Does Poverty Affect Women More?

Poverty is a huge subject matter which affects billions of people around the world. The issues around it are diverse and complex; from its causes, to its effects, to different platforms where it is discussed and to types of procedures which need to be undertaken to eradicate it completely. Skeptics will tell you that eliminating some of the causes is impossible. As it is a major issue to us all, can we bring out the fact that poverty affects women more than men?

According to the Oxford dictionary, poverty is a state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount of possessions. Poverty is one of the major problems which needs to be tackled in the world as it breeds other problems. Eradicating poverty is impossible as long as there is still corruption within a nation-corruption is one of the core causes working against reducing this scourge.

Women are often the ones mainly affected by poverty especially on the African continent. This is mainly because families prefer to educate the male child. By so doing, there is a higher rate of illiterate women than men. Millions of women entered the year 2013 without knowing how to sign their names or know their dates of birth. There is a greater possibility of women falling in the pool of poverty than it is for men because of this major factor.

The system of general education and training needs to be improved so that we have the enrollment percentage system of men being the same as to that of women.

Girls living in poverty are likely to be forced into early marriages because girls’ education is not considered important.

Poor areas tend to cause people to be violent because they have nothing much to do. People learn violent behavior from their communities until it becomes their way of life. Generally women living in poverty are most likely to experience domestic violence because the women are uneducated and feel inferior to their partners. Uneducated women are dependent on their husbands as a result they end up being prisoners of their own partners

The World Health Organization (WHO) found that 37% of African women experience physical and sexual violence, and three quarters of those women are believed to be from a poor background.

Poverty also affects women’s health due to lack of income resulting in them not being able to afford better quality medical treatment. This also affects their children.                                                             Although both men and women’s health is affected by poverty, a greater number of women are affected suffer from its effects because of an increase in feminization of women. Which is a phenomenon were by, women represent an unbalanced percentage of the world’s poor. The main cause of this is low income for women as their incomes are insufficient to cater for their children. This lowers their children’s nourishment and education, henceforth these women’s lives become miserable and they suffer from depression.

Women will then opt for prostitution as a way to make ends meet and using illegal drugs as a way they think would possibly ease their frustrations, suffering and pain; for they believe drugs are pleasurable than what they go through in reality. All this is done out of their will although they would be ruining their merciless lives. This is a psychological factor which most people do not understand which is merely a cause by poverty for most of these women.

Some psychologists Stewart, Rondon and Damiani stated that women at this point have a greater risk of contracting HIV and experiencing great depression.

Poverty affects women more to a greater extent because of several factors. Nevertheless, poverty does not only affect women, rather it also disturbs children and men as they are also caught up within this strenuous situation. For it causes people to become homeless, addicts of illegal drug substances, have food insufficiency for themselves and their families and children being impaired and sick. Just like Mahatma Gandhi once said ‘Poverty is the worst form of violence’. It’s a war of our own which needs to be tackled with no speck of time as it is affecting quite a lot of people.