In a new Poverty Brief from CROP, Sarah Bradshaw, Sylvia Chant and Brian Linneker asks: "What do we think we know, what do we actually know, and what do we need to know about women’s poverty, and how does this relate to poverty alleviation programmes?"
Some key points from their briefing are:
- While a feminised and feminising monetary poverty has been assumed, there is little evidence on which to base this assumption.
- The evidence that exists is contradictory, and any feminisation may be as much down to statistical method as ‘real’.
- Asset, time and power poverty interrelate with monetary poverty to determine women’s relative deprivation.
- Current anti-poverty programmes such as CCTs, while focusing monetary resources on women, do little to improve their asset or power poverty and may increase their time poverty.
- More research is needed on these other dimensions of gendered poverty if anti-poverty programmes are to improve women’s wellbeing.