Female-Based Urban Poverty in Parts of Sehore City, India

The standard indicators for the study of urban poverty are adopted for measuring female-based urban poverty index (Table 1). The indicators are selected in such a way that they relate to prevailing deprivation conditions in the Sehore M.C. area, and more specifically to the surveyed area as follows:

Based on UN Women, a number of factors can be defined as the determinants of female-based poverty. The factors that relate to the economic status include an employment type, inequalities in wages, lack of opportunities for work and engagement of women in unpaid domestic work, leading to women’s lack of time for paid work and their own recreation.

Although a number of indicators are required to assess the level of poverty, the economic dimension of poverty assessment cannot be ignored and still remains the most relevant factor for the assessment of poverty. The poverty lines across the globe are based on per capita income. From the literature on female poverty, a number of relevant indicators for the present study have been charted. The indicators selected are essentially affecting women’s welfare; their job satisfaction and work acceptance are also taken into consideration.

At the global level, there are regions where school education of girls is not compulsory, which becomes a huge obstacle to women’s emancipation and to their having an opportunity to be upgraded to skilled jobs. Moreover, as women’s educational status has been proven to be linked to economic development, there is a need for more than just basic education for women but also, as Verick (2014) argues, for an educational status beyond the secondary level, especially at least in the case of newly urbanising regions.

Education forms the backbone of the society, and its implications on the overall wellbeing of the family members depends, to a large extent, on women’s educational status. There is also a proven relationship between the economic development of a region and the educational status of women (U-shaped hypothesis); it is pertinent to give education an important place in assessment of female-based poverty.

Although female poverty is a social problem, for the purpose of the study, as we define the determinants of female-based urban poverty, it is important to discuss the social aspects of poverty that intrinsically affect women. Amongst the social causes of poverty, social marginalisation is the major one, which is often due to lack of freedom and awareness. Empowering women has been conceived as an aim to reduce poverty amongst them (Louis-Weinstein 2019). Women empowerment has been termed as an essential element for sustainable development (UNFPA 1994), the ultimate aim of poverty reduction programmes. Angemi (2011) proves that poverty and vulnerability are positively related to each other. A socially marginalised household is the one with limited access to resources including poor social networking (Zahra, Zafar 2015).

As social empowerment forms the basis of any developing society, it is pertinent to take it into account for female-based poverty, especially in the case of urban areas. It is important for females to be able to have control over their actions as well as movements within the society. If the liberty of moving at one’s own will is restricted or compromised, then the society is disempowered up to a large extent. What is more, social empowerment also translates into educational and economic strength of women, which is manifested in their day-to-day activities such as environmental awareness or awareness regarding governmental schemes.

Although health is itself an effect of the economic and educational status of women, as often observed, women in economically poor households sacrifice their health and nutrition in favour of other family members. Similarly, studies show a strong link between the educational status of women and health indicators (Oxaal, Cook 1998; Davidson et al. 2011).

Various aspects concerning health issues such as access to healthcare facilities, awareness and consumption have been taken into account amongst females in the reproductive age group as per NFHS-4 (IIPS, 2017). Health awareness and health maintenance are important elements of overall wellbeing of the household.

As discussed so far, women are poor because of several factors, one of which is power dynamics between men and women that aggravates the already grim situation of females. The governments of the signatory countries of the 1996 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) pledged the commitment to developing a framework that would ensure women’s participation in planning as well as decision-making. The First World Assemblies of Cities and local authorities alike had committed itself to full participation of women in the decision-making process. Structural barriers and social norms serve as impediments in women’s decision-making power and participation. As decision-making stems from the economic and educational status of women, many studies find a correlation between working status and decision-making amongst females. With an increase in educational and material resource access (O’Neil, Domingo 2015), there is an increasing participation of women in the decision-making process. Nevertheless, given the patriarchal set-up of society with male domination, a male is actually a head of the family. It has been observed that women lack the power of decision-making in urbanising society like Sehore M.C., the decision-making power still rests with males within the households. The decision-making power at the community level is practically absent. Hence for the present study, only household-level decision-making has been considered.

The decision-making power deficit amounts to ‘power poverty’ within the household, which is aggravated within a male-dominated society. As women in the surveyed area have been rarely found to be commanding any authority with regard to decisions at the community level, only decision-making at the household level is considered for the present study, including all women above 18 years old.

The lack of time for relaxation, more loosely termed as ‘time poverty’, is a more recent concept in the study of female-based poverty as females bear the dual burden of paid work and unpaid care work (Hyde et al. 2020). More often women are without any support from any male members as far as daily chores within the household are concerned, which is mainly due to the gendered norms that deter men from sharing household tasks with their female family members. It is often considered unmanly if men perform duties in the kitchen as a sharing hand. As gendered norms prompt girls from a very young age to share domestic work, females over the age of 15 are taken into account.

The study area consists of 17 localities from four selected wards in which a total of 950 females were surveyed (15% of the female population from the selected wards). The data were collected at the individual level and collated at the locality level. The selection was made based on a higher female working population along with manifestations of urban poverty including congested localities with a more observable lack of sanitation. The target population of the study is both working and non-working females at the household level from selected localities. For different domains, the group of females between 7 and 65 years of age is taken into consideration.

