Sylvia Chant – författare

Developing regions are set to account for the vast majority of future urban growth, and women and girls will become the majority inhabitants of these locations in the Global South. This is one of the first books to detail the challenges facing poorer segments of the female population who commonly reside in ‘slums’. It explores the variegated disadvantages of urban poverty and slum-dwelling from a gender perspective.

This book revolves around conceptualisation of the ‘gender-urban-slum interface’ which explains key elements to understanding women’s experiences in slum environments. It has a specific focus on the ways in which gender inequalities are can be entrenched but also alleviated. Included is a review of the demographic factors which are increasingly making cities everywhere ‘feminised spaces’, such as increased rural-urban migration among women, demographic ageing, and rising proportions of female-headed households in urban areas. Discussions focus in particular on education, paid and unpaid work, access to land, property and urban services, violence, intra-urban mobility, and political participation and representation.

This book will be of use to researchers and professionals concerned with gender and development, urbanisation and rural-urban migration.

Developing regions are set to account for the vast majority of future urban growth, and women and girls will become the majority inhabitants of these locations in the Global South. This is one of the first books to detail the challenges facing poorer segments of the female population who commonly reside in ‘slums’. It explores the variegated disadvantages of urban poverty and slum-dwelling from a gender perspective.

This book revolves around conceptualisation of the ‘gender-urban-slum interface’ which explains key elements to understanding women’s experiences in slum environments. It has a specific focus on the ways in which gender inequalities are can be entrenched but also alleviated. Included is a review of the demographic factors which are increasingly making cities everywhere ‘feminised spaces’, such as increased rural-urban migration among women, demographic ageing, and rising proportions of female-headed households in urban areas. Discussions focus in particular on education, paid and unpaid work, access to land, property and urban services, violence, intra-urban mobility, and political participation and representation.

This book will be of use to researchers and professionals concerned with gender and development, urbanisation and rural-urban migration.

In Gender, Generation and Poverty Sylvia Chant challenges the ''feminisation of poverty'' on the basis of recent fieldwork in The Gambia, Philippines and Costa Rica. Interviews with over 220 women and men of different ages at the grassroots, as well as with 40 professionals in international agencies, government departments and NGOs, highlight the difficulties of establishing any general tendency towards a widening of gender disparities in income poverty, or for female household heads to be the ''poorest of the poor''. While not denying a ''female bias'' in material privation, a more important and consistent pattern is that women are bearing an ever-greater burden of responsibility for household survival, and under especially exploitative conditions in male-headed units. These findings lead Chant to propose a more elaborate and nuanced construction of the ''feminisation of poverty'' which incorporates inputs as well as incomes and takes greater account of gender relations within the home. This not only stands to enrich gendered poverty analysis, but to provide a more appropriate basis for policy interventions.

This volume will not only be an important resource for scholars of development, gender and area studies in Africa, Asia and Latin America, but also for professionals and activists working towards the elimination of poverty and gender inequality at national and international levels.

''I recommend this book to be a staple of reference libraries.'' British Politics and Policy

''These diverse, thoughtful essays go far beyond a mere summary of international scholarship. They outline a fascinating and provocative agenda for future policy-relevant research. This book will help redefine and revitalise the field of gender and development.''- Professor Nancy Folbre, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In the interests of contextualizing (and nuancing) the multiple interrelations between gender and poverty, Sylvia Chant has gathered writings on diverse aspects of the subject from a range of disciplinary and professional perspectives, achieving extensive thematic as well as geographical coverage. This benchmark volume presents women''s and men''s experiences of gendered poverty with respect to a vast spectrum of intersecting issues including local to global economic transformations, family, age, ''race'', migration, assets, paid and unpaid work, health, sexuality, human rights, and conflict and violence.

The handbook also provides up-to-the-minute reflections on how to theorize, measure and represent the connections between gender and poverty, and to contemplate how gendered poverty is affected - and potentially redressed - by policy and grassroots interventions. An unprecedented and ambitious blend of conceptual, methodological, empirical and practical offerings from a host of established as well as upcoming scholars and professionals from across the globe lends the volume a distinctive and critical edge. Notwithstanding the broad scope of The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty, one theme in common to most of its 100-plus chapters is the need to ''en-gender'' analysis and initiatives to combat poverty and inequality at local, national and international levels. As such, the volume will inspire its readers not only to reflect deeply on poverty and gender injustice, but also to consider what to do about it.

This book will be essential reading for all with academic, professional or personal interests in gender, poverty, inequality, development, and social, political and economic change in the contemporary world.