averagewealth are important determinants ofchronic poverty. To the extent thatfemale household heads tend to haveless education and their householdscontain a higher proportion ofdependents, their households are morelikely to be chronically poor than maleheaded households.

Ample evidence suggests that greatergender equality in resources such aseducation and access to employment canreduce the likelihood of a householdbeing poor. Female labour forceparticipation, in particular, has beenshown to play a key role in cushioninghouseholds from the impact ofmacroeconomic shocks and keepinghouseholds from falling into poverty.

At the same time, barriers to femalelabour force participation remainsignificant in some countries. Barriersfrequently identified include: the timeburden associated with child-rearingand other domestic tasks, loweducational levels vis-a-vis men insome regions of the developing worldthat make women less competitive forquality jobs, the role of existing wagemale-female wage gaps in generatingan ‘underinvestment’ in femaleeducation and lower female labourforce participation rates than would bethe case in the absence of such wagegaps, and laws and customs that inhibitwomen’s participation in labour markets.

Constraints to women’s participation inother markets also matters for povertyreduction. The existing research oncredit markets in developing countries—admittedly scarce—suggests that byand large women receive unfavorabletreatment not because of discriminatorytreatment per se, but rather becauseof gender differences in individualcharacteristics that are relevant forloan qualification, e.g. holding land titles.

One institution that has had a majorimpact on relaxing credit constraints forthe poor in general and for poor women

in particular has been microcredit.Microcredit programmes, by providingsmall loans mainly for non-agriculturalmicroenterprise activities, have had asignificant positive effect on householdincomes and assets, child schooling,child and maternal health, and theempowerment of female borrowers.Consequently, microcredit programmesare found widely around the developingworld and are considered to be animportant, cost-effective instrumentfor helping the poor transform theireconomic circumstances by enablingthem to pursue more lucrativelivelihood opportunities.

With regard to land markets, data onlandholdings disaggregated by sex arewoefully lacking in many regions of theworld. The scant existing evidenceappears to show that the distributionof land ownership is heavily skewedtowards men. In Latin America, between70 and 90 per cent of formal owners offarmland are male and conditional onland ownership, men on average ownmore farmland than women.

Land ownership and tenure are crucialfor a number of reasons. Land ownershipis often the primary source of transferableand inheritable wealth; it is alsofrequently a requisite for participatingin formal credit markets in rural areas.Careful studies show that tenureinsecurity impairs investment incentives

in general. Coupled with higher levelsof tenure insecurity for women in manysettings, this suggests that women’sagricultural productivity relative tomen’s is likely to be lower due to highertenure insecurity.

Several studies in Sub-Saharan Africashow that women have lower agriculturalproductivity than men on same-sizedplots growing the same crops. Whateverlimited land rights women possess maybe precisely because men do not workon women’s individual plots, and thereallocation of labour and other inputsfrom men’s plots to women’s plots maythreaten these rights.

There are a host of interesting policyresearch issues related to gender equalityand poverty reduction. For some of theseissues, the accumulated body of researchis impressive; for others it is scant indeed.Surprisingly, there are many areas ofcrucial importance to policy—such asgender issues in the functioning of creditand land markets—where quite basicquestions remained to be answered.These questions are of centralimportance to the design of povertyreduction policies and projects.

A. Morrison, D. Raju and N. Sinha: GenderEquality, Poverty and Economic Growth.Policy Research Working Paper 4349.The World Bank 2007. Background paperfor the Global Monitoring Report 2007. @

18 International Poverty Centre

by John Sender,Development Studies,

University of CambridgeReducing the GenderGap in Education:The role of rural wage labour

Research results from ruralMozambique show thatwhen women have greatereconomic autonomy,daughters are less likelyto be neglected.

Divorced and separatedwomen clearly achievebetter results in educatingtheir children than doother women.

Rural wage employment canprovide an escape routefrom poverty for a newgeneration of womenin Mozambique.

Yet, the share of both aidand public expendituredevoted to agricultureand rural wage labourin Africa has remainedremarkably small.

Analysis of research results fromrural Mozambique offers some importantnew insights into gender relations andthe inter-generational transmission ofpoverty. The Mozambican Rural LabourSurvey (MRLS) underpinned the researchand covered many of the poorest ruralhouseholds in the country. In someof these households, especially inhouseholds where women have greaterautonomy in making resource allocationdecisions, the welfare of youngdaughters is less likely to be neglectedthan in other households.

This finding confirms patterns foundin the international literature on thedeterminants of gender gaps in educationand in nutrition between sons anddaughters. However, the estimates of‘autonomy’ in this literature have notconsidered divorced and separated statusas an unambiguous indicator of women’sability to act independently.

The MRLS contains a remarkably highincidence of divorced, separated andwidowed women. Many women in thesurvey told the researchers that theybecame wage workers following thedeath of or desertion by their spouse,or said that they left the labour marketas soon as they married or began tocohabit. These statements highlight theneed to examine interactions betweenlabour market participation and maritalstatus; and the major objective here isto assess the implications of theseinteractions for rural girls.

