From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

FROM POVERTY TO POWERInsecurity and risk are not just greater for poor people than forrich, but vary across other faultlines of social and economic inequality.Women and children often face different risks from men because theyhold relatively less power in most societies, and so are more vulnerable.For example, they may face domestic violence or have less access tofood in ‘normal’ times and have less access to emergency aid after adisaster. In many countries, women face penury after the death of ahusband. Similarly, commonly marginalised groups such as ethnicminorities, elderly people, or disabled and sick people often facegreater risks.The individual risks that poor people face reinforce and exacerbateone other, ratcheting up inequality and exclusion. If a family’s mainbreadwinner falls sick or loses his or her job, the family may have to eatless, weakening its resistance to disease, or sell off prized assets such asgoats or cows, rendering it less resilient to further shocks. Studies inMalawi show how the famine of 2001–02 drove desperate womenand girls to sell sex to survive, greatly increasing their chances ofcontracting HIV. 2When shocks affect the whole community, help from relatives orneighbours is harder to come by, further undermining resilience. Adevastating feedback loop can develop between conflict and ‘natural’disasters, which drains individual, community, and nationalresources, weakens institutions, and heightens risk through displacement,the blocking of aid and recovery assistance, and the destructionof physical and natural assets.Conflict can turn low rainfall into famine. More than 50 per centof Africa’s food crises can be explained by armed conflict and theconsequent displacement of millions of people. 3 In 2003, 13 of the17 countries with more than 100,000 AIDS orphans were in conflictor on the edge of emergency. 4One of the menaces of climate change is its tendency to exacerbateexisting sources of risk and vulnerability for poor people. In Kenyaand Darfur, for example, drought has heightened conflict overdiminishing areas of fertile land or depleted supplies of water. InZambia, droughts have left people more prone to contracting HIV,since they have forced families to marry off daughters early, often toolder men who have had numerous sexual partners. Drought and200