Information on poverty `obscuring facts'

`One in every four women raising children or managing households on their own will experience poverty despite our economic boom and our growth rate of 8 per cent." This stark figure jumps from the page of "Out of Sight - the hidden poverty of women", a policy discussion-paper presented at a seminar in Dublin yesterday by the National Women's Council of Ireland.

"There is a sense that poverty used to happen in the past but the problem is that poverty - particularly women's poverty - is hidden now," says Grainne Healy, the chairwoman of the NWCI. The NWCI contends that women's poverty is hidden by the way data is collected. "Most information is collected on a household basis. The head of the household fills out the information. Questions are not asked about how money is divided out within the household," Healy says. The NWCI believes that rather than being gender neutral, this makes data-collection "gender-blind".

According to the "Out of Sight" paper, women are at a higher risk of poverty for the following reasons:

Some 29 per cent of those households under the poverty level are headed by someone "working full-time in the home". Most of these households are headed by women. Households headed by someone over 65 are another poverty risk group. This group is also made up mainly of women. A household headed by someone working part-time is another poverty risk group. Again, women make up the majority of part-time workers in this country. Lone parents are also at risk of poverty. More than 80 per cent of lone parents are female.

The NWCI also mentions female asylum seekers and Traveller women as being at risk of poverty: such women are often not included in data collection.

Childcare - or the absence of it - is another poverty trap for women, according to the NWCI.

The NWCI believes that if data relating to poverty was included information on gender, at-risk groups of women could be better targeted for services - everything from training schemes to health services. "It's not like 20 years ago when I would have said to you, if we only had the funds, we could help these women. We do have the funds now so we must find ways of reaching the groups which need them most. Each group needs a very different set of approaches," Healy says.

As a feminist organisation and recently, a social partner as part of Partnership 2000, the NWCI has another primary goal. That is, to encourage and promote the economic independence of women.

"Traditionally, childcare wasn't viewed as a problem in the belief that women minded their own children. But the lack of childcare is now keeping many women in poverty," says Healy. Also, she believes the current unemployment figures ignore many women who don't sign on, and never have, yet who want to work outside the home.

The NWCI is also campaigning to get the Government to acknowledge the economic value of women's unpaid work.

On a broader level, Healy says economic poverty is but one dimension of the problem. Educational poverty and emotional poverty are other, more subtle problems which also need to be addressed.

"As a nation, things are looking up economically for us but those who are being left behind are being left further behind," says Healy.