An elaboration of the notion of ‘the feminization of poverty’ employed in the U.N. Human Development Report (1997), the Beijing World Conference (1995), reports of the European Union and current literature in sociology. On this basis, the hypothesis of the feminization of poverty is put to the test through a preliminary analysis of gender statistics from the 1995 census of the Maltese population.

The sociological study of the relationship between poverty and gender in Malta is a very rare enterprise. As in mainstream traditional sociology overseas, measurements of poverty mainly rely on quantitative survey data or official statistics where the unit of analysis is the household or the family and, in most cases, with no distinction between men and women head of households, single parent mothers or fathers, widows or widowers. In Malta, there is no official definition of the ‘poverty line’ and data on low income households as differentiated by gender, is not readily available.

Just as in other western European countries, women head of households, widows and single mothers report lower levels of economic well-being and lesser access to resources than their male counterparts. The lowering of the gender gap in the educational achievement of  young adults in Malta is still not accompanied by an overall equal participation in the labour market, equal access to professional and managerial jobs and the corresponding equality of income levels between the sexes. Such findings suggest that there is a cultural component to the persistent unequal gender participation in the labour market and the ensuing feminization of poverty.

In response to recommendations of the Beijing Conference (1995), public officers and researchers are to devise suitable statistical indicators that would make visible the full extent of women’s contributions to the national economy and society. The publication of national statistics on gender and age-desegregated data on poverty and economic activity would make possible a better assessment of poverty issues from a gender perspective. In addition, the systematic, periodical collection and comparative study of survey data on changing values and on women’s multiple activities in the public and private spheres would allow an examination of the complex relationship between the values of society, women’s work and the incidence of and their vulnerability to poverty.