Women and Poverty

(A) Efforts and Progress

1. The Chinese government has taken measures to reduce and eliminate women poverty 

The Chinese government has taken effective measures to curb women's poverty, making great efforts to make sure everyone including women benefits from national economic growth. The first National Human Rights Action Plans of China released by the State Council in 2009 is committed to "doubling efforts in poverty reduction for an effective solution to poor people's subsistence and lifting them out of poverty by increasing their income." Afterwards, the State Council released the second National Human Rights Action Plans of China (2012-2015) in 2012, further proposing to "implement poverty alleviation projects", safeguard citizens' basic rights to life, and make sure everyone can benefit from the national development. Furthermore, the government also incorporates women's poverty reduction and elimination into the national strategy of building China into a well-off society. Therefore, the 12th Five-Year Plan for China's Economic and Social Development (2011-2015) makes it clear to "improve women's capacity of economic and social participation and social governance, strengthen the governmental work on labor protection, welfare scheme, healthcare, poverty reduction and elimination, and legal assistance for women." In view of the fact that most poor women stay in the rural areas, the government has doubled investment into poverty relief of rural women, and even required "providing more support for women's development in the rural, poor and ethnic areas……narrowing down the gap between urban and rural women in terms of per capita income, living standards, education, healthcare, social security, etc." as one of the four basic principles in the Program for the Development of Chinese Women (2011-2020), and formulated preferential policies to facilitate women's poverty reduction. And also, both the Development Orientated Poverty Alleviation Program in Rural China  (2011-2020) and the Opinions on Promoting Rural Poverty Alleviation though Innovation Mechanisms issued by the State Council in 2014 were committed to doubling support for the vulnerably poor groups including rural women.

Besides, the State Council and its subordinate ministries of finance, agriculture, science and technology, education and others also provided support and assistance to poor women through various means to promote women's employment and entrepreneurship, encourage development of women-oriented poverty alleviation organizations, and prioritize granting of "mutual-help funds among poor villages" and "micro loans" to rural women. In 2009, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the People's Bank of China jointly implemented the financial discount policy for women's micro loans. By the end of March 2014, a total of over 180 billion yuan loans has been granted to more than 3.6 million women, of which over 12 billion yuan was subsidized on discount by the central and local governments . In 2011, the Ministry of Finance launched the breast and cervical cancers relief projects for poor mothers in the rural areas, allocating 50 million yuan annually amounting  to 1 trillion yuan by 2013  to have helped a total of 20,715 women from low-income families and those poverty-stricken by illness by the end of 2014 .

2. NGOs have also taken actions to facilitate women poverty relief

With the support and at the call of the central government, NGOs play an active role in women's poverty alleviation. For instance, ACWF successively implemented "Women Modern Agricultural Demonstration Base Project" and "Women's Green Homeland Initiative" across the whole country. During 2009 to 2013, Women's Federations at various level launched 466 women demonstration sites, more than 200,000 women-related bases, and 187 "March 8th Green Project" demonstration bases . Furthermore, Women's Federations at all levels have organized various training sessions on farming technology, entrepreneurship, transferred employment, etc. for women, and successively launched "Sunshine Project" , "New-type Professional Farmers Training Project" , "Modern Agricultural Talents Support Initiative" , "Knowledge and Technology Learning and Results and Contribution Competing Contest" , "Educational Training for One Million New-type Rural Women" , "Rain-Dew Program•Takeoff Project" , "5123 Training Program" , "Vocational Education and Skills Training for Rural Women"  , etc. to build up women's anti-poverty capacity. In the recent 5 years, Women's Federations at various levels have trained 5 million rural women and cultivated 1 million entrepreneurs . NGOs including ACWF are also caring for the livelihood and health of the poor left-behind women, disabled women, extremely poor single mothers and poor women inflicted with breast and cervical cancers and HIV AIDS. In addition, ACWF, the China Women's Development Foundation, the China Population Welfare Foundation, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and other NGOs have successively launched some charity initiatives, such as "Water Cellar for Mothers", "Mother Entrepreneurial Cycle Project", "Small Loans for Mothers", "Mother Care Express Buses Program", "Two Cancer Relief Funds for Mothers", "Postal Parcel for Mothers", "Happiness Project" and "Inhabiting Project for Mothers", creating a favorable environment to better the living conditions for women in the poor areas, promote employment of poor women, and improve poor women's health.

3. The trend of women's poverty has been eased

Throughout years of unremitting efforts, women's poverty has been reduced significantly. The occurrences of women poverty reduced dramatically in all state-level poverty-stricken counties, decreasing from 24.2 percent in 2002 down to 9.8 percent in 2010 . The gender-based poverty gap has been narrowed down, for instance, the occurrences of women poverty among the people in abject poverty in all state-level poverty-stricken counties have reduced from 0.7 percentage points higher than men in 2002 down to 0.4 percentage points in 2010, a decrease of 9.8 percent, or 2.2 percent down against the statistics in 2009 . According to the China's Progress Towards the Millennium Development Goals 2013 Report jointly released by the United Nations and the Chinese government, China has accomplished all the gender-sensitive indicators directly related to poverty, such as halving population in poverty, halving population in hunger, universal primary education for girls and boys, eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education, reducing under-five children's mortality by two-thirds, and halving the people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. And China also has created a supportive environment for accomplishing some other indicators, such as full productive and decent employment of all people including women by 2015, significantly improving the living conditions for at least 100 million poor people by 2020, etc.

