Re‐thinking the “Feminization of Poverty” in Relation to Aggregate Gender Indices

The ‘feminisation of poverty’ is often referred to without adequate specification or substantiation, and does not necessarily highlight aspects of poverty which are most relevant to women at the grassroots. The UNDP’s gender indices go some way to reflecting gendered poverty, but there is scope for improvement. In order to work towards aggregate indices which are more sensitive to gender gaps in poverty as identified and experienced by poor women the main aims of this paper are two-fold. The first is to draw attention to existing conceptual and methodological weaknesses with the ‘feminisation of poverty’, and to suggest how the construct could better depict contemporary trends in gendered privation. The second is to propose directions for the kinds of data and indicators which might be incorporated within the GDI or GEM, or, used in the creation of a Gendered Poverty Index (GPI).