Why Women More Likely Live in Poverty - Essay Example

With reference to the period since 1945 outline and comment on the various reasons why women are more likely than men to live in poverty. The position of women has always considered as an ignored issue but vital part of most of the social problems, which could be analyzed by the fact that the effect of poverty on women is neglected to be discussed in the post-war era. The differences between lifetime experiences of poverty were created between men and women, and women as compared to men were more exposed to poverty as they had been used to see their mothers and grandmothers living in poverty without uttering a single word of complaint. (Howard Glennerster) One reason was that despite of all extensive lifetime redistribution of income through the social security and tax systems, there was a tremendous significant variation of average income levels, especially when women was considered as a reserve of cheap and docile labour and was expected to work eighty or ninety hour a week. (Tavistock Routledge) A study carried out by the Christian Economic and Social Research Foundation (1957) pointed out the main reason for such patience in women bearing poverty, was poor housing conditions which caused many of the difficulties experienced by the women, and found a move away from cramped accommodation to a council estate, although welcomed, could mean renewed and greater anxieties, and caused considerable strain in the large number of cases where the higher rent could only be paid by skimping on food and other necessities. (Tavistock Routledge) Women were expected to place on their family role and unlike men women were meant to do their 'double-shift' jobs paid work, plus work in the home which made possible the relative affluence of their family, while their capacities as mothers were hampered by poverty when their children were small, and while again in old age they were the ones most likely to be suffering, since the majority of old-age pensioners were women. (Tavistock Routledge) The pension-problem is worst for women, whose longer lives and interrupted careers mean lower savings and a greater threat of poverty in later life. (Rediscovery of poverty, 2006a) What is meant by social exclusion Outline two important examples of exclusion in contemporary Britain. The UK Government Social Exclusion Unit offers the following definition: "Social exclusion is a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown". (Alex Marsh) Social exclusion so severely restricts access to the services and jobs needed for a minimal standard of living that even when they are not the majority of the poor, the excluded typically constitute the poorest. Social exclusion affects an individual's opportunity to find good work, decent housing, adequate health care, quality education, safe and secure living conditions as well as their treatment by the legal and criminal justice systems. (Social Exclusion, 2006a) Examples of Social Exclusion Homelessness Housing-related problems are the most common cause for concern towards social exclusion: high social housing rents causing poverty and benefit traps; poor physical conditions and overcrowding in parts of the stock; constraints on mobility barring households from improving their circumstances by relocating; and children living above the ground floor in flatted accommodation. The processes of residualisation, affordability problems and problems with the management of social housing have led to the poorest households having little choice but to live in adverse conditions. (Alex Marsh) Unemployment The absence of employment is another key example of 'Social Exclusion'. This is not the fact that work is absent from their lives. Many worked outside the formal labour market: caring for children in the home; in more informal, sometimes in illicit economic activities. In many cases, interviewees had been ineligible for benefits or were morally opposed to claiming. Even in this area of high long-term unemployment, there was a general resistance to living a life on benefits, which is followed even today. Some did manage to secure regular employment but, typically, this was after repeated spells of unemployment. Those jobs that do exist are often part-time, short-term, low-paid and of poor quality. Whilst some interviewees recounted their negative experiences of such jobs, none could identify any positive aspects to being out of work. (Social Exclusion, 2006b) Why was poverty 're-discovered' in Britain in the late 1950s & early 1960s After the Second World War universal social protection became a central component of public policy in Britain, which gave rise to several policies like the implementation of the famous Beveridge Report by the post-war Labour government. British policy has kept promoting voluntary funded pensions since the 1950s, but failed to cover adequate numbers even today, as they are the same as in the 1960s. (Rediscovery of poverty, 2006a) The demands of post-war reconstruction had to take priority over wages, which resulted in low basic state pensions. Second, as in Britain, occupational pensions, offered by employers in both private and public sectors, were widespread. These could be quite generous, particularly for skilled or white-collar workers. Earnings-related pensions expanded at this time: competition for skilled labour was fierce thanks to wartime and post-war labour shortages, and generous pension schemes helped to attract and retain key employees. In many respects, national governments after the war were faced with a fait accompli. It was not politically possible to write off established professional or occupational pension rights, so it became imperative to work around them. However the prosperity was not shared by all and the poverty returned with lost pensioners in the late 1950's. (Rediscovery of poverty, 2006a) The early 1960s - it was the time when the government abandoned policies premised on its expansion. In the absence of security, public participation in a voluntary pension market remained low. Efforts to promote security by increasing state regulation raised costs, reduced market transparency and confused the financial services industry and its customers. Faced with growing financial obligations, British firms started freezing, occupational pensions started transforming them from schemes guaranteeing a proportion of salary on retirement into schemes offering only a market return on accumulating individual contributions. Greater state regulation added to corporate financial burdens resulting in a failure to win back public confidence. As the Treasury argued in the 1960s, it discouraged employers from offering occupational pensions in the first place. For nearly 40 years, British governments have tried unsuccessfully to find a commercial solution to the pension crisis. (Rediscovery of poverty, 2006a) Bibliography Alex Marsh, 2004, Housing and the Social Exclusion Agenda in England, Australian Journal of Social Issues. Volume: 39. Issue: 1, p 7. Howard Glennerster, 100 Years of Poverty and Policy Rediscovery of poverty, 2006a Available from Social Exclusion, 2006a Available from Social Exclusion, 2006b Available from Tavistock Routledge, 1977, Women & the Welfare State, London Read More