In much of the literature, the focus ison maternal education as predictingthe level of child education, particularlythe education of girls, rather thanon the types of wage employment opento women and their effects on girls’schooling. In a paper commissionedfor a 2003 UNESCO report, Naila Kabeer

suggested that wage employment forwomen “is generally associated withlower levels of education of girls, mostoften the oldest girl who substitutes forher mother in the domestic division oflabour”. In contrast, the argument hereemphasises the positive impact ofwomen’s access to decent rural wageemployment opportunities, as the basisfor investment in their daughters’ future.

Many non-divorced/separated womenwere found to be employed in ‘bad’ jobs,often working for pitifully low wageson nearby small farms as seasonal casuallaborers. Part of the explanation for thisfinding may be the fact that men—husbands or fathers—are forciblypreventing them from travelling towork in the better types of job offeredby larger-scale employers. Divorced andseparated women in the MRLS were morelikely than other women to succeed infinding a decent job.

At the same time, divorced and separatedwomen clearly achieve better results ineducating their children than do otherwomen. Divorced and separated mothersare especially good at investing in theirdaughters’ education compared to non-divorced/separated mothers and to malewage workers. Thus, in absolute terms,the daughters of divorced and separatedwomen have achieved more schooling—in terms of the mean and mediannumber of years of schoolingcompleted—than the daughters ofnon-divorced/separated women, asshown in the table.

Moreover, the education gap betweendaughters and sons of divorced andseparated mothers is lower than thecorresponding gap between thedaughters and sons of non-divorced/separated mothers, i.e. divorced andseparated mothers favour their sons far

Poverty in Focus January 2008 19

Variable Stat

Children 16 yrs + Years of schooling Mean 4.62 4.25 4.36Median 5.00 4.00 4.00

Sons 16 yrs + Years of schooling Mean 5.29 4.89 5.39Median 5.00 5.00 5.00

Daughters 16 yrs + Years of schooling Mean 3.93 3.40 3.23Median 4.00 3.00 3.00

Education of sons and daughters of female and maleprincipal respondents in the MRLS

Female Male

DS NDS

less than non-divorced/separatedmothers. The chart shows that the size ofthe gender gap, measured by the ratioof the mean or median years ofeducation achieved by sons comparedto daughters, is much higher for non-divorced/separated than divorcedand separated mothers.

It is not surprising that the sons of themale principal respondents in the MRLShave had more years of education—amean of 5.39 years—than other childrenin the MRLS, since their fathers are moreeducated and earn higher wages, onaverage, than female wageworkers.It is, however, surprising that, as shown inthe Table, the children of divorced andseparated female principal respondentsare, on average, better educated thanthe children of male principalrespondents—because the daughtersof divorced and separated women boostthe average by being significantly bettereducated than the daughters of maleprincipal respondents.

The median number of years ofeducation completed by the daughtersof divorced and separated women is4 years, compared to 3 years for thedaughters of male principal respondents.Although the sons of divorced andseparated women do complete 35 percent more years of education thantheir daughters, 5.29 years compared to3.93 years, the sons of male principalrespondents are much more privileged,receiving 70 per cent more years ofeducation than the daughters of theprincipal male respondents.

Thus, as shown in the chart, the size ofthe gender gap between the educationof sons and daughters is particularlylarge for the children of the maleprincipal respondents, very much largerthan the gender gap for the childrenof divorced and separated women.

Some divorced and separated womenappear to have gained in self-confidencenot only through schooling, but also as aresult of the emancipatory experience ofa successful struggle to survive on theirwage income without a male partner.As a result, they appreciate that theirdaughters would be unwise to rely onmale support, especially if men continueto restrict women’s access to the labourmarket. Instead, they believe that theirdaughters’ welfare and, less altruistically,their ability to care for them in their old

age, will be greater if their daughtersremain at school for as long as possible.

Rural wage employment has thepotential to provide an escape routefrom poverty for a new generation ofwomen in Mozambique. Therefore, it isunfortunate that donors have done solittle to develop effective policies topromote the massive investments inagri-business and rural infrastructurerequired to increase the demand forfemale wage labour in rural Africa. Themost influential donor in Africa, theWorld Bank, has only very recentlyin the World Development Report 2008recognized that “Making the rural labourmarket a more effective pathway out ofpoverty is …a major policy challengethat remains poorly understood andsorely neglected in policy making”.

In fact, the share of both aid and publicexpenditure devoted to agriculturalinvestments in Africa has remainedremarkably small; and there has beenhardly any funding of research on ruralwage labour. Most donors, NGOs andgovernment agencies continue tobelieve as an article of faith that thepoverty of rural women and theirdaughters can be reduced significantlyby efforts to promote and subsidizeself-employment in micro-enterprises,rather than wage employment.

J. Sender and C. Oya: Divorced, Separatedand Widowed Female Workers in RuralMozambique. Feminist Economics,forthcoming 2008. @

Note: DS = divorced or separated; NDS = non divorced/separated.

Marital Status

Principal respondents

20 International Poverty Centre

Empowering Womenthrough Microfinance:Evidence from India

by Ranjula Bali Swain andFan Yang Wallentin,

Uppsala University

Microfinance programsaim to reduce incomepoverty while alsoempowering women.

