Report Fails to Measure Effects of Poverty on Peruvian Women

It's been almost fourteen years since the Cairo Conference on Population and Development, thirteen years since the Beijing World Conference on Women and eight since the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and still women can so easily, yet so inexplicably, be ignored by government discourse in some Latin American countries, including here in Peru.

Three weeks ago the Peruvian National Statistics Institute (INEI) released its 2007 Technical Report on Poverty in Peru.  The report -- which applied the same methodology and procedures used to measure poverty in 2006 -- was received with optimism and great satisfaction by government officials and the media since it stated that the poverty rate decreased 5.2% in 2007 (39.3%) compared to the 44.5% rate in 2006.  In the same way extreme poverty decreased from 16.1% in 2006 to 13.7% in 2007.  This means that for the first time in more than 20 years the poverty rate was below 40%.   

However, despite the good news, there is not even a single reference in any of the report's 31 pages about women and their poverty status; neither the charts nor tables include data related to women. Are women more or less poor? Is their poverty status similar to men's? Have they also reached the best scenario in twenty years? This is not possible to know from the report. On the other hand, the report does give detailed information about poverty incidence rates in urban areas (25.7%) and rural areas of the country (64.6%), where people are four times poorer than the poor people in urban areas. Sixty-three percent of people whose mother tongue is an indigenous language are poor, whereas only 32.6% of the people whose mother tongue is Spanish are poor.  The report also identifies the profiles of the poor: households consisting of five or more family members, with a young head of household, with only primary education or no education at all, working on agriculture, fishing or mining. After examining all these criteria, it is difficult to understand how the report can omit every reference to women, who comprise half of the Peruvian population.  

This is even more shocking when taking into consideration that for this year's report, various international institutions that work on gender issues themselves, such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, provided technical assistance to the INEI. It seems contradictory that apparently none of these institutions demanded that the report included a gender perspective.  

The Advisory Committee set up to review the methodology applied by the INEI and formulate relevant recommendations issued a statement listing its main findings, which were principally related to minor changes in the sample, the accuracy of the methodology used and the importance of INEI's transparency policy. Again there was no mention regarding the lack of gender related or sex disaggregated data needed for a comprehensive estimation of poverty.  

The relation between women and poverty has been extensively researched. According to UNIFEM "poverty traps women in multiple layers of discrimination and hinders their ability to claim their rights (...) Not only do women bear a disproportionate burden of the world's poverty, but in some cases, globalization has widened the gap, with women losing more than their share of jobs, benefits and labour rights. (...) economic policies and institutions still mostly fail to take gender disparities into account."  Arriagada believes that the gender analysis "highlights the heterogeneous character of poverty, and therefore, helps to understand it better and to adjust policies to eradicate it." 

Fortunately, despite the INEI report's deficiency, there are several institutions and NGOs that have been working on gender and poverty issues in the country, monitoring the fulfillment of the MDGs. UNIFEM, for instance, has been funding projects regarding gender participatory budgets and assisting the Round Tables for the Fight against Poverty in outlining gender sensitive budgets. Likewise, UNDP provides technical assistance to design poverty reduction policies and to promote the role of women in development. 

The INEI's report is supposed to reflect if poverty reduction strategies are working and help to outline and implement new policies to eradicate poverty.  The question is then how can poverty reduction policies be properly reviewed from a report where half of the population is not being considered?  It is time to realize that no real changes will be achieved unless gender analysis is seriously taken into account.