In 1975, the United Nations held the first World Conference on Women in Mexico City. Planned to coincide with the U.N.’s International Women’s Year, the gathering triggered an explosion in research on gender around the globe, with poverty featuring prominently.
Four decades later, the task set out for us as the editors of the recently published four volume Routledge major works collection "Gender, Poverty and Development" was no small one, and it came at a timely moment. As we get closer to the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, development practitioners, policymakers and researchers worldwide have been debating the successes and failures of the poverty reduction framework set out in the MDGs.
For gender advocates, one of the main critiques of the MDGs was that gender was not fully integrated throughout each of the eight goals, and that, as a result, the focus on these goals caused gender to remain heavily circumscribed in poverty reduction policy and programming.
About the authors
Sylvia Chantschant2
Sylvia Chant is professor of development geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science, U.K. where she is director of the MSc in Urbanization and Development. Elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2011, Prof. Chant has conducted research in Mexico, Costa Rica, Philippines and The Gambia. Her main interests are in gender and poverty, urban labor markets, rural-migration, and female-headed households, on which she has authored, edited or co-edited nearly 20 books.
Gwendolyn Beethamgwendolynb
Gwendolyn Beetham is senior program coordinator at Douglass Residential College, Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, USA. She has worked for women's research institutes and gender justice organizations around the world and has taught gender studies at the London School of Economics, Rutgers University, and Brooklyn College. Her research interests include gender-based violence, LGBT rights, and critical development theory. She has a PhD from the Gender Institute at the LSE.
