Abstract

The present study aims at to analyze the feminization poverty in Sarghoda

District of Punjab, Pakistan. The term “feminization of poverty” was coined by Diana Pearce in 1978 who claimed that women heads of households were the poorest of the poor (Pearce, 1978). This concept became very popular in the 1990s after the fourth United Nations Conference on Women. Yet, after a decade of research on the feminization of poverty, Sylvia Chant and many other researchers criticized the narrowness of the concept and highlighted the need of including the gender dimensions of poverty within the definition of feminization of poverty (Chant 2003; Moghadam 2005; Staveren & Odebode, 2007). Variables that are negatively and significantly correlated with probability of being poor are: Age of house hold head,  education and  employment. The study recommends policy interventions necessary to reduce poverty particularly focusing female-headed households including direct transfer of cash to such families and access to free education to their children