Women and Poverty
POTRET, Media Perempuan Aceh (Edisi XXI, Tahun 2008), December 18, 2008
by Marianne Klute and Victoria Kumala, Watch Indonesia!
Amirah rushes home, her basket filled with vegetable leaves from the countryside. She is in a hurry, wondering how to feed her children and when to take care of her old father tonight. Amirah feels exhausted, not only because she is hungry, but also because she feels the burden of life. After a long day in the family’s garden, there is still a lot of work waiting for her. She has no time to participate in the programmes of aid agencies, and she has no means to continue her own education.
Amirah is only one of millions of women worldwide considered “poor”, a fate, she is sharing with so many other women in many different countries. “Poverty has a female face”, states a report of the German government, like many other studies do. 60% of the poor people worldwide are female. Looking at the extremely poor, the number is even higher: 70% of the those earning less than one dollar a day are women.
Measuring female poverty by economic criteria only enforces the impression of a female face of poverty: On a global scale, women earn 10% of worldwide income and possess only 1 % of all assets, but they perform 70% of unpaid work.
Yet, female poverty is more than just lack of money and access to ecomomy. Women are the pivot point of the society. If women are poor, society as a whole experiences the negative effects. If a poor mother is malnourished or underfed, her child will be more exposed to infections, especially in case of lack of vitamin A (mango) and zinc (beef, lamb, seafood, milk). Malnourishment of mother and child leads to retarded mental and physical development of the future generation, and has direct impacts on the learning abilities. Deficiency of iodium (sea salt and fish), protein (soy beans, tahu, eggs, fish and meat), iron (green vegetables, liver and kidneys, grain and unpolished rice) reduce the intelligence.
Education for girls and women is often considered less important. But it is women who, after haven given birth, raise and educate the future generation. Many experiences and studies underline the relationship between welfare and female education. Educated women have healthier children who perform better in school. On the other side, lacking access to education is equal to remaining poor or even to be further driven into poverty.
The poverty cycle is a vicious circle. It leads from poverty to → malnourishment to → diseases and → low health to → retarded mental and physical development of the child to → low productivity to → low income back into poverty of the society as a whole.
To understand the importance of women in society, the four main roles of women are discussed more deeply: (a) women as producers; (b) as managers of household consumption; (c) as mothers and carers; (d) and as active in the community.
(a) Women as Producers
This role refers to women’s contribution to the national economy through productive activities – which extends both to employment in the formal sector and informal sector activity. Women’s role as producer fulfils two functions: first, it contributes to the national product and national welfare (whether measured or not); and it generates income for the household. Income generation by women is particularly important for poor households.
The nature of women’s contribution to production and income generation varies across societies, according to culture and history, stage of development and government policy. However, there are some facts that will help in the analysis of the impact of structural adjustment policies on women:
- In most developing countries like Indonesia, women’s activities outside the household – as indicated by participation rates – are lower than those of men, but have been rising over the past thirty years in many areas. As a result, women have formed an increasing proportion of the total labour force.
- Within the formal sector, women are paid significantly less than men. And on average, women’s income per hour is significantly below that of men. This is a combined effect of lower wages in formal-sector employment, disproportionate importance in agriculture and the urban informal sector, where incomes tend to be lower than in the rest of the economy, and the greater significance of unpaid subsistence activities.
- Women’s education and skill levels are significantly below those of men. In general, the lower the level of education in the society, the greater the disparity.
- Women are proportionately most significant in the agricultural labour force in developing countries and of lesser importance in industry and services.
- Women’s role is especially large in the informal sector, where they often form the largest part of the workforce. The official international definition of the informal sector includes: unregistered enterprises below a certain size; paid and unpaid workers in informal enterprises (i.e., family farms and businesses); casual workers without fixed employment.
- Women spend much more time on work within the household securing basic needs, which has no exchange value, than men. This includes food production, processing and preparation, health care and education. These activities, however, are not integrated in measurement of gross domestic product (GDP).
- In many countries, the number of female-based households has been growing. It is estimated that women are the sole breadwinners in one-quarter to one-third of the world’s households. Female-headed households account for a disproportionately large proportion of the very poor.
