Excerpts from Book Reviews

EXCERPTS FROM BOOK REVIEWS

Sylvia Chant (2007)

GENDER, GENERATION AND POVERTY: EXPLORING THE ‘FEMINISATION OF POVERTY’ IN AFRICA, ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar

‘Highly recommended’, CHOICE, June 2008.

Reviews in academic journals

European Journal of Development Research

‘This is an important book … intuitive and helpful to readers with a specific country focus as well as to those with an eye for comparative study. In refusing to succumb to the rhetoric of the feminisation of poverty perspective, Chant has given a new and strengthened voice to the rare breed of researchers asking for a more multidimensional view of poverty’.

Feminist Economics

‘Chant’s work is rich and detailed … accessible and interesting. Academics, policy-makers, graduate students and upper-level undergraduates doing research on development or feminist topics are likely to find this book to be an invaluable resource. And the three diverse case studies make this scholarship of interest to an international audience’.

Population and Development Review

‘In this provocative book, the well-known gender and development specialist Sylvia Chant takes on the conventional wisdom in development circles that women constitute the majority of the world’s poor, that the ‘feminisation of poverty’ is worsening over time, and that the trend is associated with the feminisation of household headship….Chant’s research casts serious doubt on the value of conventional approaches and suggests the need for much better data on gender and poverty. A must-read for students and practitioners of development’.

Sex Roles

‘The book’s key arguments…convincingly show that there is limited, or at best inconclusive, data to support the prevailing orthodoxy on the poverty of female-headed households, the greater severity of women’s poverty, or the increasing rates of women’s poverty relative to men, The implications for policy, research and methodology of her central arguments are very rich. They could lead us to new research directions and tools… Chant demonstrates the solid and careful research and analytical thinking shown in her previous books’.

Gender and Development

Gender, Generation and Poverty … considers with clarity and acuity the usefulness and accuracy of the notion of ‘the feminisation of poverty’. Feminists who may have looked at this book with apprehension, for fear it would undermine the key pillar of their claims for more attention and resources to tackle gender inequality and women’s disadvantage, can rest assured … The country comparisons provide a nuanced and rich picture of differences and similarities across genders, ages, locations, and through periods of historical change ... What comes across loud and clear is … that any attempt to reduce poverty and gender inequality will fail without a better understanding of relations between and within families and households’.