Women and Poverty in the United States
Both the political conservatives and the political liberals have foused on the feminization of poverty in the United States, although with different perspectives and recommendations for changing the situations. The conservatives have blamed both feminism and the welfare state for the increased incidence of female-headed households living in poverty, while liberals have pointed to discrimination as a major issue. All, agree, however, that the problem has been increasing over the past two decades and that more children live in poverty now than lived in poverty in the 1970s.
According to Mayra Buvinic (1997), the problem is even more widespread. She termed the feminization of poverty a global trend, rather than just a trend in the United States or the industrialized nations. As she noted, women are traditionally found to be more impoverished than men. Current trends indicate, moreover, that women actually account for a growing proportion of people considered poor based on specific income standards. Thus, in relationship to men, women's economic position is declining worldwide. In addition, Buvinic (1997) noted, women seem to be disproportionately represented among those who are calculated as poor based on indices of well-being. According to the UN Development Programme in their 1996 Human Development Report, 37 percent of people in developing countries lacked at least three essentials of well-being, while only 21 percent of them were income poor. The 700 million poor that were not calculated as income poor were primarily women.
There is disagreement about both the solution to the problem and the cause, or causes, of the problem. Much of the problem of women and children in poverty is attributed to the increase of female-headed households. The problem is not that women are the heads of households, but that women generally have lower earnings than their male counterparts.
Othe...