Women in Poverty Stricken Countries Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Women in Poverty Stricken Countries - Essay Example The disparity, then, is even more more pronounced throughout the developing countries of the world where women struggle on a daily basis to enjoy just a few of the simple freedoms that their counterparts in other parts of the world take for granted. Women in third-world countries often lack access to education, healthcare, and employment opportunities. This reality, therefore, begs the question of what needs to be done to ease the social, emotional, and physical difficulties facing the millions of women living in abject poverty in third world countries throughout the globe. There are many facets to living it poverty that make even the basic of human function difficult to endure. Yet, countless millions of individuals throughout the world are faced with this reality each and everyday. As difficult as poverty is to endure, however, being a female in poverty stricken countries seems to simply compound the situation. The voices of women globally have been silenced in many cases and it di fficult for them to achieve justice. Instances of rape and other unspeakable forms of abuse continue to occur almost unabated (Buvinic, 1997). Progress has certainly been made in recent years, largely due to the presence of a more globally focused media, but the reality is that much more needs to be done to protect women living in poverty in third world countries. The focus of this paper is to look at ways that society can better provide for the social, emotions, and physical needs of the millions of women living in poverty throughout the developing world. Social Needs of Women Living in Poverty Naturally, women comprise a little more than half of the world’s population, yet they represent a full seventy percent of individual living in poverty throughout the world. In the developing nations around the globe, this percentage can be even higher. This represents the reality that not only are women living in abject poverty, but often times they find themselves alone, frightened, and unable to consider any way out of their situation. In addition, the number of women raising children alone and in poverty continues to rise, further magnifying this problem. Women in poverty often find themselves victims of unspeakable social injustice and discrimination. In addition, they often discover problems in attaining access to even the most basic of healthcare services, educational options, and employment opportunities. While these difficulties certainly exist is first world countries, they are further magnified in the developing nations of the world, where class inequality is much more noticeable and government assistance is lacking (Batana 338). Even childbirth has become troubling for women living in property in much of the developing world, as there is a lack of clean medical facilities nearby that can attend to their specific and unique needs. Whereas even the poorest among us in Western societies typically have access to basic and clean child birthing facilities, that simply is not a luxury that much of world’s poor have available to them. Add to that the reality that single women giving birth are further stigmatized and less likely to receive assistance from society, and one quickly realizes the uphill struggle that women living in poverty face today in almost every facet of their social life. A child born poor, most often becomes a teenager without educational options, and adult without employment opportunities, and an elderly member of society with nobody to care for them. In other words, most of the women born into poverty in this world will remain such for the remainder of their life. Sociologist has