Increasing women’sresources result in increasedwellbeing of the family,especially children.

The definition andinterpretation of womenempowerment andits measurement variesacross different studies.

Robust empirical evidencefrom India shows significantempowerment impact of amajor microfinance programvia women’s self-help groups.

Microfinance programmes havebeen increasingly promoted fortheir positive economic impact and thebelief that they empower women.We investigate the impact of the SelfHelp Bank Linkage Program in Indiaon women empowerment, defined as aprocess in which women challenge theexisting norms and culture to effectivelyimprove their wellbeing within thecontext of the society they live in.

Women in poor households are morelikely to be credit constrained, and henceless able to undertake income-earningactivities. Microfinance programmes offeraccess to credit to low-income households,specifically targeting women, and thusmay meet poverty reduction and women’sempowerment objectives.

Most microfinance programmes targetwomen with the explicit goal ofempowering them. However, theirunderlying premises are different. Someargue that women are amongst thepoorest and the most vulnerable ofthe underprivileged. Others believethat investing in women’s capabilitiesempowers them to make choices, which isvaluable in itself, and also contributes togreater economic growth and development.

Another motivation is the evidence fromresearch showing that an increase inwoman’s resources results in higherwellbeing of the family, especially of thechildren. Further, an increasing numberof microfinance institutions preferwomen members as they believethat they are better and more reliableborrowers thereby contributing to theirfinancial viability. Finally, a morefeminist point of view stresses thataccess to financial resources presents anopportunity for greater empowerment ofwomen. Though many agree that womenempowerment is an important

development objective for microfinanceprogrammes, it is still unclear whatwomen empowerment means.

Given the complexity of defining womenempowerment it is not surprising thatonly a few empirical studies have tried toexamine the impact of microfinance onwomen empowerment. For the most part,empirical research on microfinance’seffect on women’s empowerment hasbeen conceptually ungrounded andtends to estimate an over-extendeddefinition of empowerment or atruncated aspect of it. A number of thesestudies also suffer from methodologicalbias and flaws; only a few studies havesuccessfully investigated this impact in arigorous manner.

The interpretation of womenempowerment and its measurement variesacross different studies. Some studiesconstruct an index/indicator of womenempowerment. However, measuringwomen empowerment by constructingindices is an inappropriate technique asit allows the use of arbitrary weights.

Most researchers, for instance, will agreethat impact of a women’s decision to buycooking oil for the family is different innature from her participation in adecision to buy a piece of land. Boththese decisions have differentimplications and magnitude of impact onher empowerment. As such giving equalweight to both these decisions does notmake sense. At the same time suggestingan arbitrary weight for these decisions isalso inappropriate, as it is not for theresearchers to decide the factor by whichthe latter decision contributes more towomen empowerment.

Other studies use Item Response Theory(IRT), where the element of analysis is thewhole pattern of a set of binary indicators

Poverty in Focus January 2008 21

that proxy for woman’s autonomy,decision-making power, and participationin household and societal decision making.They have found that credit programmeslead to women taking a greater rolein household decision making, havinggreater access to financial and economicresources, having greater access tofinancial and economic resources, havinggreater social networks, more bargainingpower vis-à-vis their husbands andhaving greater freedom of mobility.

Additional services like training,awareness raising workshops and otheractivities over and above the minimalistmicrofinance approach—with provisionof financial services only—are also animportant determinant of the degree ofits impact on the empowerment processof women.

A study of women in rural Kenya foundthat in direct bank-borrower minimalcredit, women do not gain much in termsof decision-making power withinthe household.

However, when loans are channelledthrough women’s groups and arecombined with more investmentin social intermediation, substantialshifts in decision-making patterns areobserved. This involves a remarkableshift in norm-following and maledecision-making towards morebargaining and sole female decision-making within the household.

The effects are even more striking whenwomen have been members of a groupfor a longer period and especially whengreater emphasis has been laid ongenuine social intermediation. Socialgroup intermediation further graduallytransformed groups into actors of localinstitutional change.

Another issue that needs furtherinvestigation is whether, without changein the macro environment, microcreditsreinforce women’s traditional roles orpromote gender equality.

A woman’s practical needs are closelylinked to the socially defined genderroles, responsibilities, and socialstructures, which contribute to a tensionbetween meeting women’s practical

needs in the short-term and promotinglong-term strategic change. By helpingwomen meet their practical needsand increase their efficiency in theirtraditional roles, microfinance may in facthelp women to gain respect and achievemore in their socially defined roles, whichin turn may lead to increased esteem andself-confidence.

Although increased self-confidence doesnot automatically lead to empowerment,it may contribute decisively to a woman’sability and willingness to challenge thesocial injustices and discriminatorysystems that they face. This implies thatas women become financially better-off,their self-confidence and bargainingpower within the household increasesand this indirectly leads to theirempowerment. Finally, given thatempowerment is a process, the impactof the microfinance programme may takea long time before it is significantlyreflected on the observable measuresof women empowerment.

