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Gender and Poverty Reduction


Gender equality is a major dimension of human development. In many societies, impoverishment is deeper in female-headed households and among women, particularly older women. Women also often have fewer economic and political opportunities to improve their well-being and that of their families.

In UNDP, gender equality and women’s empowerment are central concerns in all areas of work, including poverty reduction.

In relation to our work in poverty reduction, the focus is on:

  • Poverty Assessment - Promoting the production of gender-disaggregated data, facilitating the assessment of women's progress in terms of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs);
  • Strategies and Policies – Promoting employment strategies that are gender-sensitive, ensuring they do not have an adverse effect on the work, employment and incomes of women;
  • Capacity Development.

Visit the Women’s Empowerment page to learn more about other aspects of UNDP’s work on gender issues.


Key initiatives

Women's Empowerment – access to markets, lands and assets and the assessment of inheritance, marital laws and social norms

The MDGs cannot be achieved without making progress towards gender equality. Therefore monitoring and assessing MDG progress must include sex-disaggregated indicators and data. MDG-based development strategies and policies must also be gender-sensitive. To facilitate the development of gender-sensitive policies, the constraints to gender equality must be identified, particularly when assessing legal frameworks; access to assets, markets and credit; and social norms. Although there has been significant advocacy in this regard, very little research has been conducted in the developing world, particularly on the following:

  • disaggregating the ownership of assets within the household to look at how it affects the gender pattern of wealth ownership overall or its impact on household decisions and women's well-being;
  • marital and inheritance regimes, which affect women's ability to accumulate wealth;
  • sex-disaggregated data.

In response to this, UNDP has initiated a project and an analytical paper has been prepared for assessing legal regimes (inheritance, marital laws) and social norms on women's access to assets, markets and credit. On the basis of this paper, country studies in Africa and Asia will be undertaken.

Resources

`Reorienting development – engendering employment strategies’ by Selim Jahan, Working Paper no. 5, International Poverty Centre (IPC), UNDP, Brasilia, February 2005.

 

Links

Women's Empowerment