Publication

This paper describes how employment is central to the ongoing understanding of poverty and well-being, as well as to prescriptions for poverty reduction. The authors describe how labor-intensive growth, and greater labor force participation by women, are major policy recommendations in the poverty agendas of the 1990s. The paper describes how women especially face social and ideological constraints when seeking, obtaining and performing work outside households, with responsibilities for child bearing and rearing generating particular problems. The authors explain how such issues of work intensity raise general questions about poverty eradication programs and social development perspectives.