Poverty among women or among female headed households

Poverty among women or among female headed households

Measures of poverty "among female headed households" and "among women" are not indicators of the same phenomena. Both capture a gender dimension of poverty but in distinct ways. They differ by the unit of analysis and by the population included in each group, and obviously have different meanings. There are reasons to consider both.


The goal of headship-based indicators is to represent what happens to specific vulnerable groups of women and their families, therefore their unit of analysis is the household and the population considered includes both men and women (and children) living in these households, but excludes women and men living in other household formations.


Indicators of poverty among females, by their turn, make a complete separation of men and women as individuals, counting or not children as a gendered group in their aggregations. Interpreting the results based on individual-based measures of poverty is affected by the fact that poverty is usually measured at the household level and therefore male poverty is intrinsically associated with female poverty and vice-versa.