This new gender-sensitive metric will change the way we tackle poverty

Solutions
Decades of research show that poverty is experienced differently by different groups in society. Paradoxically, when poverty is measured, it's assumed that everyone experiences it in the same way.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) together with Australian National University and Australian Aid are devising the Individual Deprivation Measure (IDM), set to be finished by 2020.

IDM looks at the individual circumstances of poverty, contrary to monetary poverty. Money is not the only way poverty is experienced and not the only way it can be escaped.

IDM addresses the varying dimensions of individual poverty, looking at how gender, disability, age, and ethnicity effects the experience of poverty. The new measure is founded on feminist principles and seeks “to leave no one behind.”

This is important because “The focus on the individual captures the reality of poverty and vulnerability faced by many women and ensures that female experiences are not hidden from view.”

Seeing poverty through an individual lens is confronting it with much more knowledge and leads to understanding why people can’t overcome it easily. Tailored solutions to individual poverty are more effective than general poverty reduction measures. If we want to meet the 2030 UN deadline for eradicating extreme poverty, we need these effective solutions.

Support IWDA in their efforts to eradicate poverty in the most effective way.

More Stories