Feminization of Poverty

As defined by experts, feminization of poverty is an observable occurrence, a trend that shows women as the ones who suffer poverty greatly compared to men. Well, right now, women do produce food on the table as well as run the household. Men cannot in any way come close to women in the amount of time spent in housework even if these women go out and work.

Feminization of poverty came up as a Sociology term for women who suffer unreasonably when statistics show that 2 out of every 3 impoverished adults are women. This is the reason why the Decade of Women's slogan is: "Women do two-thirds of the world's work, receive 10 percent of the world's income and own 1 percent of the means of production." So how do these numbers generally affect a woman's life and way of living? Unfortunately, these numbers are still growing everyday and feminist activists seem find it difficult to solve this issue.

How can women cope up with this growing trend of bearing more of the burden of poverty than anybody else? Is feminization of poverty really happening? Yes, in many corporate areas, women are still paid less than men, and that accumulates throughout the lifetime. There's also the issue of occupational segregation where the jobs that women are most likely to apply for also pay less. Then there's the issue about divorce where women usually takes care of the children and child support is not that easy especially when only about 50% of Dads pay child-support. Thus, after the divorce, a man's income will go up while a woman's income will suffer.

Even in a complete family, wherein the mother works to help the family generate a greater income, it's still considered a woman's job to take care of the family after work. Maybe there are men who do this instead of the women, I don't think we can find many of them; they're actually one of the kind. So I'm keeping my eyes open. I'll follow on this issue on my own until I'm sure that the term feminization of poverty won't exist anymore.