- Women’s contribution to national production is seriously understated because so much of it is unmeasured, and because women’s pay is below that of men, even for the same job.
- Women’s contribution to income generation is particularly important for the survival of low-income households.
(b) Women as Managers of the Household Consumption
Women normally are expected to organise household consumption, as they are responsible for securing the basic needs of the household, they, therefore, are particularly affected by changes in the conditions of consumption.
(c) Women as Mothers and Carers
Women are responsible for the welfare of children and thus of future generations. It is estimated that three-quarters of all health care takes place at the family or individual level. Women have prime responsibility for most informal health care and education as well as feeding; they are also primarily responsible for ensuring that children have access to formal education and health care.
(d) Women in Community
In this role women contribute to the nature, viability and cohesiveness of the community. The community can play a vital role in contributing to household survival at times of hardship, as well as in raising social welfare in more normal times.
Women have to accumulate time spent working outside the household and household activities – excluding social activities – taking most of women’s time.
Neoliberal development policies during the last decade are most devastating towards the poor and marginalized. Therefore, a growing argument exist that poverty is experienced more severely by women than men.
- Within the households and outside, women and girls have less access to food, education and health care than men and boys. Hence they may face poverty more severely than men.
- Some of the poverty processes like lack of basic needs have a more adverse impact on women’s work burden than men’s, given women’s responsibility to fetch fuel and water, leading to reduced health status.
- Women’s economic position is highly dependent on men due to unequal inheritance rights, earning opportunities and returns to labour. When their marriage breaks down, women’s economic position quite often deteriorates very fast.
- Women have lesser means – assets, skills, employment options, education, legal resources, financial resources – to overcome poverty than men, and are more economically insecure and vulnerable in times of crisis. Given greater constraints from the household to the market, their range of income earning options and the returns to their labour and education is lower.
- Women disproportionately bear the burden of structural adjustment in the sense that they are more represented in the growing informal sector, where the nature of work is mainly irregular and casual – they can be called in and thrown out when necessary. They spend greater time on reproductive work to compensate for cut in social services by the government and increase in prices of basic commodities.
Development policies only aiming to increase gross national product (GNP) and national income, seem to “miss the point” of development if only seen through the economic lens. Development should include human development which can be described as a process to expand human capabilities, as what people can or cannot do: that is, “whether they can live long, escape avoidable morbidity, be well nourished, be able to read and write and communicate, take part in literary and scientific pursuits, and so forth” (Amartya Sen, 2000).
Evidence has also revealed reduced real earnings in the informal sector where a large concentration of women works. These informal sectors can include sweatshop workers and domestic servants; all those people who work on an unpaid basis for family farms and businesses producing for their own subsistence consumption and for the market. It includes home-based paid workers working on subcontract and those whose workplace is the street. In one hand, there is an increase in female participation in the work force, albeit low wages and hence loss in household income but has increased female working hours. Furthermore, informal work lacks the social protection afforded to formal paid work, such as job security or health insurance, and is often irregular and casual, causing women having to be ready whenever called or dismissed. This also holds an impact to young girls or daughters having to drop out from school in order to care for her siblings.
Understanding the importance of the fourfold role of women in society, we can conclude that women play a key role within this poverty cycle. The high number of poor and poorest women in a country like Indonesia reflects the poor status of the general human development, and reciprocally reflects the disregard of the value of the people, both women and men. Likewise, women also play a key role in any effort overcoming poverty by breaking the vicious circle, as described above. Equal opportunities and equal rights for women are essential to fight the poverty of a society. It is not a question of women´s rights, but of the fate of men, women and children living in poverty, like Amirah, her old father and her children. <>
Watch Indonesia! is a working group for Democracy, Human Rights and Environmental Protection in Indonesia and East Timor. Watch Indonesia! is based in Berlin, Germany. Marianne Klute is mainly working on environmental issues, conflicts and women. Victoria Kumala is doing research on poverty and currently working as an interim with Watch Indonesia! www.watchindonesia.org
