Revision summary
Feminization of poverty is the greater depth and duration of women’s poverty. Indian kinship often withholds land and line from women. Informal and unpaid work keep them at the bottom of the labour market. Caste multiplies the effect for Dalit and Adivasi women. Rights in wage and title are the counter, not charity alone.
Model answer
Introduction
Feminization of poverty means women, especially widows, single mothers, and informal workers, are poorer and stay poor longer than men in the same class. In India it is caste, kinship, and labour market together, not a Western single-mother story alone.
Body
How it appears
- Leela Dube’s Seed and Earth denies women the line and often the field, so widow and daughter poverty is built into kinship.
- Female-headed households, unpaid farm work, and urban domestic and home-based labour keep women in low, insecure pay.
- NFHS and labour counts show thinner asset title, worse nutrition, and higher informal share for women.
Indian shape
- Dalit and Adivasi women face landlessness plus stigma. Upper-caste seclusion can hide unpaid dependence.
- Feminization is not only more poor women. It is poverty reproduced through marriage, dowry, and care work.
Policy
- SHGs, MGNREGA, and succession reform help when wages and titles actually reach women, not only household males.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD K[Seed Earth kinship] --> P[Women without title] I[Informal care work] --> P P --> F[Feminization of poverty]
Conclusion
Feminization of poverty in India is the gendered face of land, caste, and informal work. Counting poor women is not enough; title, wage, and kinship ideology must change.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Is caste system changing, weakening or disintegrating in India?
Next question in the 2015 paper (Q2). View answer →
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Is this only about female-headed homes?
No. Married women can be asset-poor inside households that look male-headed.
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Does growth end it?
Growth without title and care support can leave women as cheap informal labour.
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More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
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Elwin defined tribal freedom as protection of land, language, and self-rule. He rejected Ghurye’s assimilation of tribe into Hindu society. Isolation was a shield, not a museum, until contact was fair. Nehruvian Panchsheel borrowed this caution. Law now tries to keep that freedom as rights inside the state.
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Phule linked caste domination to the robbery of the peasant. Gulamgiri and the cultivator’s whip made tillers the centre of critique. Satyashodhak schools attacked the knowledge monopoly that kept the field unfree. He is closer to anti-caste agrarian politics than to mild temple reform. Class language came later; the landlord-priest pair was already his target.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Louis Dumont's perspective on Indian caste system
Caste System
Dumont treats caste as a hierarchical ideology of purity and impurity. Power and wealth are real but encompassed by ritual rank. Homo hierarchicus contrasts with Western equality as a value. Sripuram and Rampura show class and dominant caste that the ideology does not fix. The perspective is necessary for values, insufficient for land and politics.
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