Global Gender Inequality: Women's Rights and Feminized Poverty

Introduction: Women's Global Inequality

Although women have seen substantial progress in the United States due to the women's rights movement, globally women still struggle to attain parity with men, particularly in the resource-poor developing world. Although women have assumed politically prominent leadership positions in the U.S., Germany, Canada, and other major national powers, females have broadly struggled to achieve parity in the world community as a whole. Globally, women make up "just 17% of parliamentarians" and "over the past 25 years only 1 in 40 women were peace agreement signatories" (Inequality Statistics, 2014, Womankind Worldwide).

There are also significant health disparities regarding women's health. For example, "99% of maternal deaths occur in developing countries, with women continuing to die of pregnancy-related causes at the rate of one a minute," and while "women produce up to 80% of food in developing countries" they are "more likely to be hungry than men, and are often denied the right to own land" (Inequality Statistics, 2014, Womankind Worldwide). Helping women is a vitally important issue given that women make up the majority of the world's population — yet remain disenfranchised and denied their basic rights. Improving women's well-being is critically tied to improving literacy, improving health and sanitary conditions, and reducing overpopulation.

The Feminization of Poverty

Women have less access to adequate food and high-paying work, and are often politically and economically disenfranchised, resulting in what is commonly called the "feminization of poverty." They lack the tools to meaningfully improve their condition. "Of all the people in the world living in poverty, 70% are women. They are also more often the primary caretakers of children, which further drains their resources. Women also constitute the majority of the 1.5 billion people living on $1 a day or less" (Abbate, 2010).

The term "feminized poverty" refers not only to the immediate financial disadvantage of women relative to men, but also to the structural inequalities that make it so difficult to remedy their circumstances. "Being naturally classified as caretakers, women have often been corralled into specific lines of work, such as teaching, caring for children and the elderly, domestic servitude, and factory work such as textile production. These kinds of jobs lack stability, security, and higher income" (Abbate, 2010). By virtue of being perceived as caretakers, women are relegated to a status in which they are seen as automatically second-class citizens. Women who are single mothers are the most vulnerable to falling into poverty (Feminization of Poverty, 2014, Boundless).

Violence Against Women

Violence against women is still tacitly normalized in many regions of the world. "Recent global prevalence figures indicate that 35% of women worldwide have experienced either intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime," and "on average, 30% of women who have been in a relationship report that they have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence by their partner" (Violence Against Women, 2013, WHO). Women are also more likely to be victims of violent crime, including sex- and employment-related crimes such as human trafficking, where women are often coerced into entering the sex trade or forced to work for slave wages.

The world over, women and girls remain prone to exploitation, including trafficking that forces them into hard labor or sexual slavery. These conditions deny them opportunities to access education and participate in public life, including politics. In some communities, rape is even used as a weapon of war. Creating an effective public policy response to these realities is challenging given the profound cultural and economic obstacles that stand in the way of change. Improving access to education is seen as a critical tool of female empowerment, as is ensuring that women have control over their fertility — a measure that is also vital to stopping the spread of AIDS, a disease from which women suffer disproportionately in the developing world, where condom use is still not widely accepted in many areas.

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