Knowing Gendered Poverty in the Global South: A Protracted Path to Progress?

Abstract

This paper reflects on the difficulties of knowing about the extent and nature of gendered poverty across regions of the Global South in which women have often been assumed to bear a disproportionate share. Some advances have been made in collecting and collating data appropriate to the task, but there remain various lacun ae which make it difficult to pinpoint, let alone explain, variations across space and time. This leads us to conclude that the path to mapping and understanding gendered poverty in developing regions is a protracted one, and that progress will need to be accelerated if we wish to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of “eliminating poverty in all its forms everywhere”, and “empowering women and achieving gender equality”.