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This document is the author's final manuscript accepted version of the journal article, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer review process. Some differences between this version and the published version may remain. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. RE-THINKING THE 'FEMINISATION OF POVERTY' IN RELATION TO AGGREGATE GENDER INDICES SYLVIA CHANT Department of Geography and Environment London School of Economics Houghton StLondon WC2A 2AE UK s.chant@lse.ac.uk ABSTRACTThe 'feminisation of poverty' is often referred to without adequate specification or substantiation, and does not necessarily highlight aspects of poverty which are most relevant to women at the grassroots. The UNDP's gender indices go some way to reflecting gendered poverty, but there is scope for improvement. In order to work towards aggregate indices which are more sensitive to gender gaps in poverty as identified and experienced by poor women the main aims of this paper are two-fold.The first is to draw attention to existing conceptual and methodological weaknesses with the 'feminisation of poverty', and to suggest how the construct could better depict contemporary trends in gendered privation. The second is to propose directions for the kinds of data and indicators which might be incorporated within the

Although urban women generally enjoy some advantages over their rural counterparts, a range of gender inequalities and injustices persist in urban areas that constrain their engagement in the labour market and in informal enterprises and inhibit the development of capabilities among younger women. These include unequal access to decent work, human capital acquisition, financial and physical assets, intra-urban mobility, personal safety and security, and representation in formal structures of urban governance. But the nature of these varies for different groups of women, not only on account of poverty status and where they live in the city, but also according to age, household characteristics, degree of engagement in income-generating activities and so on. This paper reviews what we have learnt from the literature on gender and urban development. It discusses disparities in access to education and vocational training and to land and housing ownership through a "gender lens". It considers service deficiencies and associated time burdens, which limit income generation among women. Violence and gender, and gender divisions in access to different spaces within the city and in engagement in urban politics, are also covered. These factors cast doubt on whether women's contributions to the prosperity often associated with urbanization are matched by commensurate returns and benefits.

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