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Background
Poverty is not ‘just lack of income’ because it can be measured in terms of lack of income, lack of assets, lack of time, and deprivations of health and education. Poverty can be interpreted as the rejection of the opportunities and choices most basic to human life. For example, the opportunity to lead a long, healthy, and creative life, and to enjoy a respectable standard of living, freedom, dignity, self-esteem, and respect for others. Two common measures of income poverty are, first, the proportion of the poor in the total population, a measure of incidence of poverty also known as the headcount ratio, and second, the average income the poor need to reach the poverty line, a measure, including some with mathematical properties, that are useful for statistical analysis. A large number of women just cross the poverty line but the extremely poor ones would remain in the same situation. Economic and social breakdown caused by displacement will bring about a worsening of women’s already low status and vulnerability. Their poverty and low social status also make it less likely that they will be involved in decision-making.

History
Feminization of poverty refers to the disproportionate number of women suffering from poverty as a direct consequence of women’s unequal access to economic opportunities. The feminization of poverty is a relative concept based on a women-men comparison, where what matters are the differences or ratios, depending on the way it is measured between women and men at each moment. If poverty in a society is distinctly reduced among men and is only slightly reduced among women, there would be a feminization of poverty. Therefore, two definitions of the feminization of poverty arise. First, the feminization of poverty may be defined as an increased in the difference in the levels of poverty among women and among men. Secondly, an increase in the difference in the levels of poverty among female-headed households and among male and couple-headed households. The definitions of the feminization of poverty discussed so far are not exhaustive. One could go further and define it as an increase of the role that gender discrimination has as a determinant of poverty, which would characterize a feminization of the causes of poverty. For instance, an increase of wage discrimination that also exacerbates poverty among women and men of all types of families can be understood as a feminization of poverty because it denotes the relation between the biases against women and a rise in poverty. In numerous cases, such changes in the causes of poverty will result in one of the types of the feminization of poverty discussed above, that is, in relative changes in the poverty levels of women and female-headed households. "Feminization of poverty" stems from a number of social and economic factors, including dramatic changes in family structure, economic transformations and shifting government policies, most prominently welfare "reform." The concept of the feminization of poverty has served to illustrate the many social and economic factors contributing to women's poverty, including the significant gender gap between women and men in pay. Feminization of poverty is understood as pertaining ‘to the extent to which single women predominate among various groups of the poor’ and to ‘the more general sense of the potential poverty of many partnered women’. In other words, it means the condition of ‘feminized poverty’, rather than a trend. The term originates in the US and the question posed is whether it is an international phenomenon. The proportion of female-headed households whose incomes fall below the “poverty line” has been broadly adopted as a measure of women’s poverty. In many countries, household consumption and expenditure surveys show a high incidence of female-headed households among the “poor,” defined as those whose incomes fall below the poverty line. There are two especially troubling assumptions underlying income-based measures of poverty. First, there is a tendency to conflate income with the ability to control income. While women may control earned income, the limits on poor women’s financial sovereignty have been well demonstrated. An income-based measure may hide the extent and nature of poverty when women earn an income but have no control over those earnings. While the question of who controls income is acute for women, it is also relevant to the position and well-being of men. Societies that place upon individuals a heavy communal, kinship or clan-based obligation may end in both women and men having limited control over individual income. Second, and related is the assumption that income creates equal access and generated equal benefits. Access to education illustrates the point. While lack of financial resources may result in low enrolment or high drop-out rates among poor children, social values around the role of women and the importance of formal education for girls are likely to be more meaningful in demonstrating the difference between male and female enrolment rates. The feminization of poverty concepts has focused attention on the phenomenon of the growing impoverishment of women, but it is increasingly seen as a model that not only distorts and simplifies the phenomenon of poverty but is also politically divisive. Although the feminization of poverty model to date, has disproportionately focused on single mothers and young women, it clearly has the potential to incorporate a life-span perspective.

