Women Are Poorer Than Men

Women Are Poorer Than handsIn recent years, focus has been on disc oering if meagreness is gendered, that is to say to what achievement women may be more at threat of pauperism than men. In this essay I shall be discussing how women ar affected by poverty and what occurrenceors lead to women being haplesser than men. Peter Townsend et al (1987) fix argued that thither has been a feminisation of poverty, this term may be understood in various rooms, it may refer to the increase risk of poverty or the increased visibility of womens poverty it may as well refer to the reconstruction of poverty from a womans affectpoint.It is difficult to compargon the poverty of men and women because statistics argon usually based on family lines and this suggests that stomachhold incomes argon dowerd evenly in the midst of adult members. Glendinning and Millar (1987 maintain that men get a larger sh atomic number 18 in well-nigh cases and this may echo their higher earning ability and the fact that in many households men soothe make the decisions of how money is spent.It has been shown that women are more likely to be poorer than men, although their poverty has often been masked tush studies that focused on male-headed households Ruspini (2000).Townsend ack forthwithledges four groups which make up the major(ip)ity of the egg-producing(prenominal) poor, these consist of women who take care of minorren and other dependents they are un nonrecreational and are unable to take up traffic. There are alike lonely(prenominal)(prenominal)ly(prenominal) women with children who dip in and discover of employment. Then there are ancient women like pensioners who live alone. There are also women with low simoleons where the incomes of others in the household do not contri subduede towards the total household income to enable the womens income to go over the poverty line. Women unquestionably tend to see to it more poverty than men because their boil two un salaried and paying is undervalued, in addition women have always get downd work in a different way from men.A private and open die has always existed where women were seen as belonging in the private sphere of home and home and the ideologically constructed family, whereas men were seen as belonging in the public sphere of the market and the put forward.In legal deformity of work, three main powers for why womens poverty continues have been identified, the first is because a third of all women of on the job(p) age still wait outside the labour market around twice the simile for men, they do not have passable devil to the core of the labour market and they are disproportionately represented inside part-time and lower nonrecreational jobs and on average women are paid less than men. The New Labour government has aimed to maximize labour sop up involvement by supporting (the idea of work-life balance) and trying to make it easier for slew to merge paid work and famil y life. In-work benefits and tax credits were introduced as incentives nevertheless the working families tax credit has been more beneficial to women earners than those whose main income comes by male partners since it is more likely to be paid through the overcompensate packet. The development of a National Childcare Strategy was also introduced just now it does not pecker up to the levels of childcare provision to be tack together in most other European countries.The second reason involves the duty women have for most of the tasks associated with genial re resultion in the way of unpaid care work and domestic labour.The third reason is the sharing of income and resources within families, in the majority of cases this does not benefit women. Individuals can be poor in households with adequate incomes. This finding has important implications for policy initiatives aimed at the allayer of poverty (Pahl 1989 Kempson 1996).Other forms of inequality have persisted within the p ublic sphere, Gillian Pascall (1997) and others have argued that while women now make up a high proportion of the public sector workforce in wellnesscare, social work and cultivation, they remain under represented in senior and management positions. This is characteristic of the glutinous floor where women are concentrated in specific occupations with low catch and status and what they do at work is often similar to what they do at home, although the adit of the minimum wage in April 1999 has been beneficial to women who are dependent on low paid work nevertheless not to other wage groups. Though most health service proles are women, most of the surgeons are men and it is largely men who control health and social services including services that concern women, for instance reproductive healthcare, as well as support for easy carers and the education agreement. This is typical of the blur ceiling where women are less likely to hold senior positions and when they do hold sen ior positions they have to work harder and for longer hours in jobs that are classed as mens work. In the 1970s 70 portion of managers were men and straight off 90 percent of judges are men.Anti discrimination code has sought to outlaw all forms of sex discrimination but this has mostly brought about advances for individual women but has not benefited all women although it has improved the practices of most employers as well as raising public awareness.While the education system no longer just prepares girls for domesticity, it is tending to equip them for sub- servient occupations particularly in the public sector on the other hand it has also expanded womens options in the labour market.Despite the fact that women have been allowed to suffrage and participate in the democratic process on the same terms as men since 1928, in 2000 only 20 percent of Westminster Members of sevens were women and in 2001 only 28 percent of local government councillors were women (EOC 2001).Althou gh there has been a feminisation of the labour market, the increase in womens workforce society can have disastrous effects on their health because of the ternary burden they have to shoulder, at home they take care of children and make domestic tasks which are unpaid as well as doing their paid job.The General Household Survey of 1998 showed that the majority of carers were women who provided more than a snow hours of care per week which was far more than any paid worker would do. It has been shown that caring is comprisely in various ways, for one there is outlet of earnings and the rate of adults providing care who are in paid employment is low, the effect is even extensiveer for women than men and greatest of all in the case of a mother providing care for a disabled child Arber and Ginn(1995) Baldwin (1985).In addition costs that are associated with disability like house adaptations to accommodate special equipment and higher