The first of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly commits to ending poverty in all its forms and dimensions everywhere by 2030. As of today, this remains one of the biggest challenges facing humanity. Extreme poverty is currently defined as living on less than $1.90 a day.
The majority of the people living in extreme poverty are women. In general, all over the world women are more likely to be poor than men. This phenomenon is called the „feminization of poverty“ and is directly linked to gender inequality: In many countries, women are deprived of basic rights and opportunities for well-being, thus making and keeping them poor and trapping them in a vicious circle. A woman farmer in a developing country, for instance, is often unable to make her crops thrive like a man because she does not have the same access to resources like seeds, credits and other services. Also, she is very unlikely to own her land: Only 20 % of landowners globally are women. Often the law fully deprives women to buy or inherit property or at least social conventions strongly favor their male relatives.
In many countries, women do not have access to even basic education and therefore to better jobs and a better income. Although women's labor force participation has increased in recent decades, globally women have way lower average earnings than men. And all their family work goes mostly unnoticed and unrewarded. SDG-1, the end of poverty, can therefore only be achieved with the end of gender-based discrimination.