Pauvreté, genre et stratégies de survie des ménages en Côte d'Ivoire

Does the increasing of women-headed households mean the feminization of poverty ? The present research aims at verifying this hypothesis in the specific context of Côte d'Ivoire. In this respect, it joins a utilitarian approach of poverty and has appeal to the equivalence scales - to seize the differences of size and composition of the households. The analyses put in evidence the fragility of the correlation between gender and poverty in Côte d'Ivoire. Poverty affects indifferently the households steered by men as well as those depending economically on a woman, in spite of the social discrimination that undergo, generally, these last ones in terms of incomes and jobs. In fact, the study reveals that beyond the sex of the household's head, lack of active persons on the labour market turns out to be a determining factor of the households' poverty in Côte d'Ivoire. In this context, the work of the secondary women constitutes one of the major articulations of the strategies of survival, in particular in the men-headed households. The analyses are based on the exploitation of the data taken from the Côte d'Ivoire living standard surveys, conducted in 1995 and covering the whole territory. (Full text in French)