”Even though they make up half the population, women and girls have endured discrimination in most societies for thousands of years. In the past, women were treated as property of their husbands or fathers – they couldn’t own land, they couldn’t vote or go to school, and were subject to beatings and abuse and could do nothing about it. Over the last hundred years, much progress has been made to gain equal rights for women around the world, but many still live without the rights to which all people are entitled.”–Robert Alan Silverstein

‘‘We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.’ – Gloria Steinem

‘Feminization of poverty is a phenomenon in which women represent disproportionate percentages of the world’s poor. It as “the burden of poverty borne by women, especially in developing countries”. This concept is not only a consequence of lack of income, but is also the result of the deprivation of capabilities and gender biases present in both societies and governments.This includes the poverty of choices and opportunities, such as the ability to lead a long, healthy, and creative life, and enjoy basic rights like freedom, respect and dignity. In many countries, the feminization of poverty and the masculinization of wealth is still the status quo.’

*Women are poor. Women lack control over their income. Women lack power and voice. Women are missing out because they are undercounted, undervalued, underserved, and underrepresented.

*Women bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s poverty. Statistics indicate that women are more likely than men to be poor and at risk of hunger because of the systematic discrimination they face in education, health care, employment and control of assets.

*It is estimated that if women’s paid employment rates were raised to the same level as men’s, America’s GDP would be 9 percent higher; the euro-zone’s would be 13 percent higher, and Japan’s would be boosted by 16 percent.

*Poverty implications are widespread for women, leaving many without even basic rights such as access to clean drinking water, sanitation, medical care and decent employment. Being poor can also mean they have little protection from violence and have no role in decision making.

*Women’s nominal wages are 17 percent lower than men’s.

*More than 1.2 billion still subsist on less than $1 per day. women make up the majority of the world’s poor — owing to unequal access to resources and opportunities, discriminatory land and inheritance laws, and unequal distribution of household resources.

*7 out of 10 of the world’s hungry are women and girls.

*Of the 37 million people living below the poverty line in the US, 21 million are women, according to US Census Bureau figures from 2006

*More than two-thirds of the world’s unpaid work is done by women — the equivalent of $11 trillion, according to a global UNDP study from 1995. “women do two-thirds of the world’s work, receive 10% of the world’s income and own 1% of the means of production.”

*If the average distance to the moon is 394,400km, South African women walk the equivalent of a trip to the moon and back 16 times a day to supply their households with water,according to a 2006 UNDP report.

*Women are missing from poverty statistics that measure poverty by household, rather than individual: systems of national accounts do not include unpaid domestic work as “productive.”

*Women make up some 60% of the world’s working poor, people who work but do not earn enough to lift themselves above the $1 per day poverty line, According to a 2004 report by ILO (reaffirmed in 2006)

*Women in the US earned only 77 cents for every $1 earned by a man in 2005, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. In the developing world, the ratio is just 73 cents, according to World Bank estimates. For women of colour, the gap is even worse — African American women earn 63 cents and Latinas 53 cents (IWPR 2004).

*At the rate the wage gap is closing, women in the US will not see equal earnings until 2050. Women account for 64% of minimum-wage workers in the US, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007.

*Elderly women are 70% more likely to be poor than elderly men.

*In some regions, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, women provide 70% of agricultural labour, produce over 90% of food, and yet are nowhere represented in budget deliberations, noted the World Economic Forum in 2005.

*Two-thirds of children denied primary education are girls and 75% of the world’s 876 million illiterate adults are women, reports the Millennium Campaign in 2007.

*Gender inequality in education and employment in Sub-Saharan African has reduced per capita growth by 0.8% per annum, according to recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates.

*The global average proportion of women in Parliament in 2007 is just 17.3%, according to the Inter Parliamentary Union; the US ranks 67th with a mere 16%.

*In Mexico, women in paid employment devote an additional 33 hours to domestic chores per week, while men’s weekly contribution six hours.

*In Arab states, only 28 percent of women participate in the workforce.

*Women are concentrated in insecure jobs in the informal sector with low income and few rights; they tend to have few skills and only basic education. They are the first to be fired.

*80 percent of women workers are considered to be in vulnerable employment in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

*In many countries around the world, women’s property rights are limited by social norms, customs and at times legislation, hampering their economic status and opportunities to overcome poverty. Even in countries where women constitute the majority of small farmers and do more than 75 percent of the agricultural work, they are routinely denied the right to own the land they cultivate and on which they are dependent to raise their families.

It seems women are forced to be poor, illiterate and unemployed because they are women. Whether women are black, white, yellow or brown, they are poor. They have black eyes or blue eyes or brown eyes or green eyes, they are poor. There are women who are made poor only because they do not have dicks!

Poor and dependent women are depressed, afraid, anxious, fearful, vulnerable, weak. They are having low self esteem and lack of self confidence. Women must not be poor. They must not be shy and silent. They must have a loud voice. They must refuse to be shackled, chained, threatened and beaten. Women must have money. They must have their own houses. Women must be independent and must be powerful.