Introduction
With the deepening and development of the research on poverty, the ways to measure gender and poverty are also more extensive and the areas involved are expanding. Income is not the only way of poverty dimension. Measurements of poverty, such as poverty line, poverty index and different poverty measure methods basically treat poor women and poor men as indiscriminate. Thus, a more nuanced and complex analysis of poverty and gender is emerging and a multidimensional measurement is needed.Accordingly, scholars are giving rise to a more gender-aware approach to poverty assessment. Considering about the influence of gender gaps, the distinction of poverty can not be divided into absolute poverty and chronic poverty just simply based on income. And the approaches to measure gender and poverty is based on some vital factors, such as level of education, disempower, employment, living standards, income, social exclusion and inequality (Rogan, 2016). Therefore, using various approaches to measure gender differences through different dimensions. Similarly, it is also more efficient and more comprehensive to measure poverty from a social gender perspective.Besides, it is also necessary to indicate understandings of poverty to reflect the distinctively gendered nature of disadvantage for both women and men.
There are two most common methods of poverty measurement while using datas and statistics. The first one is The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), another
She uses “poverty thresholds” to measure the level of income and household sizes among the social
Poverty and wealth is difficult to measure in terms of geographic dimension. The pictures below demonstrate
Nearly half a century ago, Lyndon Johnson began campaigning the War on Poverty with a vision for a sustained and prosperous economy. Back then, poverty in America was associated with graphic images of substandard wooden shacks and impoverished city alleys. Today, the face of poverty has taken a new shape. In societies imagination, poverty takes the form of hopeless Americans and single mothers frantically treading on a rolling barrel that is headed towards the rivers end. For the enormous amount of women living in this situation, the American dream is dead.
The Poverty Line: The Measure of What It Means to Be Poor What it means to be poor is a difficult concept to define, as there is no consensus as to how we should properly measure it. Sociologists and government policymakers like to view poverty in absolute or relative terms, creating thresholds or cut-off lines to determine who is in poverty and who is not. To them, poverty is a measure of income and consumption. Poverty is traditionally understood to mean a deprivation in the amount of money or material resources needed to meet a person’s basic needs such as housing, food, clothing, and transportation. It is typically based on whether a family’s income is sufficient to meet their basic needs based on a federally established threshold.
These are called Absolute and Relative Poverty. Absolute Poverty occurs when individuals are not able to consume sufficient necessities to maintain life, such as food/water, clothing and shelter. Relative Poverty is always present in society. The relatively poor are those at the bottom end of the income scale, often those that rely on others for income. A common measure used by many countries is the Gini Coefficient
Women in poverty has a huge impact in our world. The direction our society and history goes, has led to the disparity of gender. The gap between women and men in poverty has increased exponentially in the past decade. There are several factors that have led to this issue. In poor countries men own 90 percent of the land, which is a far greater gender disparity in wealth than found in high-income nations.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE FOUR APPROACHES: (i) The Monetary Approach: The monetary approach is the most popular approach to identification and measurement of poverty. In this approach, poverty identifies with a shortfall income from the poverty line. Where the poverty lines define as a threshold level of income which can purchase the minimum consumption bundle of good and services needed for the survival of subsistence life. The threshold level of income depends on the monetary value of those items which are included in the consumption bundles and its market prices (Grosh and Glewwe 2000).
It is proven that gender does contribute to a difference in wages in society and there for another cause of wealth inequality. The U.N. has found that gender discrimination is still a significant factor in holding many women and children around the world in poverty. In many countries, there is a gender income gap in the labor market. For example, in America, statistics show that “The median full-time salary for women is 78 percent of that of men”; despite the fact women make up half the workforce. One of the reasons women earn less income/money in their lifetime is usually because they are single mums and/or have more people/family to support on their
America has advanced socially in regards to sexual equality since the birth of the nation. There have been many advances in society, especially for women, despite these advancements, there continues to be inequalities in sexual “equality” .Why does a wage difference exists between men and women? Are employers being sexist? Sexism has been a problem since the beginning of mankind.
Education is a key element linked with one’s class in the system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy. Specifically, parents transmit the benefits or disadvantages of their class to their children through the educational system (Young, J, 1990. p.162). The type and level of education a child receives is normally associated with class, region, race and ethnicity, religion and gender. Quoting John Porter, Young, J. 1990, argues that “those who have most access to the greatest rewards of society are thus at the top of the stratification system…is composed of individual with …similar backgrounds” (Young, J 1990.p,.162).
Gender Inequality Gender inequality is a characteristic of social structure according to which different social groups (in this case men and women) have certain differences resulting in unequal opportunities. Gender inequality is associated with social construction of masculinity and femininity as oppositional categories with unequal social value (Ferree, 1999). One of the main problems in gender theory is the problem of dominance. Together with race and class gender is a hierarchical structure that could to provide both opportunities and oppression (Ferree, 1999). Gender inequality can exist in different forms, depending on culture, region, religion and other factors.
It is important to link gender equality and sustainable development for a number of reasons. How can we achieve a sustainable future, and reach our development goals if half of the world’s population has their rights, capabilities and dignity ignored? Women’s knowledge should be used to help achieve these goals, they should be viewed as central actors, not victims. Furthermore, to be effective, policy actions for sustainability must redress the disproportionate impact on women and girls of economic, social and environmental shocks and stresses. The lives of girls and women have changed dramatically over the past quarter century.
In many cases, women are the primary sources of family income, and are engaged in all types of activities such as paid domestic work as well as informal industrial jobs, trading and service. Unemployed poor people are often led
Gender equity faces obstacles like the lack of education for both boys and girls, and the challenges of deviating from societal stereotypes and norms. Nevertheless, if actors from the private and public sector come together, public policy can be created to strengthen women’s lives and rights. Why Gender Equality is Important A Social Justice Issue Women cannot escape poverty, be adroit, nor become autonomous, if they do not have a good-paying job. This is difficult to attain without higher education, in a society who dismisses their employment applications and that teaches women they are submissive and physically, cognitively, and psychologically inferior to men.
They decided to not index it to the cost of food or the share of income a family spends on food. The method of defining the line of poverty has not changed much and all of the considerations above to first come up with the measure of poverty line and the subsequent indexing methods have a significant importance to how poverty is measured today. The limitations of the poverty line There have been many criticisms about the way poverty line is defined and how it has been indexed.