Millions of people in the world go to bed hungry. Yet, the amount of food that we waste could have fed all of us and would still have leftovers for the next day. It’s also said the amount of tax dodged by the rich properly deployed would have ended the global poverty twice over.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that the poor are extremely disenfranchised both in the society and of course in the market. This is to say that unlike those who are not poor, the poor lack access to both economic and social infrastructure. With no money in their pocket, schools and other socially empowering enablers are beyond their reach. The everyday market is also not accessible to them.

Given the extremely limited means that they are forced to live with, male get the first right to everything with the women being the eternal last in the right to everything. Yet they are the ones who keep the family together, create the surplus to bring up the kids and do their utmost to save the next generation from the curse of poverty.

The role of women and gender deprivation in the vicious cycle of poverty is a very well researched area now. And there is a universal acceptance of the fact that if poverty were taken as a social malady that creates extreme disenfranchisement, women bear the brunt of it.

All studies, almost without exception, are of the opinion that if we are to reach the goal of elimination of extreme poverty by 2030 as mandated by the United Nations, the women should be seen as the crucial change agents. Finding ways to enfranchise them through empowerment is the only strategy that could translate this mandate into reality.

The challenge here, therefore, is seen as two-pronged. One is the global – alleviation of poverty. The other is within the cohort of the poor and more micro in that sense which is the creation of a strategy to bridge the gender inequality, the persistence of which would run the risk of pushing back all efforts at poverty alleviation.

The studies, however, have incontrovertibly thrown up a singular strategy. Women have been empirically found to have the inalienable tendency to strive towards the creation of surplus for investment in the family’s economic growth. This is also seen as a more effective sustainable model. Therefore if the UN mandate is to be realised, women should remain in focus as the change agent in poverty alleviation.