Covid and Crisis: The Feminization of Poverty

As the average woman, worldwide, earns just over 50 cents to a man’s dollar, global attention has turned to the widening gap between men and women cyclically stuck in poverty. This disproportionate designation of women among the world’s poor has fallen under the label of the “Feminization of Poverty.” Oftentimes, this disparity is rooted in lack of opportunity. Women are denied critical access to credit, land, education, and healthcare.

The Coronavirus pandemic has deepened this divide. As previously projected, regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where 59% of the world’s poor women dwell, will continue to create conditions of poverty for women. In Sri Lanka, for example, a growing population of over 1.7 million women are forced to face the non-regulated informal sector, where “no working means no wages.” In the nearly three years following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, governmental response has been largely gender-blind. In a study published by the United Nations Development Programme, it was revealed that while 221 countries and territories adopted 3,099 social and labor protection initiatives in response, only 19.6 percent of these measures, 606 in total, targeted womens’ economic security or unpaid care. Additionally, only 14.4 percent of initiatives aiming to fiscally aid businesses survive the pandemic were aimed at “female-dominated sectors.”

In 2022, the UN published the Covid-19 Global Gender Response Tracker, which monitors global governmental pandemic responses, underlining those which aim to alleviate through gendered lenses. With such practices in play, policymakers can be advised on how to prevent the exacerbation of gendered poverty following the economic crises presented by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Additionally, global restrictions on education across gendered lines project worrying trends for future feminization of poverty. According to UNESCO estimates in early 2022, in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence, girls are two and a half times more likely to drop out of secondary school than boys. Poverty, cyclically, continues to be a barrier in access to education, with girls from underserved communities, low family income backgrounds, or belonging to minority ethno-linguistic groups, most likely to face educational poverty and therefore perpetuate the disparity. In December, 2022, Taliban officials banned all women from receiving elementary education, female teaching staff, and female university attendance, essentially banning women from having access to education.