47 Million Women To Be Pushed Into Poverty Worldwide

By Nsunjo Erica

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has sharply increased female poverty worldwide according to the latest poverty forecast by UN Women and UNDP.

The poverty forecast project which was carried out by the Pardee Centre for International Futures at the University of Denver shows that as the pandemic continues to trigger global poverty generally, women are at a very high risk of getting poorer especially those at a productive age.

According to the UN agency poverty forecast, the pandemic has confined more women and girls to poverty than men with 47 million women worldwide sliding to poverty as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

About 59 percent of the world’s poor women currently live in sub-Saharan Africa. The new poverty forecasts indicate a rise of about 9.1 percent in female poverty as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most of the challenges facing women aside from the pandemic according to the poverty forecast include higher job losses, shrinking work hours, and greater care burden, which has triggered poverty rates

The poverty forecast indicates that there will be 119 poor women for every 100 poor men aged 25 to 34 years this year alone, a ration expected to increase to 121 women per 100 men by 2030.

Additionally, the forecast also indicates that by this time next year, 435 million women and girls will be living on less than $1.90 a day (Sh200) worldwide including 47 million specifically impoverished by Covid-19. This is if governments take no measures to uplift women in poverty worldwide.

“The increase in women’s extreme poverty are a stark indictment of deep flaws in the ways we have constructed our societies and economies. We know that women take most of the responsibility for caring for the family; they earn less, save less and hold much less secure jobs – in fact, overall, women’s employment is 19 percent more at risk than men’s, ” said UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

Poverty rates have been declining steadily since the late 1990s and the number of women living in extreme poverty was expected to fall by 2.7 percent between 2019 and 2021. However, the new forecast predictions for the coming years are worrying.

The data, summarized in a UN Women report also show that the pandemic will push 96 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, 47 million of whom are women and girls. This will increase the total number of women and girls living in extreme poverty to 435 million, with projections showing that this number will not revert to pre-pandemic levels until 2030.

Governments are advised to put more emphasis on gender Equality especially during the COVID-19 crisis as women are more likely to lose their source of income and less likely to be covered by social protection measures due to the increased cases of gender inequality.

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