Progressing Gender Equality Post?2015: Harnessing the Multiplier Effects of Existing Achievements

This article argues that international efforts to progress gender equality now and post?2015 need to build on the achievements of the MDGs and other international frameworks, but simultaneously address the gender dynamics that underpin the root causes of poverty. The first half of the article seeks to unpack the ways in which gender inequalities underpin five clusters of MDGs: poverty and sustainable development; service access; care and caregiving; voice and agency; international partnerships and accountability. The analysis then turns to highlight the importance of harnessing the momentum from other global initiatives such as CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) and the Beijing Platform for Action to promote more fundamental change including: the establishment of a more powerful UN agency to champion gender equality; the institutionalisation of gender budgeting and gender?responsive aid effectiveness approaches; and the promotion of gender?sensitive social protection to tackle gender?specific experiences of poverty and vulnerability

Entrenchment or Enhancement: Could Climate Change Adaptation Help to Reduce Chronic Poverty?

In the context of climate change, the poorest people are commonly seen as having the least capacity to adapt. However, to date, there has been a limited examination of the dynamic and differentiated nature of poverty. Through bringing together both the chronic poverty and adaptation literature, this article presents a new pro-poor adaptation research agenda underpinned by a more nuanced understanding of poverty. Whilst recognising that poverty reduction efforts are threatened by climate change, this article investigates ways in which proactive adaptation could offer opportunities to create pathways out of chronic poverty through targeted vulnerability reduction and adaptation efforts

Chronic and structural poverty in South Africa: Challenges for action and research

Ten years after liberation, the persistence of poverty is one of the most important and urgent problems facing South Africa. This paper reflects on some of the findings based on research undertaken as part of the participation of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape in the work of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), situates it within the broader literature on poverty in South Africa, and considers some emergent challenges. Although PLAAS’s survey, being only the first wave of a panel study, does not yet cast light on short term poverty dynamics, it illuminates key aspects of the structural conditions that underpin long-term poverty: the close interactions between asset poverty, employment-vulnerability and subjection to unequal social power relations. Coming to grips with these dynamics requires going beyond the limitations of conventional ‘sustainable livelihoods’ analyses; and functionalist analyses of South African labour markets. The paper argues for a re-engagement with the traditions of critical sociology, anthropology and the theoretical conventions that allow a closer exploration of the political economy of chronic poverty at micro and macro level

Escaping Chronic Poverty Through Economic Growth

It is discussed how chronically poor people participate in growth (or are excluded), and how different forms of growth connect to poverty. Important policy levers, in relation to agriculture, urbanisation, social protection and fiscal reform are discussed. [CPRC Policy Brief 8].agriculture, poverty, growth, excluded, chronically poor people, urbanisation, social protection, fiscal reform, economic, social change

Understanding Chronic Poverty in South Asia

South Asia has the largest number of chronically poor people in the world –an estimated 135 to 190 million people. Chronic poverty in the region is most renounced in areas that have significant minority populations, that are economically stagnant, where agrarian class structures and gender relations are exploitative, and where governance is weak [Chapter 7 from The Chronic Poverty Report 2004-05].chronic poverty, South Asia, governance, economically

Global Chronic Poverty in 2004-2005

This report is about people living in chronic poverty – people who remain poor for much or all of their lives, many of whom will pass on their poverty to their children, and all too often die easily preventable deaths.chronic poverty, poor, children, deaths