Gendered Poverty in Rural Nepal: Meanings, Dimensions and Processes

The central problem of poverty studies in Nepal is the failure of recognising adequately the core vectors of oppressions simultaneously: class, gender and caste. The developmennt strategy of social mobilisation and micro-credit has not sufficiently responded these issues, either. Utilising the case from rural Nepal, I analyse poverty from gender perspective at three levels: spaital, household and individual. The work goes on exploring meanings and dimensions of gendered poverty; explores processes and effects of gendered poverty by bringing informal institutions as a framework of analysis and evaluates the role of current development strategy in mitigating these processes and effects. This work is, therefore, a profound fact-based analysis on the relations between social stratification, assets-income-human capabilities and gender inequality and it is a departure from core economic analysis of poverty. The analysis should be useful for professionals of Gender and Development or anyone else who may be interested in Sociology of Gender and (Under) Development in South Asia.