poverty working group

The women and poverty sub-group of the UK Women's Budget Group held its first meeting on 11th June 2003 at the Fawcett Society.

The high presence of women in groups in poverty was the trigger for identifying this as a key WBG theme at the WBG annual strategic planning meeting in November 2003.

In May and June 2004 the group organised innovative meetings exploring the links between women and children's poverty, exploring the issues with women living in poverty. The group launched a report 'Women's and children's poverty: making the links' in March 2005. This report is a combination of both academic and experiential expertise on the subject.

For a copy of the report 'Women's and children's poverty: making the links' click here.

For a copy of the report in larger print, click  here.

For more information about the workshops click here.

Role of the Poverty Working Group

The Group is open to all members of the WBG, and reports back to the management group. Its role is

• To identify opportunities to mainstream a poverty perspective within current and future WBG agenda
• To proactively establish link with women experiencing poverty and open spaces for them to feed their experience and priorities into WBG work
• To respond to policy opportunities from a women and poverty perspective on an ad-hoc basis
• The group will administer itself, with support from the WBG project officer

Its work will include:

• Exploring the conceptual and practical reasons why women are still the majority of the poorest groups in the UK
• Identifying issues that need to be raised with government, and advocate for tackling the issues that women in poverty face
• Sharing knowledge and expertise/resources on the situation of women in poverty

Ideas for future initiatives include:

• Developing a framework for discussion of underlying issues
• Response to government consultations and policy papers
• Regular seminar on chosen themes, with potential for developing a policy position
• Establishing engagement with women in poverty themselves