Given the measurement problems, we useda technique to estimate empowerment as alatent rather than an observed variable.The general structural model estimatesthe mean women empowerment for 2000and 2003, to measure the impact of theSelf Help Group (SHG) programme onwomen empowerment.

The empirical analysis is based on datacollected in 2003 from five differentstates of India. About 1000 householdswere surveyed and their responses wererecorded by recall for the years 2003and 2000. To investigate the impact ofmicrofinance participation on womenempowerment the data was analysedover two sub-samples namely: SHGsmembers group and a control groupcomprised of non-SHG members.

The results are especially robustindicating that on average there is asignificant increase in the womenempowerment of the SHG membersgroup. No significant change is observedon average for the members of thecontrol group. The elegance of the resultlies in the fact that even though thedegree of change and the pace ofempowering women is likely to vary,nevertheless the results clearly show that

the group of SHG members experiencea significant and higher empowerment.

While our results clearly indicate theevidence for a general increase in womenempowerment for SHG members overtime, this does not imply that each andevery woman who joined the SHGprogramme was empowered to thesame degree or they all progressed at thesame pace. Some of the women membersmight have been more empoweredthan other members within the SHGprogramme, prior to their participationin this programme. But on the averagethe SHG members were empoweredover this time period. However, a similarempowerment process cannot beobserved for the control group.

It is difficult to say which factors aremore important for empowering women.The differences in pace of empowermentmight be a result of various factors:household and village characteristics,cultural and religious norms within thesociety, behavioural differences betweenthe respondents and their family members,and the kind of training and awarenessprogrammes that the women have beenexposed to. All these factors together areresponsible for the empowerment process.

The nature and types of activities andprogrammes that the women areexposed to critically determine howempowering the impact of the SHG ison women. The minimalist microfinanceapproach is not sufficient. An importantdirection for future research, that we arecurrently working with is to find which ofthese factors have a greater impacton empowering women.

R. Bali Swain and F. Yang Wallentin:Does Microfinance Empower Women?Evidence from Self Help Groups in India.Uppsala Universitet, Dept. of EconomicsWorking Paper 2007:24. @

By helping women meettheir practical needs,microfinance maylead to increasedself-confidence,respect and esteem.

22 International Poverty Centre

The discussion on empoweringwomen in microfinance often attractsopposing views. The debate tends tocrystallise at the point of clearlyattributing impacts to microfinance andin particular women’s empowerment.Two seemingly separate issues emerge:impact on the client and impact on themicrofinance institution (MFI).

It is a fact that microfinance does impactboth the MFI and its clients. Over theyears, tension has been created in termsof prioritising between these twoimpacts. The essence of microfinanceis to create access to useful financialservices for the ultimate purpose ofimproving livelihoods. The targetingof women is important in order toachieve maximum impact on the family.

MFIs generally agree that genderdimensions are crucial for designingand implementing effectivemicrofinance interventions forimproving livelihoods in a sustainablemanner. Yet, some institutions have notfully integrated gender issues in theirpractical operations largely because ofconflicting priorities.

The priority impact for MFIs is financialand institutional sustainability. Someargue that MFIs can reach sustainabilityby using the advantage of critical massand still empower women, therebyensuring congruency of purpose.However, the question remains to whatextent strategic gender interests can beachieved while MFIs are focusing ontheir own viability.

With the waning of donor funds, MFIsare under pressure to cover theiroperational costs in order to remain inbusiness. Furthermore, state regulationhas pushed MFIs into the regular

financial sector realm where rules aremore defined and non-compliancecan be severely penalised to thedetriment of the institution. Issuesof the right operational systems,professionalism and a strong businesscase thus come to the fore.

MFIs that have not reachedsustainability are often under pressureto deliver primarily to that goal suchthat gender dimensions take abackground role. Lip service is paid tothis discussion regardless of the othercompelling factors that suggest thatgender-sensitive financial productscan actually improve the bottom lineof the institution.

The older MFIs were often donor-driven;they focused on the impacts on theclient and therefore on outreach, asillustrated in the chart. However,some did not espouse strictaccountability and operational rigour.

Regulation and commercialisation thennecessitated significant changes in theway MFIs operate. These involveenhancing a culture of sustainability,embracing professionalism and securingfunding from commercial sources forcontinued business.

The main concern of poor women isto provide a livelihood for the family.They often lack the entrepreneurial skillsneded to make it in the marketplace.In some cases, they have positionedthemselves in saturated markets withscanty preparation for their work. Mostbusinesses involve petty trading withvery short term prospects; theperformance is often dismal.

A study in Zambia showed that thoseentrepreneurs who had the necessary

Microfinance has separateimpacts on the client andon the microfinanceinstitution (MFI).

A tension has been createdin terms of prioritisingbetween these two impacts.

MFIs that have not reachedsustainability are oftenunder pressure to deliverprimarily to that goal;gender concernstake a background role.

Donor engagement isneeded to help strugglingMFIs adopt a mutuallycompatible focusof gender differentiationand organisationalsustainability.

