Using
women to
get rid of poverty
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
May 17, 2006
LONDON - The secret key to driving
down the rates of poverty and population growth is
female. To be absolutely precise, it is poor women living
in the Third World's rural backwaters, where 75% of the
world's hungry scrape a living. Everything else is a bit
of a sideshow.
The last few years the number of
rural women living in poverty has gone up in both India
and China, although during the latter half of the 1990s
the figures were falling. In Africa, although the numbers
haven't gone up, the fall in numbers is very modest. Only
in Latin America and the Caribbean has there been some
marked improvement.
Too rapid population growth is one
part of the problem, but even where it is slowing - as in
China- there has been a sharp jump in the number of
female-headed households. Changes in traditional values,
the emigration of men to look for work in the cities and
overseas, increased family break up, low productivity and
a deteriorating environment all are working to reinforce
each other.
In a number of countries the
problem is exacerbated by a male dominated culture or by
social instability resulting from conflict and war, civil
disturbance or over rapid industrialization.
Although women are a critical
element of production in the rural economy - in Africa
women produce three-quarters of their families' food
supply - social custom usually subordinates them. Women's
access to land is severely constrained, yet in the rural
economy only land of one's own gives access to the means
of production.
Islamic law grants land rights to
women, but in daily life the threat of divorce or other
social sanctions encourage women to cede practical
control of their land to men. In Africa customary land
systems often give married women the right to a certain
number of fields, but they must give priority to their
husband's fields and livestock.
Development has not favoured women
or the rural areas. Over the last twenty years, according
to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation,
investment and aid allocated to rural areas has gone down
by 20%. And most crop and livestock projects are aimed at
men. Project designers, bankers and aid officials all too
readily assume that women cannot afford to buy improved
seed, fertilizer and irrigation equipment. Nor can they
repay loans. These attitudes are based more on prejudice
than fact. The repayment records of poor women are often
much superior to those of better-off
borrowers.
Lack of education postpones the day
of reform. A near billion earthlings are illiterate and
two thirds of them are women. Investment in women's
education is probably the single most cost-effective
activity for any government at any level of
development.
To under invest in women compounds
every other mistake. Education and economic opportunity
can produce in triply disadvantaged women- in poor,
female and single parents- a triple multiplier effect- in
the home, in society and, not least, in nurturing the
next generation.
Contrariwise, when women
participate in economic life, population growth is
controlled. There is growing evidence that a woman's
income and her degree of control over household spending
benefits her children's nutrition and health. Thus,
improving female opportunities and income lowers child
mortality and morbidity. Over the long run women will
then have fewer children.
Access to land provides a similar
benefit. If a woman can work for herself, she will need
fewer sons to assure her care if something happens to her
husband.
Tragically in many parts of the
Third World, men are either absent, seeking work in the
city or the mines or travelling to distant lands, or
simply not pulling their weight. Men, when deprived off
their traditional macho activities such as war-fighting,
political intrigue or hunting, often become almost idle
rather than putting their shoulder to the plough. The
burdens of life and well-being are thrown on women, who
are not equipped by education, tools or advice to realize
their unfulfilled potential.
The answers to successful economic
and social development, we all know, are multi- faceted
and complicated. But one thing is very clear: take care
of women's poverty and education and then population
growth and small-scale rural economic growth will largely
take care of themselves.
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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