Gender Dimensions of Poverty and HIV/AIDS: A Statistical Review of Six

Although no country treats its women as well as its men, women are by no means a homogeneous group. Without examining the differences among them, especially those that arise from income groupings, ethnicity and geographic location – notably the rural/urban divide – policy-makers risk increasing not only gender discrimination, but other obstacles to reaching the MDGs. An examination of six developing countries points to areas in which data deficiencies stemming from gender blindness distort poverty reduction policies. Millennium Development Goal 3 – Promote gender equality and empower women – in fact cuts across all seven others and calls for “engendering ” the development paradigm itself, along with any policy framework formulated for that model. Gender-specific information, statistics and data, disaggregated in various planes – income class, location, and social groups – are therefore crucial to achieving both. Given this broad perspective, this article focuses on mobilising gender-specific information in two areas – human poverty and HIV/AIDS – for six countries