Microfinance forGender Equality:A dilemma?

by Irene KB Mutalima,Christian Enterprise Trust of Zambia

Poverty in Focus January 2008 23

training and business know-howmanaged to grow their businesses.On the other hand, women-runbusinesses in Zambia showed theshortest life cycle, averaging four years.This was attributed largely to the loweducation and experience levels of theentrepreneur. This could be true in otherenvironments as well.

There are also contextual connotationsto this aspect. Where culturally thehusband is expected to go off to workand earn a living for the rest of the family,a woman’s contribution is regarded asmerely supplementing that effort. Evenwhere a husband is no longer in gainfulemployment, the woman’s effort may stillnot be viewed as a long-term means ofsustaining the family.

Hence, the woman’s business is drivenby that level of ambition: as a stop-gapmeasure. It is almost as if there is a glassceiling and the business can only go so far.

Some clients rarely take time to reflecton how best to utilise borrowed funds.This often leads to delinquency,reducing their chances of getting newloans. Most MFIs lend mainly to women,who have higher default and drop-outrates. In this case, business development

services might be the logical process toget clients more focused on growth.MFIs who are focusing on their ownsustainablitiy may not integrate thisenough into their work.

General market conditions affectthe viability of the enterprise. In astagnating economy, market vibrancy islacking and the micro-businesses suffer.Where markets are seasonal, clients willlead a hand-to-mouth existence. Studiesshow that it is often the women clientswho will be most affected by marketinstability. Reducing lending does nothelp resolve this problem; it simplyhelps the MFI to manage its portfolio.

The microfinance sector in Zambia hasnot grown to expectation. A genderaudit of the two main microfinanceinstitutions in Zambia showed thatboth had received feedback from clients.But how useful was this for addressingorganisational as well as client issuesfrom a gender perspective?

Issues of weaning off donor support andreaching sustainability in the financialmarkets are topmost—not a combinedstrategy that includes genderdimensions. Since the Central Bankintroduced microfinance regulations,

MFI management tends to prioritisesustainability and regulatory observance.This limits the utility of gender audits,beyond providing useful information.

The key reason for this is that theirfindings call for efforts to improveoutcomes on clients’ lives, withoutmaking the link to how this willpositively impact the institution’s bottomline. Yet, management is often appraisedon their ability to develop the institutionand not so much on the client impact.Thus, the gender audit does not addressthe key institutional issues.

Studies from Ethiopia show thattargeting for specific impact can actuallyproduce desired results. Gender-disaggregated data show specificimpacts on women. The question ishow this information is used to informdecisions on how to serve poor peoplefrom a gender perspective that will alsoimprove the MFI.

For instance, although 83 per cent ofthe rural population of Zambia are poor,they have least access to microfinance.The incidence of poverty in female-headed households is significantlyhigher than in male-headed householdsThus, a large segment of poor womenare not served.

There is evidence that it is possibleto run profitable institutions that aretargeting women. To ensure this, MFIsneed to fully engage with gender issues;not merely promoting women’s issues,but taking a holistic approach todifferentiating product compositionand delivery to meet identified needsof both women and men.

Donor engagement is needed to helpstruggling MFIs adopt a mutuallycompatible focus of genderdifferentiation and organisationalviability. Those MFIs that have successfullyintegrated gender in their work and arehaving institutional bottom line successesshould be encouraged to provide learninglessons for those that are struggling.

I. Mutalima: Microfinance and GenderEquality: Are we getting there?The Southern African RegionalPoverty Network (SARPN), 2007. @

Donor driven andfocused on client

development

Donors callingfor sustainable

institutions

Regulation andcommercialisation

requiring robust MFIsfor wider financial

sustainability

Concerns focused more on outreach andimpacts. While institutional sustainabilitywas expected, slippages occurredand in some cases a trend/culturewas established.

Bottom line issues came to the foreand product ranges were examinedfor profitability. Products andprocesses that did not supportthe bottom line were not favoured.

As above, MFIs concentrate onimproving their operating processesto meet regulatory requirements.Following the waning of grant funding,MFIs definitely favour profitableproducts. Engagements with otherissues like gender are relegatedto the background.

24 International Poverty Centre

The term ‘feminisation of poverty’refers to an increase in the relative levelsof poverty among women and/or femaleheaded households. It deserves specialattention from policy makers since it isrelated to two negative phenomena:gender inequality and poverty. Giventhat the increase of poverty among asocial group tends to set priorities forpublic policies, in the last decade thediscourse on feminisation has had someimpact on the agenda to promotegender equality in the economic sphere.This, however, comes at the risk ofcollapsing the broader gender inequalityconcerns into a pure poverty agenda.

Based on the available evidence aboutLatin America and some developedcountries, this article briefly reviewswhether there really is a generalisedfeminisation of income poverty.Irrespective of this, we argue thatpoverty—as currently measured—capturesonly a small part of important genderinequalities in the economic sphere.

Much has been said about a feminisationof poverty in the world. But such afeminisation should not be confusedwith higher levels of poverty amongwomen or female-headed households.The term ‘feminisation’ relates to the waypoverty changes over time, whereas‘higher levels of poverty’ refers to thelevels of poverty at a given moment; itincludes the so-called overrepresentationamong the poor. Thus, feminisation is aprocess while ‘higher poverty’ is a state.

