SOC

1) One example that our book points out on the feminization of poverty in core nations is “The expansion in the number of female-headed households”. This is mostly due to divorces that occur which split the parents and leave the children in a rough situation. The father sometimes (in a lot of cases) will “flee” and leave the mother to take care of the kids on her own. Thankfully, we have laws that require the father to pay child support, but the emotional and financial situation of the household is still deeply affected. This is one of the many reasons divorce is so terrible. Moreover, the mother then has to lead the household and take the roles of both father and mother which puts more stress on her as depletes her resources. Of course, this will lead many single-parent households into a certain level of poverty (mostly relative poverty in a first world country due to all the help they receive i.e. SNAP). Now, with regards to peripheral nations, divorces are still prevalent and cause the same evils in those cases. Although, they may cause more damage to the woman who is the head of the household as many of these less developed countries don’t have the same laws that require men to pay child support. Therefore, being a single parent in these countries probably sends the mother into an even greater level of poverty than in a first world country. Finally, the connection between the distribution of wealth and a mother being the head of the household should be fairly obvious at this point. The women who are leading a home are further pushed into poverty and are barely able to “get onto their feet” financially leading them to a near impossibility of ever increasing their wealth.

2) In some places, there is evidence that women are still paid less than men for doing the same job. In peripheral nations, the percent of women living in poverty is much higher than the percent of men living in poverty. As our textbook mentioned, women in peripheral nations "accumulate fewer assets, farm less land, make less money, and face restricted civil rights and liberties" (Keirns et al., 2017). This is an example of the feminization of poverty in core nations, as women in other countries are given fewer rights than men are. Women also do not have easy access to the tools needed in order to not live in poverty, such as access to education. This connects to the distribution of wealth because it shows how wealth is not being distributed equally. As the video mentioned, even though people in the lowest income category have started earning more income in the past years, people in the highest income category have also started earning even more income. This is what causes the high inequality percent to remain. The video also mentioned multiple times how those with higher education make much more money than those without a college degree. If women in peripheral nations are not given the same access to education as men are, the high level of inequality is not going to change.

References

Keirns, N. J., Strayer, E., Griffiths, H., Cody-Rydzewski, S., Scaramuzzo, G., Sadler, T., . . . Jones, F. (2017). Introduction to Sociology (2nd ed.). Houston, TX: OpenStax, Rice University.

3) Single mother households relate to gender inequality issues as women are more susceptible to poverty and lack essential life needs in comparison to men. I was raised by my mother and only went to my fathers on the weekends. It was hard for her to hold a job and take care of all of her children. I am one of eight and my siblings father was not always in the picture and the lack of child support did not help either. My mother was left to do it all on her own and considering day care is not cheap and not all of us were in school yet, we struggled. In other countries women are not even aloud to work. They are essentially care givers of the household and are not aloud to be the bread winners, only the men. In america women are held to pretty equal standards to men so we can work and earn the same wages as men, so in america we have both genders gaining wealth, but in other countries like Syria woman have to gain permission to work. This means that they have a lot less people contributing to their countries over all wealth. This plays a part in some countries poverty considering they have a lot less people working. Syria is not the only country that has these laws prohibiting women to work, some other countries with similar laws include Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, Guinea, and Bolivia.

Edited by Samantha Cooper on Apr 1 at 12:26pm