Poverty and Gender: Invisible Structures and Practices of Resistance

Understanding the phenomena and complex structures of poverty and social inequalities require adequate approaches. Among these, gender constitutes a central dimension. This panel adopts the perspective that poverty is not a neutral condition but a gendered and historical phenomenon, shaped by structural inequalities, socio-economic dependencies, and power relations. By conceptualizing poverty through a gender lens, this panel seeks to explore how gender interacts with other social categories to produce specific forms of economic vulnerability and marginalization.

Women and queer individuals are particularly affected by economic precarity, whether due to unequal pay, unpaid care work, or restricted access to resources and social security. At the same time, men are constructed about not being vulnerable. Above that, knowledge about the interconnections between gender and poverty often remains insufficiently visible or is systematically marginalized. This panel explores the intersection of poverty and gender as an epistemic, political, and social challenge.

Numerous studies have shown how poverty disproportionately affects women, particularly—but not exclusively—women raising children alone. Historically, social insurance schemes have primarily focused on protecting male workers, leaving women with less coverage and making them more dependent on means-tested social assistance programs. These programs have historically played a key role in disciplining and normalizing the poor – concretely women. Men have been constructed as being self-sufficient and independent from state support.

In this panel, we ask: How are gender and poverty produced and negotiated in public, academic, and political discourses? What historical and contemporary knowledge gaps exist regarding the experiences of groups that are overrepresented in poverty, such as women with children? To what extent do social security systems, labor market structures, and economic policies reinforce gendered patterns of poverty? What forms of knowledge production and resistance exist against these structural exclusions?

We propose a complete panel with four contributions, one of which comes from the organising team. This panel brings together inter- and multidisciplinary perspectives on poverty and gender. Our panel adopts a perspectives both from a German- as well as French-speaking part of Switzerland and therefore is tri-lingual: presenters can present in EN, FR, GE.