So, is there a generalised feminisationof poverty in the world? No one reallyknows. There are not many empiricalstudies about this subject and, ofcourse, a conclusive answer to thisquestion depends on a comprehensiveanalysis based on data including severalregions of the world. Yet the existing

information about the Americas andWestern Europe points in the directionof a negative answer.

The first study identifying a feminisationof income poverty was about the USA,covering a period from the 1950s to the1970s. Other studies followed, some ofthem arguing that such a feminisationdid not happen in the USA in the 1960s,‘70s and ‘80s. Likewise, studies of theUnited Kingdom found no evidence ofa relative increase in the poverty amongwomen or female-headed householdsbetween the 1970s and 1980s. In Canada,a worsening of the gender gap inpoverty indicators was found for theperiod 1973-1990 if one comparesfemale-headed with male-headedhouseholds, but not if the focus turnsto an overall women-men comparison.

Our study found no evidence of afeminisation of income poverty in the1990s in the countries that togetherencompass the large majority of thepopulation of Latin America. This resultholds for different definitions offeminisation of poverty and for variouspoverty lines and assumptions aboutintra-household inequality. Out ofeight countries, including all the mostpopulous ones, only in two—post-crisisArgentina and Mexico—a relativeworsening of poverty indicators forfemale-headed households was found,but even in these countries no relevantdifferences were identified in overallwomen-men comparisons.

Reviewing several studies we found thatthe overrepresentation of women orfemale-headed households amongthe poor is a much more commonphenomenon than the feminisation ofpoverty. However, although higher levelsof income poverty among these groupsoccur in many countries, this is not a

by Marcelo Medeiros and Joana Costa,International Poverty Centre

The international discourseon feminisation has had animpact on the agenda topromote gender equality.

Higher static levels ofpoverty among women ismuch more common than adynamic process offeminisation of poverty.

The real levels of povertyamong women are likelyto be higher than the onescommonly presented,which ignore intra-household inequalities.

Current poverty measurescapture only a small partof gender inequalities, butnot the important lack ofeconomic autonomyof women.

Is There Really a‘Feminisation of Poverty’?

Poverty in Focus January 2008 25

general rule. Even in developingcountries there is no rigid connectionbetween the sex of the head of thehousehold and poverty. In fact, povertyseems to be more correlated withthe presence of children in the familyand other characteristics of thehousehold members.

A review of studies about developed andtransition economies shows that therewas a high degree of over-representationof female headed households in povertyin Canada, Australia, Russia, USA andGermany in the 1990s; a higher incidenceof poverty among women was identifiedin the 1980s in USA, Australia, Germany,Canada and UK, but not in Spain.

In developing countries, studies indicatethat female-headed households aremore likely to be in poverty in Braziland in urban India but not in six Sub-Saharan African countries, three Asiancountries and thirteen other LatinAmerican countries. One reviewcomparing 61 country studies foundthat in 38 of them there was anoverrepresentation of female-headedhouseholds among the poor, and in15 of them some kind of relationshipbetween certain types of female headshipand poverty. However, in eight of thesecountries it did not find any such links.

The conclusion of another review, based onmore than one hundred country studies,is that only in certain countries do thefemale-headed households consistentlypresent worse poverty indicators.

Most studies are based on surveysof income or consumption at thehousehold level. Invariably they neglectany inequalities in the distribution ofincome within the households. However,from a gender perspective, such animplicit assumption of perfect distributioncan be disputed. There is no reason tobelieve that the factors that determinegender inequalities in the public spherewill not act within the families.

On the contrary, despite the scarcity ofdata to support such research, the veryfew studies available about this subjectpresent some evidence of significantintra-household inequalities. Theyidentified differences in the final

allocation of economic resources amongfamily members, usually favouring men.

If intra-household inequalities were takeninto consideration, we would probablyfind that the current figures of the levelsof income or consumption povertyamong women are underestimated.Everything indicates that the real levelsof poverty among women are higherthan the ones commonly presented.However, these data for developingcountries are so limited that one willhardly be able to correctly estimatehow much higher these levels are.

The inclusion of intra-householdinequalities in the analysis of thefeminisation of poverty seems to be anunlikely scenario for the near future, asthis would require the measurement ofthese inequalities in more than onepoint in time. But, differently from theissue of overrepresentation, such aninclusion would not necessarily showthat the feminisation is underestimated.

What matters for the feminisation is notthe level of intra-household inequalitybut an increase in the bias againstwomen. As the situation of womenin many developing countries hasimproved in the last decades relative tothat of men, the result of this inclusionwould probably be in the oppositedirection, that is, of a reduction ofthe feminisation of poverty if intra-household inequalities were considered.

This brings forward an important issue,both from the theoretical and practicalpoints of view: poverty as usuallymeasured should not be our priorityguide to gender equity actions.

Although we frequently conceive povertyat the individual level, our measurementin effect occurs at the household level.The practice among researchers is usuallyto measure total family income orconsumption, or the satisfaction of basicneeds by households, and then to divideit by the number of persons in thesehouseholds to come up with per capitaestimates. Thus, the unit of analysis ofpoverty is the household.