transport costs.There is also the cost to the carer in terms of the stress and strain (Glendinning and Millar1992 Pahl 2006).Social policy is fountain to acknowledge the contribution of carers, one way was the introduction of the Carers Act 1985 which impose an obligation on local authorities, however the support that carers receive is still limited.Financial support is also provided by the social security system with benefits like carers allowance and disabled persons tax credit for low paid disabled workers.There are also many ways in which care can be paid for Ungerson (2000) see also Ungerson (2006).The way social security is arranged and its effects on women can be attributed to the architects of the welfare system who were so used to patriarchal assumptions about various(prenominal) roles of male breadwinners and female homemakers that the National Insurance system for example was founded on the idea that married women would mainly be financially dependent on their husbands and although obvious biased elements have sin ce been removed, the inheritance of the assumptions on which the system was founded remains.Lewis and Piachaud (1992) demo that women have always been poorer than men by showing the proportion of women amongst adults in receipt of poor relief or social assistance was at around 60 percent and was the same at the end of the twentieth century.Women are the main recipients of most benefits and rely more on mode tested benefits even though it means greater personal scrutiny, preferably than contribution based benefits like jobseekers allowance, incapacity benefit and industrial injury benefit because these types of benefit rely on the recipient having been employed, and for women their work patterns are fewtimes interrupted when they take time out to raise children and therefore their national insurance contributions are affected. Women are also in around cases hidden claimants because they receive benefits as dependents of male breadwinners, and for this reason, the welfare terra firma may also function directly to make women dependent on men, although living accommodations and social security provision has provided at least some measure of independence to women like those escaping from violent or dysfunctional relationships.Donzelot (1979) has observed that families face to have extended functions and are subject by the welfare state to greater levels of surveillance and control for example womens performance as mothers and informal carers may be subject to supervision by healthcare and social service professionals. The family has not lost its functions, but it has lost control. It is still the major arena for the care of dependents, but traditional female tasks are now defined and managed outside the family and by men. Pascall (1997 23). This is seen in the cases of lone parents 90 percent of whom are women who will have social assistance benefits withdrawn if they should inhabit and they can be compelled to cooperate with the making of child support a ssessments against the father(s) of their child(ren).In terms of work the, mother -as-work policy ignores that child care is also work and lone mothers stand little chance of becoming equal stakeholders because they must be both breadwinners and carers, and the position at present is that lone mothers are likely to be praised for the paid work they do and condemned as welfare dependent for the unpaid work they do and the eradication of the alone(predicate) Parent Premium to income support which directly disadvantaged many lone parents most of whom are women.In recent years studies have shown that pensioners are far more likely than the working population to experience ongoing poverty, between 1998 and 2001, 18 percent of pensioners experienced persistent poverty as compared to 7 percent of the working population. Studies have also found that in recent decades older women and those from ethnic minorities are more likely to experience poverty than other pensioners.Findings from these studies led Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to state in 2002 Our aim is to end pensioner poverty in our surface area. the introduction of a pension credit in October 2003 which guaranteed a minimum income of one-half of those tidy sum in this age group in the UK attempt to twin this goal but the success of this policy depends on all those authorize to claiming the benefit actually doing so Flaherty et al (2004).The majority of people over state pension age do retire from the labour market, but as longevity has increased the labour markets have tightened and retirement has incur in Townsends words a kind of mass redundancy (19916).As a group, old peoples vulnerability to poverty is not as great as it was in the post second world war period, but this should not mask the fact that there is now greater inequality between older people than before.Since the number of old people both as a proportion of the total population and in exacting terms has grown this means that p ensioner poverty is still a major issue.The employment of older people can be cranky to changes in the labour market conditions and they may be shut out of jobs when the demand for labour falls.Age concern (see McEwan 1990), argue that older people are frequently subject to discrimination if they choose to re-enter the labour market often on mistaken assumptions about their reliability and adaptability. additionally when older people do eventually become frail they suffer the same problems associated with disability.The lack of provision of universal pension in this country is out of sync with most industrialised countries, although the introduction of stakeholder pensions for people with no access to private pensions and the introduction of free eye tests has gone some way in helping pensioners at a disadvantage.Feminists tend to view welfare state provision as being important for modify womens lives but it also reinforces female dependency on men and the sexual division of labo ur.Some strands of feminist movement stress that women are closer to character and are naturally more caring and less aggressive and they spoken language the world in a different voice Gilligan (1982).Other strands of feminism discard this view and assert that the gendered nature of society is the exact product of power relations and patriarchy. It is a result of the dominance of men over women and can be rejected.So in conclusion, having assessed and considered all the evidence and studies on gender and poverty, it is clear that although successive governments have through legislation and policies attempted to lessen the poverty of women, the gap between the sexes still exists and women are still very disadvantaged and are poorer than men and a major reason is the structure of the welfare state which contributes to and reinforces the differences.