The AHP multi-criteria decision-making method focuses on the relative importance of evaluation criteria. The results obtained show the best balance of performance for criteria from different domains such as lack of economic, educational, social empowerment and health, decision-making aspects and time poverty amongst females in the surveyed area. Generally, income criteria and economic dimensions are associated with poverty issues, but there are criteria other than economic poverty such as educational poverty, lack of decision-making and time poverty which affect the overall status of females within the society and are causing variation in the overall poverty levels of an economically deprived society. AHP thus has made the decision-making between the criteria of various domains of female-based poverty in Sehore M.C. more efficient, flexible and realistic based upon the available criteria and alternatives. The domain weights have been calculated using the AHP method. The following steps are involved:

Step 1: Defining the criteria based on the problem. The criteria are defined to assess the results. The present study takes five criteria, namely economic poverty, education poverty, social poverty – lack of women empowerment, health poverty, lack of decision-making and lack of time for relaxation or time poverty.

where w_i is the weight of the i^th criterion, w_j is the j^th criterion and a_ij is the value for the i^th criterion as against the j^th criterion. The stronger the relation, the lower the integer. The following is the comparison matrix for the present study.

First, we must recognise the value of the eigenvector which is the weighted value of the criterion. To calculate the eigenvector, we use the following equation: wi=ai/ni∀i ${{w}_{i}}={{a}_{i}}/{{n}_{i}}{{\forall }_{i}}$ where w_i is the eigenvector and a_i is the sum of the matrix normalisation values and is divided by the number of the criterion (n). The largest eigenvalue is the number of times multiplying the number of columns with the main eigenvector (see Table 4), which can be obtained by the following equation: λmax=(ΣGM11−n1×X1)+…+(ΣGM1n−n×Xn) ${{\lambda }_{max}}=\left( \Sigma GM11-{{n}_{1}}\times {{X}_{1}} \right)+\ldots +\left( \Sigma GM1n-n\times {{X}_{n}} \right)$

Step 4: Approximation of consistency index (CI). This involves the calculation of the consistency index for the calculation of the consistency ratio (CR). The consistency index is calculated as follows: CI=λmax−n/n−1 $CI={{\lambda }_{max}}-n/n-1$

The consistency ratio is calculated as follows: CR=CI/RI, $CR=CI/RI,$

where RI is the ratio index.

The RI value used is in accordance with the order n matrix. If the CR of a smaller matrix is 10% (0.1), this means that the inconsistency of each opinion is considered acceptable.

The consistency ratio is tested for a 10% acceptance level for smaller matrices. The RI for n = 6 is 1.32. Since for the present study CI is 0.108. Therefore, CR=0.108/1.32=0.08 $CR=0.108/1.32=0.08$ which is smaller than 0.1; thus, the consistency is accepted for the present study.

The weights thus obtained using the AHP process are used in the percentage data for the indicators within the domains. The final scores for each domain as well as overall female-based urban poverty were mapped in ArcGIS 10.3 using the inverse weighted distance (IDW) interpolation technique.

The economic poverty domain contains indicators that relate to economic depravity amongst women. For the economic domain, three distinct pockets of better-performing localities and one continuous patch of poor-performing localities are observed (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

The core of poor-performing localities in terms of economic poverty is located in the central portion of ward 33 which stretches to ward 31, covering the northern part of the study area.

The area of better-performing localities is located around the southern periphery of ward 32 extending to moderately-performing near the western margin of the study area.

Another pocket of medium-performing localities lies around the southern periphery in the central region stretching along the northern parts of ward 31.

Two distinct pockets of high- and poor-performing localities in the educational poverty domain are observed in Figure 3, the latter stretching to most of the western portions of the study area covering wards 32 and 33 and the north of ward 31 that form the core of the poor-performing pocket of localities. Another poor-performing region lies near the eastern periphery, which is mainly composed of the market area accounting for low scores in terms of educational poverty indicators.

Fig. 3.

The core of better-performing localities is located near the eastern margin of the study area in ward 27 where the education poverty is at its lowest. Another patch of the better-performing region on the educational poverty domain lies near the southern margin of ward 31. These two areas have a considerable graduate degree and diploma holders amongst the female population.

The social poverty domain takes into account the empowerment of women parameters including awareness of government schemes, exposure to media and environmental awareness. With respect to the social poverty domain, two distinct pockets of high- and low-performing localities are observed. The low-performing localities are situated along the west covering the whole of ward 32 along the western margin of the study area. The core lies at the southern margin of ward 31 where exposure to media and control over income are minimal, causing lack of women empowerment in the area under study (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.

The core of better-performing localities lies on the border of wards 32 and 33 stretching towards east, covering the southern margin of ward 33. Further, three distinct pockets of better-performing localities are observed comprising one locality near the eastern margin and two near the northern and southern regions of ward 31.

Most of the study area is performing fairly well on the health poverty domain, except for the central region covering mainly ward 31 with the core in the eastern margin of ward 33. Two patches of poor-performing regions are observed in the western and eastern margins of the study area (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.

Access to Anganwadi and health services with a considerable female population having a normal body mass index (BMI) accounts for a positive image of the study area in the health domain.

The decision-making forms an important part considering the urban set-up of the study area. The decision-making amongst females is indicative of female empowerment within the society (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.

Source: own compilation.

With respect to the domain of decision-making power deficit amongst females, the pocket of poor-performing localities is observed along the western margin of the study area covering the whole of ward 32 and the northern periphery of wards 33 and 31. One isolated patch can be found near the southern margin of ward 31.

On the other hand, the eastern half of the study area accounts for better performance on the decision-making power deficit domain with its core near the southern margin of ward 33.

The time poverty domain is an important aspect of poverty considering the time spent on housework, duration of work and management of housework. Given the time poverty domain, two distinct pockets of high- and low-performing wards, each located in the east and west of area of interest, can be observed (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.

Source: own compilation.

The poor-performing localities lie in the western part covering most of wards 32 and 33, except for two localities near the southwestern margin of the study area which is faring medium in the time poverty domain. Another pocket of high-/ poor-performing localities lies in the east covering ward 27.

The better-performing localities in terms of time poverty lie in ward 31 covering the northwestern margin and ward 27 covering the eastern margin, while the rest of the area lies in the medium category.