However, inequalities between men andwomen cannot be studied having only

the households as the unit of analysis,as it tends to mask much of thedynamics of the relations betweenindividuals. Even if we narrow thedebate of gender equity to theeconomic sphere, from the perspectiveof gender relations it matters not onlyhow much a woman can consume butalso how she achieves the power toconsume. Often, poverty research merelycalculates the expected consumptionper household member—more exactly,a simple or weighted average of thefamily income or observed consumption—thus neglecting how the economicpower within the household is structured.

Many have taken the feminisation ofpoverty as a global fact. Of course, theterm can be used to express differentconcepts, but in the sense of a worseningof the situation of women in relation tothat of men—or female-headed versusmale-headed households—there isno clear evidence of a widespreadfeminisation of poverty in the world.And while finding higher levels ofpoverty among women or female-headed households is far more commonthan finding a gender bias in theevolution of poverty over time, thisis not a universal phenomenon either.

Beyond that, we have to question thedegree of importance we should giveto these issues. There is no doubt thatpoverty should occupy a prominentposition in the political agenda, but theconcerns about a feminisation of povertyor the overrepresentation of womenamong the poor should not overshadowthe debate on gender inequality.

When we talk about poverty in the waywe currently measure it, we are using aconcept that captures only a small partof important gender inequalities. Itseems that both researchers and policymakers would gain from focusing onrelated but different issues, such as thelack of economic autonomy of women.

M. Medeiros and J. Costa: Is There aFeminization of Poverty in Latin America?In Press, World Development (2007),doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.02.011.

A preliminary version is available athttp://www.undp-povertycentre.org/pub/IPCWorkingPaper20.pdf

26 International Poverty Centre

The ‘feminisation of poverty’ hastraditionally been viewed as a globalphenomenon, and associated with threeapparently intuitive notions. These arefirst, that women are poorer than men;second, that the incidence of povertyamong women is increasing relative tomen over time, and third, that growingpoverty among women is linked with the‘feminisation’ of household headship.

While a now quite substantial body ofresearch has cast doubt on the last ofthese assumptions, the other two are stilltreated as somewhat self-evident. This isdespite serious conceptual and/orempirical problems with both. Forexample, the first assertion—that womenare poorer than men—is static, andtherefore anomalous within a constructwhose very nomenclature impliesdynamism. While the latter is highlightedin the second tenet, it is virtuallyimpossible to establish whether gendergaps in poverty are widening given adearth of sex-disaggregated panel data.On top of this, no consistent trend inthis direction is verified by the limitedstatistical evidence actually available(see above, p. 24-25). Beyond these caveats,there is arguably a bigger problem stillwith the ‘feminisation of poverty’, namelyits implicit emphasis on incomes.

That the ‘feminisation of poverty’ hasbeen associated primarily, if notexclusively, with income, appears ratherat odds with the wider literature ongender and development, in which therehas been growing support for conceptsand measures which encapsulatepoverty’s multidimensionality, and,via participatory methods, attemptto incorporate the ‘voices of the poor’themselves. The relevance of moreholistic and subjective perspectivesis eminently apparent in recentinvestigation into the ‘feminisation of

poverty’ undertaken in The Gambia, thePhilippines and Costa Rica. In additionto examining statistical and policydocuments, this comparative researchdrew on interviews and focus groupdiscussions with over 200 low-incomewomen and men of different ages, andconsultations with 40 professionalsworking in international organisations,state agencies and NGOs.

Although there was no consistentquantitative or qualitative evidence tosupport a generalised tendency to a‘feminisation’ of income poverty, onestriking trend across the three case studycountries was what is perhaps bestsummed-up as a ‘feminisation ofresponsibility and/or obligation’.

This notion rests on three mainobservations. The first pertains togrowing gender disparities in therange and amount of labour investedin household livelihoods. While risingnumbers of poor women of all ages areworking outside the home, as well ascontinuing to perform the bulk ofunpaid domestic and care work, men arenot increasing their participation in suchwork despite a declining role as sole orchief earners in households. That thisgrowing unevenness in gendered inputsto household livelihoods is occurringin a context where neo-liberalrestructuring is frequently requiringgreater investments of time in all formsof labour, including self-provisioning,raises serious concerns about inequality,exploitation and sustainability.

My second main observation relatesto persistent and/or growing disparitiesin women’s and men’s capacities tonegotiate gendered obligations andentitlements in households. Despitewomen’s progressive movements to thefrontline of coping with poverty, they do

by Sylvia Chant,London School of Economics Beyond incomes:

A New Take on the‘Feminisation of Poverty’

Are women poorer thanmen? Are women-headedhouseholds poorer? Is thegender gap widening?

The scant data oninequalities withinhouseholds preventcertain knowledge.

Looking beyond incomes,field studies reveal largeand increasing genderdisparities in obligationsand responsibilities.

‘Feminisation’ should referto privation in manydimensions, not justto income poverty.

1. See Poverty in Focus No. 9:What is Poverty? — concepts and measures.

Poverty in Focus January 2008 27

not seem to have gained any ground fornegotiating greater inputs to householdincomes or labour on the part of men, letalone reductions in men’s resource-depleting activities.

