Poverty as a gendered experience: the policy implications

Abstract

The poverty experience is gendered by the differential impacts on women and men, girls and boys, and by their different responses. This should be considered more in the design and implementation of anti-poverty policies and programmes. For poor women, time is often the most valuable resource; it is so much taken up by caring work that they can remain caught in a vicious circle of poverty. Collecting more genderbased data can improve the functioning of social policies and help ensure the reduction of gendered poverty