(B) Gaps and Challenges

1. Gender equality awareness is yet to be increased in government's poverty reduction policies

Despite the Development Orientated Poverty Alleviation Program in Rural China  (2011-2020) issued by the State Council in 2011 targeted the minorities, women, children and disabled people as the focus groups into poverty reduction program, yet the objectives and poverty relief measures outlined in the program failed to attend the vulnerable group of poor women. In addition, some macroeconomic social policies and development strategies highly concerning the interests of women also failed to give due attention to the gender issue and women's rights and particular needs. What's more, as the group of poor women is diversifying, the poverty issues in relation to mobility-affected women, landless and unemployed women and the elderly women are becoming more prominent, but unfortunately most of the existing poverty alleviation and development policies and strategies are still lacking specific measures to alleviate poverty for different segments.

2. There is a lack of gender-disaggregated poverty monitoring data and poverty alleviation statistics

In China, poverty monitoring lacks systematic gender-based indicators, hardly reflecting the whole picture and changes of women's poverty. Besides, government policy formulation and implementation also lacks a gender perspective and gender-disaggregated evaluation indicators, for instance, as part of the Development Orientated Poverty Alleviation Program in Rural China (2011-2020), the mid-point policy evaluation report and the associated implementation assessment report released in respectively 2006 and 2010 failed to include a description for the effectiveness of women's poverty alleviation.

3. NGOs are playing an insufficient role in women poverty relief and their subjective role needs to be highlighted

The role of NGOs needs to be further displayed. Some poverty alleviation programs and anti-poverty projects fail to give due attention to the subjective role played by poor women and do not give full play to women's initiative and creativity in mechanism building and project implementation.

4. Men and women have unequal access to financial resources

In fact, women's poverty is highly connected with their limited access to financial resources and opportunities. Currently, women's rights to property inheritance, land contracting and even employment are still frequently infringed. Specifically, the practice of "patrilineal inheritance" is still followed in many places, especially in rural areas, denying daughter's equal right to property inheritance. Rural women are also forced to lose their contracted land and related economic interests at the result of change of marriage status or even their gender identity. In addition, women have less access to credit loans, and some social barriers like gender discrimination on the job market are still prevalent.

5. The poverty relief resources are allocated irrationally

Influenced by socio-cultural practices and existing institutional arrangements and other factors, the practices of some poverty alleviation projects and resource allocation still followed the tradition of male precedence, leading to poor women's rights are restricted. And also, poor women in some rural, remote and ethnic areas as well as the vulnerable female groups like landless women, mobility-affected women, the elderly women and disabled women are often at a distinct disadvantage in accessing to the poverty reduction resources and the associated support.

(C) Suggestions in Response

1. The government should raise gender equality awareness in its poverty relief policy-making and program execution

The government should pay close attention to the needs of women's development and reduce structural poverty due to gender differences in the process of formulating macroeconomic policies. It is also necessary to conduct gender-based analysis and evaluation of all the poverty alleviation policies and projects introduced by the government and develop policies in favor of rural women as well as poor women in ethnic and remote areas.

2. Gender-disaggregated instrument for poverty monitoring and poverty relief evaluation needs to be improved

The government should further improve the gender-disaggregated poverty monitoring and statistical indicators, surveying different segments of poor population by gender, age and other criteria so as to objectively reflect the poverty situation of different groups of women and the associated trends. While developing anti-poverty policies and assessing the effect of implementation, the government should include gender equality-related indicators to fully reflect the effectiveness of poverty alleviation and development programs and results of women's poverty reduction.

3. Efforts should be made to ensure NGOs play a bigger role in women poverty alleviation and value women's subjective role in poverty reduction

The Government shall create conditions to support and encourage NGOs to leverage their strengths and adopt variable approaches to participate in poverty alleviation projects and programs so as to play a greater role in poverty reduction. Meanwhile, women need to be further empowered to play a subjective role in anti-poverty campaign. In planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating poverty alleviation projects, it is necessary to respect the views and choices of poor women, listen to their needs, and value their experience. It is also essential to continue to innovate poverty alleviation mechanisms and models and encourage poor women to participate in poverty reduction activities, in an effort to stimulate their self-confidence, creativity and initiative, and effectively improve their capabilities.

4. Poor women should be provided with more relief resources

During configuration of poverty alleviation resources, we should give full consideration to gender, geography, ethnicity and other factors, and channel the resources to the grassroots and disadvantaged groups to ensure that poor women in rural, remote and ethnic areas can benefit equally. It is also necessary to innovate anti-poverty funds management and distribution to meet the practical needs of different groups of poor women, hence effectively improving the fairness and effectiveness of financial resources.

(Women of China)