Climate change
Women are more likely to be poor, and to be responsible for the care of poor children, than men. Approximately 70 percent of the world's poor are women; rural women developing countries are among the most disadvantaged groups on the planet. They are therefore unlikely to have the necessary resources to cope with the changes brought by climate change, and very likely to suffer a worsening of their everyday conditions. Poor women are more likely to be hurt or killed by natural disasters and extreme weather events than men. There is also evidence to suggest that when households experience food shortages, women tend to go without so that their children may eat, with all the health implications this brings for them. Since poverty and climate change are closely linked, the poorest and most disadvantaged groups often depend on climate-sensitive livelihoods like agriculture, which makes them disproportionately vulnerable to climate change. These groups lack the resources required to weather severe climatic effects like better houses and drought-resistant crops. This diminished adaptive capacity makes them even more vulnerable, pushing them to take part in unsustainable environmental practices such as deforestation in order to maintain their well-being. The extent to which people are impacted by climate change is partially a function of their social status, power, poverty, and access to and control over resources. Women are more vulnerable to the influences of climate change since they make up the bulk of the world’s poor and are more dependent for their livelihood on natural resources that are threatened by climate change. Limited mobility combined with unequal access to resources and to decision-making processes places women in rural areas in a position where they are disproportionately affected by climate change. There are three main arguments in association to women and climate change. Firstly, that women need special attention because they are the poorest of the poor; secondly, because they have a higher mortality rate during natural disasters caused by climate change and thirdly because women are more environmentally conscious. While the first two refer mainly to the women in the South, the last is especially apparent in the literature on gender and climate change in the North. The feminization of poverty has been used to illustrate differences between male and female poverty in a given context as well as changes in male and female poverty over time. Typically, this approach has fed the perception that female-headed households, however, defined, tend to be poorer than other households. Women are clearly more disadvantaged than men by poor household infrastructure or the lack of piped water and less-consuming energy sources.

Lack of assets
According to Martha Nussbaum, one central human functional capability is being able to hold property of both land and movable goods. In various nations, women are not full equals under the law, which means they do not have the same property rights as men; the rights to make a contract; or the rights of association, mobility, and religious liberty. Assets are primarily owned by husbands or are used for household production or consumption, neither of which help women with loan repayments. In order to refund their loans, women are usually required to undergo the ‘disempowering’ process of having to work harder as wage laborers, while also encountering a growing gendered resource divide at the domestic level. One of the major factors influencing women to greater poverty are the limited opportunities, capabilities, and empowerment in terms of access to and control over production resources of land, labor, human capital assets including education and health, and social capital assets such as participation at various levels, legal rights, and protection.

Time poverty
Time is a component that is included in poverty because it is an essential resource that is oftentimes distributed inequitably across individuals, especially in the context of the inadequacy of other resources. It is extremely relevant to gender, with a marked difference in gender roles and responsibilities observed across the world. Women are certainly more time-poor than men across the income distribution. Women concentrate on reproductive or unremunerated activities, while men concentrate in productive or compensated activities. Women generally face more limited access to leisure and work more hours in the sum of productive and reproductive work than do men. Time poverty can be interpreted in regards to the lack of sufficient time to rest and sleep. The greater the time devoted to paid or unremunerated work, the less time there is available for other activities such as relaxation and pleasure. A person who lacks adequate time to sleep and rest, levies and works in a state of ‘time poverty’. The allocation of time between women and men in the household and in the economy, is a major gender issue in the evolving discourse on time poverty. According to the capabilities approach, any inquiry into people’s well-being must involve asking not only how much people make but also how they manage their time in order to obtain the goods and services to meet their livelihoods. Time poverty is a serious constraint on individual well-being as it prevents having sufficient rest and sleep, enjoying leisure, and taking part in community or social life.

Capability deprivations
Since the last twenty-five years, feminist research has consistently stressed the importance of more holistic conceptual frameworks to encapsulate gendered privation. These include: ‘capability’ and ‘human development’ frameworks, which identify factors such as deprivations in education and health. Another is 'livelihoods' frameworks, which indicate social as well as material assets. Also, 'social exclusion' perspectives, which highlight the marginalization of the poor; and frameworks which stress the significance of subjective dimensions of poverty such as self-esteem, dignity, choice, and power. A higher share of women than of men are poor, women undergo greater depth or severity of poverty than men, women are likely to experience more persistent and longer-term poverty than men, women’s irregular burden of poverty is increasing relative to men, women face more difficulties in lifting themselves out of poverty, and women-headed households are the ‘poorest of the poor’ are the common characterizations of the ‘Feminization of poverty’.

Deprivation of health outcomes
Poor women are more vulnerable to chronic diseases because of material deprivation and psychosocial stress, higher levels of risk behavior, unhealthy living conditions and limited access to good quality healthcare. Women are more susceptible to diseases in poverty because they are less well-nourished and healthy than men and more vulnerable to physical violence and sexual abuse. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health, be adequately nourished, and have adequate shelter can make an enormous difference to their lives. Violence against women is a major contributing factor to HIV infection. Stillwaggon argues that in sub-Saharan Africa poverty associated with high-risk for HIV transmission adds to the stigma and social risk for women and girls in particular. Poverty and its correlates like malnutrition and parasite burden can weaken the host and create a dangerous environment, making sex and birth and medical care riskier for poor women.