On International Women’s Day, Aisha Maniar looks at how poverty is holding back progress towards gender equality.

Poverty poses a major obstacle and block to progressing women’s rights and improving the lives of women and, subsequently, much of the rest of society all over the world. Women make up the majority of people living in poverty worldwide including the United Kingdom, the sixth largest economy in the world. International Women’s Day offers a timely opportunity to shed light on the often overlooked gendered nature of poverty in Britain today.

One in five, or 14.3 million people, in Britain currently live in poverty, defined by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as individuals whose “resources are well below what is enough to meet your minimum needs, including taking part in society” (2025 UK Poverty report). For women, the figure is higher; they are likely to have a persistently low income, acquire debt and be more entrenched in poverty than men. Women from ethnic minorities and with disabilities experience poverty at higher rates, and there is also a north/south divide in the level and impact of female poverty.

Higher female poverty in the UK can be broadly attributed to the same factors as in many other countries in the world: lower pay, the gender pay gap, and the far higher burden of unpaid care work placed on women. Women contribute billions of pounds in unpaid care work annually to the economy and absorb the burden of many of the cuts to public and support services for children, the elderly and disabled.

With women holding almost two-thirds of low-paid, part-time and insecure jobs, opportunities to save and work themselves out of poverty and debt diminish. It also means that many women continue to experience poverty into retirement. In the past decade, the “the proportion of female pensioners in the UK living in poverty has increased by six percentage points”, with over 1.25 million female pensioners “living below the breadline.” 

The impact is not just on earnings and savings but on all aspects of life. The stigma and shame attached to poverty mean that women very often suffer invisibly. Food poverty means many mothers reduce their food intake to ensure their children are properly fed. A 2023 Action Aid report found that period poverty increased by almost 20% in the year before.

One of the more visible aspects of widespread poverty in the UK today is homelessness. Women, for their own safety, are once again largely invisible. Government statistics report that women make up around 15% of rough sleepers nationwide. The first national women’s rough sleeping census held by Solace Women’s Aid in 2023 found that “In the 41 local areas that took part in the Census, 815 women were identified compared to just 189 through the Government’s Rough Sleeping Census.”

Off the streets, women make up over 60% of homeless adults in temporary accommodation, with this number having doubled in the past decade. Poor, unsuitable and precarious housing options for women add to the silent suffering, and often prevent women, with or without children, leaving abusive relationships and domestic violence.

A further invisible impact is on women’s health. Austerity measures have seen life expectancy fall over the past decade. The disparity in the life expectancy of the average woman and women living in poverty is almost one decade. For women experiencing sleeping rough, a life expectancy of 43 is almost half that of the average woman.

These are not just statistics but the everyday precarious living conditions and inequality experienced by millions of women across the UK. Poverty is not the result of the poor lifestyle choices of individuals but of deliberate punitive choices made by politicians.

There is much to be done to reverse growing gender inequality and the regression of women’s rights due to poverty. The current Labour government has failed thus far to take positive action, such as scrapping the two-child limit for universal credit support and addressing the detriment to millions of women affected by the rise in pension age.

Just some of the many steps that need to be taken immediately to address poverty and its impact on women’s rights in the UK include rethinking cuts to council budgets that force the burden of social care onto women as unpaid care work, increasing funding for women’s organisations who understand the particular challenges all kinds of women face, and public investment in childcare, making it affordable to allow women to access their rights and participate more fully and equally in society.

Aisha Maniar is a human rights activist.

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