Indeed, regardless of their decliningshares of household effort, many mencontinue to withhold earnings—and/orto appropriate those of wives or otherhousehold members—to fund extra-domestic, and fundamentally self-oriented pursuits such as spending timewith male companions, drinking, takingdrugs, engaging in extra-marital sex and/or gambling. Since women have littlechoice, especially where idealised normsof femininity continue to emphasisealtruism and the primacy of family care,men’s extra-domestic indulgences notonly reinforce women’s obligations, butcan, in the process, exacerbate them.For example, illness or incapacity inducedby risk-taking behaviour can deprivehousehold members of economicresources through losses in earningsand medical expenditure.

A third distinctive pattern across thecase study countries is an increasingdisarticulation between investments/responsibilities and rewards/rights.While the onus of dealing with poverty isbecoming progressively feminised, thereis no obvious increase in women’s rightsand rewards—whether of a material ornon-material nature. Gambian, Filipinoand Costa Rican women frequently stressthat they are working harder in andoutside the home. However, unless theyhead their own households, rarely dothey claim that this has entitled them toany benefits such as more personal overcollective expenditure, more freedom, orlicense to pursue goals which might beconstrued as individualistic.

Indeed, in most cases women appear tosee no justification to expect or demandmore as a result of giving more. This iseven the case with young womenwho are undoubtedly the biggestbeneficiaries of institutional attemptsto level the gender playing fieldin such areas as education andemployment. While young women’sgrowing personal asset base might beexpected to strengthen their bargainingpower and aspirations, potential gains

are frequently circumscribed by socialand familial constraints. Young women’shigher earning capacity, for example,does not necessarily enable them tonegotiate new deals within households,but can instead expose them to moreclaims. This is especially the case inThe Gambia.

On the other side of the fence, men,despite their lesser inputs to householdlivelihoods, are managing to retain theirtraditional privileges and prerogatives,including the exercise of authority,distancing from the time and labourefforts necessary for household survival,and recourse to resource-draining‘escape routes’. The scenario wherebyinvestments are becoming progressivelydetached from rights and rewards couldconceivably evolve into new and deeperforms of gender inequality, and, as such,is a matter of profound concern.

The above findings also raise importantquestions about the relevance of the‘feminisation of poverty’, which, inrespect of its current referents, does notseem to capture the essence of wherepoor women’s most significantcontemporary privations lie. Genderedpoverty goes far beyond the questionof income, with a broader perspectiveon poverty also indicating that the‘feminisation’ of privation may owemore to the actual and idealisedmajority position of male householdheadship than a rise in the numbersof households headed by women.

On balance, the notion that poverty is‘feminising’ might only be sustained ifinputs are given as much emphasis asincome, and due attention is paid to theirsubjective and objective corollaries. Themounting onus on women to cope withhousehold survival arises not onlybecause they cannot necessarily rely onmen and/or do not expect to rely on men,but because a growing number seem tobe supporting men as well—whetherthrough income or labour contributions.

This underlines the argument thatpoverty is not just about the privationof minimum basic needs, but ofopportunities and choices1. While onone hand female household heads couldconceivably be seen as an extreme case

of ‘choicelessness’ and ‘responsibility’—inhaving little option other than to fendfor themselves and their dependents,and on potentially weaker groundsgiven gender discrimination in societyat large, this needs to be qualified:a) because female-headed householdsdo not necessarily lack male members;b) free of a senior male ‘patriarch’, theirhouseholds can become ‘enabling spaces’in which there is scope to distributehousehold tasks and resources moreequitably, and c) women in male-headedhouseholds may be in the position ofsupporting not only children, butspouses as well, as an increasingproportion of men seem to be steppingout of the shoes of ‘chief breadwinner’into those of ‘chief spender’.

If classic conceptualisations of the‘feminisation of poverty’ aremethodologically and analyticallyinappropriate in depicting trends ingendered privation, this arguably leavesus with two choices. One is that existingterminology is abandoned, and perhapssubstituted by something akin to a‘feminisation of responsibility and/orobligation’. The second is that the termis retained with the proviso that thepoverty part of the construct refersnot just to income but other, albeitrelated, privations.

The latter is conceivably preferable: first,because the ‘feminisation of poverty’ issuccinct, well-known, and has alreadygone some way to ‘en-gender’ povertyreduction strategies, and secondbecause giving poverty a more explicitmultidimensional emphasis would bringit more in line with poverty discoursesin general. Provided it is made patentlyclear that poverty is not just aboutincomes, but inputs, the ‘feminisation ofpoverty’ would have greater theoreticaland empirical resonance. It wouldalso provide a better basis for policyinterventions which in the process ofdirecting poverty reduction programmesto, and or through, women, can simplyadd to the disproportionate burdensthey are currently carrying.

S. Chant: Gender, Generation and Poverty:Exploring the ‘Feminisation of Poverty’in Africa, Asia and Latin America(Edward Elgar, UK 2007). @

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International Poverty CentreSBS – Ed. BNDES, 10º andar70076-900 Brasilia DFBrazil

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