‘For practitioners and students of development, and library collections on women in development or comparative development. Highly recommended.’
– J.A. Fiola, Choice
‘Sylvia Chant provides the most lucid treatment to date of the debate over the relationship between gender and poverty, and, based on new research from Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, critically engages and moves the discussion beyond the taken-for-granted assumptions that tend to govern this issue. Essential reading for scholars and policymakers alike.’
– Maxine Molyneux, University of London, UK
‘Sylvia Chant’s important new book, Gender, Generation and Poverty, challenges the widespread, uncritical belief in the feminisation of poverty – a central trope in development discourse, which explains both the nature of (and potential solutions for) global poverty. Drawing on rich, carefully documented case studies from The Gambia, Philippines and Costa Rica, Chant amply demonstrates the weaknesses of the feminisation of poverty perspective, particularly its tendency to link poverty to women, rather than gender relations, to emphasise women as victims, rather than agents, and to measure poverty by income privation, rather than grassroots subjective experiences. Chant calls for a more nuanced approach; one that pays attention to context, to the impact of gender relations between men and women and to the way generational change affects the gendered experience of poverty. Gender, Generation and Poverty thus has profound implications for both development praxis and theory. It should be required reading for anyone concerned with avoiding “cookie-cutter” approaches to understanding and alleviating poverty in an increasingly complex, unequal and insecure world. I think it is a landmark study, bringing a crucial, critical eye to a long-held “truism” of development thinking and practice.’
– Jane L. Parpart, Dalhousie University, Canada and Visiting Professor, LSE, UK
