The 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, called on the world community to take action in twelve areas of critical concern to women: poverty, access to education and training, access to health care, violence against women, women and war, economic inequality with men, political inequality with men, creation of institutions for women’s advancement, lack of respect for women’s rights, stereotyping of women, gender inequalities and the environment, and violation of girl children’s rights.6 These are concerns that all women share, although degrees of inequality vary greatly from one country to another.

The feminization of poverty, the disproportionate number of women living in extreme poverty, applies to even the wealthiest countries, where two out of every three poor adults are women. There are many causes for this phenomenon. Because women are primarily responsible for child care in many cultures, they have less time and opportunity for work. Male labor migration increases the number of households headed by women and thus the number of families living in poverty. Job restrictions, discrimination, and limited access to education reduce women’s employment options, except in the “informal economy” of domestic service, prostitution, and street vending. Birthrates are higher among poor women, particularly among adolescents, who make up many of the estimated 585,000 women who die every year during pregnancy and childbirth. The poorest women usually suffer most from government policies, usually legislated by men, which restrict their access to reproductive health care and family planning.

Women have made gains in the workplace, making up 38 percent of the nonfarm-sector global workforce in the early 2000s, as compared to 35 percent in 1990. But segregated labor markets remain the rule, with higher-paying jobs reserved for men. In the farm sector, women produce more than half of all the food and up to 80 percent of subsistence crops grown in Africa. Because this is informal labor and often unpaid, these women laborers are denied access to loans, and many cannot own the land they farm. (See “Viewpoints 33.2: Women Activists in Chiapas, Mexico.”)

Social class continues to be a major divider of women’s opportunities. Over the course of the twentieth century women from more affluent backgrounds experienced far greater gains in access to education, employment, and political representation than women in poverty did. In the aftermath of decolonization and state formation, women emerged as heads of state in Bangladesh, India, Israel, and Pakistan. A wave of democratic political transitions in the 1980s yielded women heads of state in the Philippines and Nicaragua. In the years following democratic transitions, the same occurred in Panama, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, and Liberia.