A different type of gender gap: How women and men experience poverty

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 20, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 14-39

  Fodor, Éva ^a   Vicsek, Lilla ^a  

^a CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY   (Hungary)

Author keywords

Feminization of poverty; Gender; Hungary; Masculinity; Post communism; Poverty

Indexed keywords

EID: 32044443209     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325405284248     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Éva Fodor, "The Feminization of Poverty in Six Post-State Socialist Societies," Review of Sociology 7:2(2001): 91-107.
2. For details of the survey, see Fodor, "The Feminization of Poverty"; or Rebecca Emigh and Ivan Szelényi, eds., Poverty, Ethnicity and Gender during the Eastern European Market Transition (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000).
3. Defined as households where the size-adjusted, per capita income was below the poverty line (defined as 50 percent of the median national income).
4. The reasons for the lack of a gender poverty gap are complex and include the structure of the household, women's labor market position, and the relative generosity of old age benefits in Hungary.
5. Diana Pearce, "The Feminization of Poverty: Women, Work, and Welfare," Urban and Social Change Review 11 (February 1978): 28-36.
6. See Sarah Fenstermaker and Candace West, eds., Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Social Inequality, Power and Resistance (New York: Routledge: 2002).
7. Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
8. Lynne M. Casper, Sara S. McLanahan, and Irwin Garfield, "The Gender-Poverty Gap: What We Can Learn from Other Countries," American Sociological Review 59:4(1994): 594-605;
9. and Karen Christopher, Paula England, Tim Smeeding, and Kathrin Ross Philips, "The Gender Gap in Poverty in Modern Nations: Single Motherhood, the Market, and the State," Sociological Perspectives: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics 45:3(2002): 219-42.
10. Carol Stack, All Our Kin (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1974);
11. Jill Duerr Berrick, Faces of Poverty: Portraits of Women and Children on Welfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
12. Ruth Sidel, Keeping Women and Children Last: America's War on the Poor (New York: Penguin, 1996);
13. Harrell R. Rodgers, Poor Women, Poor Children: American Poverty in the 1990s (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996);
14. Randy Albelda and Chris Tilly, Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pitts: Women's Work, Women's Poverty (Boston: South End Press, 1997);
15. and Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Henry Hold and Co., 2001).
16. Statistical Yearbook of Hungary (Budapest, Hungary: KSH Kiadó, 2002).
17. Judith Treas, "Money in the Bank: Transaction Costs and the Economic Organization of Marriage," American Sociological Review 58 (October 1993): 723-34;
18. and Paula England and Barbara Stanek Kilbourne, "Markets, Marriages, and Other Mates: The Problem of Power," in Roger Friedland and A. F. Robertson, eds., Beyond the Marketplace: Rethinking Economy and Society (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1990), 163-89.
19. Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift (New York: Penguin, 1991).
20. Ann Whitehead, "'I'm Hungry, Mum': The Politics of Domestic Budgeting," in Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz, and Roselyn McCullagh, eds., Of Marriage and the Market: Women's Subordination in International Perspective (London: CSE Books, 1981), 88-111.
21. Elzbieta Tarkowska, "Intra-household Gender Inequality: Hidden Dimensions of Poverty among Polish Women," Communist and Post-Communist Studies 35 (December 2002): 411-32;
22. and Jan Pahl, "Earning, Sharing, Spending: Married Couples and Their Money," in R. Walker and G. Parker, eds., Money Matters: Income, Wealth, and Financial Welfare (London: Sage, 1988).
23. Nancy Folbre, "Hearts and Spades: Paradigms of Household Economics," World Development 14:2(1986): 245-55;
24. and Ruth Lister, "Women in Poverty," in Klaus Funken and Penny Cooper, eds., Old and New Poverty: The Challenge for Reform (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1996).
25. Pahl, "Earning, Sharing, Spending" and Jane Millar and Caroline Glendinning, "Gender and Poverty," Journal of Social Policy 18:3(1989): 363-81.
26. Tarkowska, "Intra-household Gender Inequality."
27. Lister, "Women in Poverty."
28. Stack, All Our Kin.
29. Kathrine S. Newman, Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 139.
30. Stack, All Our Kin, 112.
31. Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 215.
32. William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
33. Jay MacLeod, Ain't No Making It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995);
34. and Tarkowska, "Intra-household Gender Inequality."
35. Bourgeois, In Search of Respect.
36. Timothy Nonn, in his study of poor San Francisco men, notes that the men in the street develop coping mechanisms, "alternative masculinities," to provide them "with a sense of self-worth." These include, aside from displays of hypermasculinity and aggression, expressions of caring and honesty, as well as structuring values around the concept of "respect." While these are not purely destructive strategies, nevertheless, the men in Nonn's study are in a special situation: almost none are married, many are homeless, and all are family-less. See Timothy Nonn, "Hitting Bottom: Homelessness, Poverty, and Masculinity," in Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner, eds., Men's Lives (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2001), 242-51.
37. Hochschild, The Second Shift.
38. Emigh and Szelenyi, Poverty, Ethnicity and Gender.
39. Lynne Haney, Inventing the Needy: The Gender Transformation from Socialist Welfare to Welfare Capitalism in Hungary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
40. The unemployment rate has been higher for men than women since the early 1990s in Hungary, a fact partially explained by the overwhelming loss of jobs in male-dominated heavy industries. See Fodor, "The Feminization of Poverty."
41. Richard E. Matland and Kathleen A. Montgomery, eds., Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
42. Gal and Kligman, Politics of Gender.
43. R. W. Connell, Gender and Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987).
44. The interviewers include the author as well as several paid (and trained) sociology students from a university in Hungary.
45. Initially, we expected significant differences between gender relations and roles in Roma and non-Roma households, but we found practically none. Nevertheless, the inclusion of Roma is important because this group is often omitted from surveys, and Roma are indeed far more impoverished than non-Roma Hungarians.
46. The vast majority of settled poor families in these locations receive some sort of aid, mostly the one directed at poor families with children.
47. See also Haney, Inventing the Needy.
48. There was one exception - a case of a couple where the man was significantly older than his very young wife.
49. Ildikó Nagy, "Jövedelemszerzés és pénzkezelés a családban" [Attaining and handling family income], in Kolosi Tamás, Tóth István György, and Vukovich György, eds., Társadalmi riport 2000 (Budapest, Hungary: Tárki, 2000), 460-93.
50. There were two exceptions when men managed or had significant control over the family income. One man retained significant sums to be spent for his own needs ("Sometimes I have some extra money. If I make an extra 5,000 forints a month, then I spend it myself. Sometimes on my own needs ... that's a little extra, you know." (110ml) and one case when it was separately managed - a second marriage for both.
51. Hochschild, The Second Shift.
52. Marjorie DeVault, Feeding the family: The social organization of caring as gendered work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).