Women, at the center of families

In recent years, new tools to lift women out of poverty (e.g. micro-credit) have completed a very limited list of strategies dedicated to fight the feminization of poverty. But governments shouldn't ignore the basic changes that can turn millions of lives around - as it happened in developed countries in the 20th century. In Europe, the world wars caused very deep social changes by bringing women into the factories since men were busy fighting on the front.

Long story short, the changes that have had the biggest impact were all based on the idea of gender equality: providing women the same rights as men. That entails, giving them the right to own land, to start and own a business, but also the right to access common goods and services: healthcare, legal help, employment but also tools and resources shared by a community (e.g. land, forest).

They work more than you’d think…

The result of recent studies on families living in poverty pointed out the huge amount of work that women carry out by taking care of their kids and helping out in their community all while going to work (when possible). But what made a difference in terms of bringing equality of rights for women has been the presence of organized groups who campaigned together and shared information and skills to find jobs and create change in their country.

After all, single parent families are often made of women who decided to build a new home because life under their husband’s roof was not bearable. In a sense, these women live in less poverty than they previously did, but they often need support to set up this new life - as anyone would.

The best strategy is always to offer both job opportunities and training, along with social safety nets to help with the kids and coping with the temporary lack of income. And this obviously means that governments should make sure that women and children are entitled the same rights as those with higher social status. But then again, that's if they really want to fight family poverty. More often than not, they really couldn't care less.