ANALYSIS OF GENDER-BASED EXPERIENCES OF POVERTY IN THE ‘NORTH’ AND ‘SOUTH’: THE CASE OF PAKISTAN

The terms North and South, though loaded to a certain extent with ideological and normative content, are frequently used in development literature with respect to various issues. Despite life’s riches in rich countries, i.e. the North it is asserted that men’s and women’s lives in poverty reflected an almost similar pattern in both the North and the South. This paper describes and analyses the gender-based experiences of poverty in rich and poor countries of the world. To do so, the paper first problematises the concepts of terms such as the North and the South as well as the meaning of poverty. Thereafter referring, in brief, to the poverty-related situation of men and women at global level, the paper presents the plight of men and women in Pakistan from gender-perspective by contrasting and comparing the situation with respect to observations from other countries. We warrant the assertion that there might be differences in ways poverty is experienced by poor – men and women – in Pakistan from the poor of other countries but differences are only in degrees not in kind.