Module 5

• Poverty: SEN (1999)

  • Deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of incomes
• Poverty is typically defined from an economic perspective—looking at what is either lacking or absent in terms of income and access to basic needs. (VIROLA-GARDIOLA, 2009)
• Poverty (SCAR FRANCISCO, 2005)

  Redefined as not simply a lack of income and material resources, but also the absence of capabilities, opportunities, and power that will allow an individual to fully assume his/her role as a member of a community
• Who are the poor(RA8495, Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act):

  • Individuals and families whose income fall below the poverty threshold as defined by the National Economic and Development Authority and/or cannot afford in a sustained manner to provide their minimum basic needs of food, health, education, housing, and other essential amenities of life
• Marginalized groups


  • Small farmers and rural workers
  • Fisherfolk
  • Urban poor
  • Indigenous peoples
  • Workers
  • Women
  • Children
  • Youth
  • Older people/elderly/senior citizens
  • Persons with disabilities
  • LGBTQIA+
• Social analysis


  The systematic and scientific way of understanding social realities through the identification and classification of social facts, determining their relations, and interpreting using the different tools of analysis
• Tools of analysis

  • Historical analysis
  • Structural analysis
  • Gender analysis
  • Class analysis and political economy
• Historical analysis


  A tool that traces historical events and processes for proper understanding and interpretation of existing social reality
• Structural analysis


  Study of interrelationships and of the functions of a system, including economic, social, political, and cultural structures
• Gender analysis


  A tool that clarifies the power relations between women and men, identifying women's/men's performance of roles in society particularly in reproduction, production, and community management
• Class analysis and political economy


  A tool that facilitates appreciation on how the structures and processes of politics and economy bring about poverty, underdevelopment and dependency
• Absolute Poverty - Situations when people are not able to have the basic needs necessary due to low income (Brodie, 2014). A society’s poverty threshold is considered in determining absolute poverty as it “quantifies the number of people below the poverty line and is independent of place and time” (Ludi, n.d., p. 1)
• Generational Poverty or Chronic Poverty - Poverty situations wherein individuals and families have been living in poverty for generations (eSchoolToday, n.d.). Getting out of the poverty situation may be more difficult as the affected individuals and families, to start with, were born with already limited access to material resources, capabilities, opportunities and power.
• Situational Poverty or Transitory Poverty - Situations when people experience poverty all of a sudden, for instance, due to a disaster experience. Most of the time, when given assistance, people in this situation can get out of poverty (eSchoolToday, n.d.).
• Relative Poverty - Refers to people whose economic status is much worse than what is normally the acceptable or general standard of living “by comparing them with others in the population under consideration” (Ludi, n.d., p. 1).
• Marginalized Groups - Disadvantaged or vulnerable groups who are often in a state of poverty and who find it difficult to get out of difficult situations
• Economic Structure - This is the material organization or the sustaining dynamics of the society
• Social Structure - This indicates which kind of social groupings are existing in the society under analysis (clanic, castes, feudal, etc.). The social position of the group is linked with their position in the economic structure: ownership or non-ownership of the means of production, place in the labor organization, and access to the social product.
• Political Structure - This is the governing dynamics of society. This presents ways a society organizes itself for decision-making. It also shows how systems and people are managed.
• Cultural Structure - This is the meaning-giving dynamics of society. It provides symbolic representation of the society’s values, dreams and ideology.
• • Stereotyping - It is a “very feudal outlook that puts women as second-class citizens in the human order” (Ferrer, 2009, p. 36) (objects of sexual satisfaction and sexual symbols, weaker sex, emotional, fickle minded, “tukso” or temptation).
• • Multiple burdens - It refers to the “overburdened role of women which we observe in the community, summed up in “BBBB” (bahay, bata, bana, baboy, batya, basket, or even bayan)”. (Ferrer, 2009, p. 36)
• • Subordination - Women have always been a “footnote” to the men. Gender subordination describes the secondary position of women vis-à-vis men in society (Dionisio, 1994). This is evident in the economic sphere wherein men are perceived as the head of households while women are mere homemakers (Dionisio, 1994). Furthermore, this can also be seen in the political sphere wherein it is male dominated and male focused.
• • Marginalization/discrimination - “Women are not given the proper respect and dignity to be a member of the human race”. According to the 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey conducted by the National Statistics Office, one (1) in five (5) Filipino women age 15-49 has experienced physical violence since age 15.
• • Class Oppression - “The degree of subordination, marginalization and the like vary according to the women’s class belonging” (Ferrer, 2009, p. 37).
• Dehumanization - “Women do not feel that they are significant humans.” It is necessary to employ gender perspective in the following areas to objectively understand the relations between men and women:

  • “Gender division of labor as perceived within the three (3) categories of work – production, reproduction and community;
  • Resource access and control; and
  • Gender relations and constraints to women’s participation” (Ferrer, 2009, p. 38).
• • Big business -  They serve as conduits of foreign technology and are considered local capitalists.
• • Landlord -   They have dominated the rural economy ranging from trading, merchandising, marketing, and agricultural capital
• • Bureaucrats -   They are the policy-makers who become pre-disposed to the desires of big businesses due to the privileges given to them through profits, shares or stocks.
• • Workers -   They are the work force that offers labor in establishments in exchange of wages
• • Peasants -    The peasants are the farmers and producers who rent agricultural lands owned by landlords and pay in the form of harvest embodied in a tenancy system of agriculture