Gender inequality and poverty: trends, linkages, analysis and policy implications

This report contains an overview of gender-poverty linkages across different sectors of development cooperation. It also provides a more detailed analysis of poverty trends, poverty measurement, and the relevance of households and labour markets for gender and poverty issues.

Findings include:

• Human rights: there is a need for greater focus in donor assistance on the use of human rights and legal instruments to secure women’s economic and social rights and on the implementation and enforcement of existing legal and human rights of relevance to women, at international, national and local levels. There is a need to promote the participation of women in debates on legal and constitutional reform, and for support to existing NGOs working with poor communities, to provide gender-sensitive legal awareness, advocacy and aid, as well as human rights education
• Urban poverty: a gender equality perspective of urban poverty is important because men and women experience and respond to poverty in different ways. Access to income and assets, housing, transport and basic services is influenced by gender-based constraints and opportunities. Gender-blind urban services provision may not meet the needs of women if their priorities are not taken into consideration
• Education: a gender perspective on poverty and education highlights several possible strategies to tackle female disadvantage. These include:
  • reducing opportunity costs to girls’ schooling, e.g. through childcare provision or investment in labour saving infrastructure, or flexible or non-formal educational provision
  • incentives and scholarships for girls’ enrolment to reduce the direct costs of girls schooling
  • educational initiatives outside of the schooling system, such as adult education and literacy programmes, for those who ‘missed out’
  • tackling gender bias in the curriculum and non-education sector policies to tackle discrimination, e.g. in labour and financial markets, which prevent women from realising the returns to educational investment
• Health: a gender analysis of health and poverty suggests the need for policies which pay attention to the broad range of women’s health needs, not just reproductive health. Efforts must also be made to ensure that health sector reform strategies do not put extra heavy burdens on poor women through increased demands on their time or incomes. Improvements in quality of care, which take account of women’s perceptions and experiences, is important in order to increase demand for services