As costs continue to rise, SA?s poor are really struggling to get by, Business Day


Date: January 1, 1970
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South Africa?s poor struggle to survive as food prices and inflation rise
South Africa?s poor struggle to survive as food prices and inflation rise

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  • This article provides learning tips on women and poverty, and mainstreaming gender .
Trainer’s notes
Globally, it is a known fact that the majority of the poor are women. The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, paragraph 51 notes that poverty among women and girls is directly related to their lack of access to economic resources, “including credit, landownership and inheritance, lack of access to education and support services, and their minimal participation in the decision-making process”.
In the training manual Local Action, Global Change, the chapter on Women’s Human Rights in the Economy points out that the deprivation of women’s rights also leads to greater poverty among women and girls. Poverty violates the human rights of women and girls denying them:
  • Participation in political and public life
     

  • Education
     

  • Food and freedom from hunger
     

  • Health
     

  • Freedom from violence
     

  • Housing
     

  • Life itself
Women in poverty face a number of circumstances which worsen their marginal status. Poor women, for example are often more vulnerable to different forms of violence, including police brutality, and many women in prisons come from poor communities. Poor women are vulnerable to violence and crime in their neighbourhoods, and they face the additional burden of governments’ increasing cutbacks on their obligations by removing subsidies for food, education, welfare programmes and health care.
(source: Local Action, Global Change, published by UNIFEM and the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, 1999)
 
Analysis of case study
The case study is an example of gender-blind reporting on poverty. Although one woman vendor is sourced and her situation described as a lead-in to the issue, the story is told through the voices and perspectives of men.
 
The men sourced, economists and a spokesperson from the trade union, are considered the “experts” and talk in the story on behalf of the poor. By accessing only men economists, the story conveys the message that men are the ‘experts’ on economic issues.
 
The general categorisation of people as ‘the poor’ also makes women invisible and hides the fact that they are the majority of the poor.
 
The story fails to explore the underlying gender issues of poverty. The story raises the issue of rising food prices, for example, but ignores the fact that it is most likely women in the homes who are responsible for the purchase of food and for the nutrition of their families.
 
The story could have mainstreamed gender into its analysis in the following ways:
  • Accessing  more voices and perspectives from women and men who are  among the South Africans who earn less than R551 a year;
     

  • Accessing the voices and perspectives of  women economists, researchers, policymakers, especially those involved in advocacy and lobbying on gender budgeting;
     

  • By examining who are the majority of the poor in South Africa and including sex- disaggregated data;

     

  • The inclusion of background information on why women comprise the majority of the poor in South Africa;

     

  • By analyzing from a gender perspective the actions recommended by the ‘experts’ to remedy poverty.
     

Training exercises
 
Exercise one: Discuss the following questions:
  1. Who is poor in your community?
     

  2. Do they belong to specific racial, ethnic, religious or other social groups?
     

  3. Are they more likely to be women and children?
     

  4. What makes these people poor?
     

  5. How does poverty affect women?
     

  6. What factors help people to rise out of poverty? Are the actions needed the same for women and men?
     

(Source: adapted from Local Action, Global Change, Learning about the Human Rights of Women and Girls, published by UNIFEM and the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, 1999
Exercise two: Read the South African case study and discuss the following:
  1. How does the story make women invisible?
     

  2. Who speaks in the story?
     

  3. From whose perspective is the story mainly told?
     

  4. What gender issues are central to the article’s focus, but which are not explored in the story?
     

  5. What data is missing from the story?
     

  6. What message does the story send about who are the ‘experts’ on poverty?


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