Challenge of poverty reduction programmes: a study on women and poverty in developing countries

It is estimated that nearly 40 per cent of the worlds poor, who earn less than a dollar a day, live in South Asia. While this estimate reflects income or consumption expenditure, poverty has other attributes such as powerlessness, dependence, or isolation. Low economic status and social exclusion combine to influence health and educational status, nutritional levels, access to sanitation and safe drinking water, to credit and ability to exercise ones democratic rights. So the incidence of poverty among women in South Asia is especially high, with women and men experiencing poverty differently and often becoming poor through different processes. The process of feminization of poverty in South Asia is closely linked to the cultural and institutional constraints that restrict womens participation in economic activity, the macro economic framework and technological choices that have often tended to reinforce pre-existing constraints. Women continue to largely concentrated in informal employment, as unprotected and sub-contracted labour, there are persistent wage gaps between men and women, and women bear near total responsibility for care and nurture. With increasing migration and displacement, new groups of vulnerable women and greater numbers of female headed households have emerged.