Women exiting chronic poverty: empowerment through equitable control of households’ natural resources

This paper examines the relationship between women’s vulnerability to poverty and their management of domestic natural resources. It finds that gendered experiences of poverty often derive from discriminatory social institutions which prohibit women’s control over the financial returns from productive resources; which limit their ownership of natural resources; which prevent them from seeking alternative employment; and which prescribe women the major responsibility for domestic care work. Compounding these gendered social conditions are changing environmental circumstances, such as climate change, resource scarcity and disease, which further perpetuate many women’s vulnerability to poverty.