Money Talk

I ventured forth to listen to a talk on poverty. The gendered nature of poverty to be more precise.

It turns out that women’s experience of poverty is very different from that of the male. Well, there’s no surprise there as practically everything is experienced through the lens of one’s own gender and therefore, through gendered differences. While I would be amongst the first to agree with Germaine Greer on the whole sex /destiny business, it remains worthwhile to explore how and why gender makes a difference, especially when faced with the extra burdens poor women deal with.

Ruth Lister gave a short, but concise talk on the relationship between poverty and gender this afternoon. Professor Lister discussed the findings of a few recent studies on poverty and gender. These inevitably found that women and their male partners view personal spending quite differently. For example, fathers interpret spending on the kids as mum’s personal spending, while his beer money is his personal spending. This means that when she buys the kids some clothes he sees it as her money, not his or their joint money. Okay, I probably need to qualify that, as some fathers.

It is well known that women can be thrown into poverty when a male partner leaves her with his debts and she has to cope with reduced income and fewer options for employment. Professor Lister said this had been described as STDs, or ‘sexually transmitted debts’. Anyone who has seen a friend in this situation, or indeed been put into this situation herself will instantly recognise that description.

Another useful phrase I learned is that of the 'sticky floor'. While we usually hear about the glass ceiling, many more women face the situation of not being able to get off the sticky floor of low paid, low status work in the 4 C’s. (Catering, Caring, Cleaning and Cash Register).

Women’s poverty is often hidden as stats on income tend to assume that the income in a household is fairly shared. Well, it’s not and it does not take much common sense to work that one out! Unless that is, you come from a political standpoint of belief in traditional family values and other such naive and wilful thinking.

Poverty in old age is the likely outcome for so many women who have spent their lives in activities not valued by our present capitalist system. Pensions policy has to be continually monitored in case it further damages women, and groups like the women’s budget groups in Scotland and in England keep close track of these issues and lobby Scottish and Westminster Governments on their policies.

On the whole, I feel equally positive and enraged after this talk. We are making progress, but as usual it is a long and sometimes bitter struggle to get financial equality.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/staff/staff_biog/lister.html

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