Women and Poverty

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Recommended: Inequality of class and gender

This essay will examine how women have been treated by the welfare state and the social security system by successive governments since the introduction of the 1942 Beveridge Report. It will also examine the expected roles of married women from a feminist perspective by looking upon research carried out by N. Timmins who was opposed to Beveridge’s recommendations. The essay will also briefly discuss the research by G.P. Murdock in Social Structures and that of A. Oakley in the gendered roles of men and women in society. Finally, it will observe how the labour market discriminates against women and traps them in poverty throughout their working life and how these inequalities affect women in later life when they retire.

‘Women are at far greater risk of poverty than men: at any given stage in their lives, women are far more likely than men to be poor and their experience of poverty is also likely to be far more acute’ (Wright, 1992 p17). Poverty has been defined as a relative multidimensional and dynamic phenomenon, which in the United Kingdom (UK) has a female face, as historical data for the past hundred years has provided a constant depiction of women’s experience of deprivation (Ruspini, 2011). Regardless of attempts to promote equality between the sexes, gender still remains a key organising principle in society. This is especially the case within the social security system where the labour market is segregated horizontally and vertically and beset by persistent pay gaps and hours of work that varies by gender; a division of labour in the household, with men working long hours outside the home and women working fewer hours but undertaking more unpaid caring work; and the distribution of resources and ownership betwe...

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...p (2010) The Impact on Women of the Coalition Spending Review 2010 UK Women’s Budget Group - November 2010 (Online) Women’s Budget Group.

Available at:

http://www.wbg.org.uk/RRB_Reports_4_1653541019.pdf

(Accessed 10th April 2011).

Work and Pensions Committee (2009) Tackling Pensioner Poverty: Fifth Report of Session 2008-09 Volume ll (Online) House of Commons, London.

Available at:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yBvgfIgGFUkC&pg=PA73&dq=uk+women+pensioners+in+poverty&hl=en&ei=TiemTe_iFpTN4AbD4c2WCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=uk%20women%20pensioners%20in%20poverty&f=false

(Accessed 10th April 2011).

Wright, R (1992) A feminization of poverty in Great Britain? (Online) Review of Income and Wealth Series 38, Number1 p17-25.

Available at:

http://www.roiw.org/1992/17.pdf

(Accessed 10th April 2011).

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