Gender and Poverty

Since December 1999 all countries wishing to access concessional lending from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are required to prepare a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The vast majority of PRSP incorporate an analysis of the current level and profile of poverty that relies on the unitary model of the household. This article argues that by doing so, policy analysts may receive a distorted view of the relationship between gender and poverty. Using the 2003 Tajikistan Living Standard Survey the article shows how, by modifying the assumption of equal sharing of household resources, gender differentials in the experience of poverty may vary. The article also illustrates how those gender analyses that simply use a dichotomy based on the gender of the head of household may also be misleading. The findings have implications for mainstreaming gender into the PRSP process, and for the priority of policy and programme interventions supported under national Poverty Reduction Strategies.