| Abstrakt: |
It is estimated that nearly 40 per cent of the world's poor, who earn less than a dollar a day, live in South Asia. While this estimate reflects income or consumption expenditure, poverty has other attributes such as powerlessness, dependence, or isolation. Low economic status and social exclusion combine to influence health and educational status, nutritional levels, access to sanitation and safe drinking water, to credit and ability to exercise one's democratic rights. So the incidence of poverty among women in South Asia is especially high, with women and men experiencing poverty differently and often becoming poor through different processes. The process of feminization of poverty in South Asia is closely linked to the cultural and institutional constraints that restrict women's participation in economic activity, the macro economic framework and technological choices that have often tended to reinforce pre-existing constraints. Women continue to largely concentrated in informal employment, as unprotected and sub-contracted labour, there are persistent wage gaps between men and women, and women bear near total responsibility for care and nurture. With increasing migration and displacement, new groups of vulnerable women and greater numbers of female headed households have emerged. This paper attempts to explore and understand the challenges involved in making the policies on poverty and gender issue a reality. To understand the ways and manner in which poverty and other forms of deprivation affect women participation decisions in variety of contexts. Further, to discuss about the micro credit programmes, the role of commercial banks; To analysis the current policy frameworks in the sub-sector with perspective developed through the above understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
