Feminization of Poverty
Feminization of Poverty – the process of an increasing proportion of women among people living near or below the poverty line, where the poverty line is understood as the subsistence minimum. This category most often includes single mothers, retired women, women with disabilities, and women heading households.
The macro-level of the feminization of poverty causes identified by the researcher include:
- The economic crisis, which in most countries of the post-Soviet space formed a social class of the poor, including the working poor, the majority of whom are women because of gender asymmetry in the labour market;
- A state budget structured along gendered lines;
- Economic policy directed toward the development of extractive, “male” industries;
- The regulation of a “male” range of public works, such as builders and road workers;
- The imperfection of the tax system: taxes are paid on official earnings, while women more often have only official earnings; at the same time, the burden of dependants, which is higher for women, especially in single-parent families, is poorly taken into account;
- The destruction of the social protection system, the low level of social transfers, and the destruction or rising cost, and therefore inaccessibility, of the service sector, including childcare institutions, whose consumers are to a greater extent women.
The micro-level causes include:
- Patriarchal forms of relations within the household, which lead to the dominance of the power factor over the income factor, when a woman cannot dispose of family income on an equal basis, even if she brings into the family an income equal to or greater than that of a man;
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Reproductive burdens falling mainly on women, while parental functions and the functions of caring for sick and elderly household members are distributed unequally.
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