Curbing Feminization of Poverty: Priming Women’s Sustainable Livelihoods

Strategies of gender responsive poverty reduction rest on singularizing models of dispossession: biological (lack of food, shelter, clothing…) and social (powerlessness) and distinguishing between seven underlying forces of social change, or forms of 'capital' and making a distinction between five approaches (Shafer, 1998). Organizational adaptation to poverty is part of the globalization of public policy, an ad hoc process, which defines in outline the emergence of a new system of global governance, heralding the emergence of a system adapted to the process of co-evolutionary development that systemic crisis in the South has given rise to. Rich nations relations with the poor are now being shaped by the interplay of strategic concerns and aid market interests (Duffield, 1995) that raise the following questions (Costantinos, 1998). Does gender responsive poverty reduction and development enter societal processes in Africa as an external ideology, constructing and deploying its concepts in sterile abstraction from the immediacies of indigenous traditions, beliefs and values? Do these ideas come into play in total opposition to, or in cooperation with historic national values and sentiments? The unique contribution of the sustainable livelihoods approach recommended here is the synergy that is created by the outputs of the main “building blocks” of the sustainable livelihoods approach - human resilience, economic efficiency, social equitability and ecological stability. Adaptive strategies represent permanent change in community strategy and structure and organizational processes. These capacities are contingent upon availability, stability and accessibility of options, which are ecological, socio-cultural, economic and political. They are predicated on equity, ownership of resources and participatory and wise decision-making -- notions of sustainable development that incorporate the idea of change and uncertainty.

Key words: poverty, gender, poverty reduction, sustainable livelihoods,

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