The Feminization of Poverty

Abstract

Poverty among women and girls remains a prevalent social justice and health issue that stunts the life potential and freedom of females throughout the globe. Through referencing four published articles, this text explores the incidence of poverty among women and girls due to gender discrimination, sexist ideologies and practices, and oppression on the basis of gender. Due to the presence of mechanisms that disproportionately generate poverty among females, many girls and women are automatically confined to a life that uniquely strips them of their inherent rights to dictate their future, and are instead forced into a life of perpetual suffering, violence, social exclusion, and ultimately, impoverishment. Examining this issue from a feminist lens is imperative in understanding the inner complexities of how women and girls in different areas of the world experience disadvantages on the basis of gender, especially from a social, political, cultural, and economic perspective. This can allow healthcare providers, such as nurses, to be able to examine such issues from a critical thinking lens, and become increasingly politically active and involved in female advocacy efforts and policy reform. Through nurses becoming increasingly involved in such efforts, dramatic positive change in the lives of women and girls throughout the globe can occur.

Keywords

• poverty, social determinants of health, societal norms, patriarchal power, marginalization