ABSTRACT
The New Poverty Agenda is seen as incorporating gender within a new broader concept of poverty (Lipton and Maxwell, 1992) capable of measuring, evaluating and redressing gender bias along with poverty reduction policies, based on labour intensive growth, targeted social services and safety nets. Multilateral positions on gender and development (GAD) for their part also stress the poverty of women as a primary justification for development interventions designed to improve the position of women. However, it is argued here that the concept of poverty cannot serve as a proxy for the subordination of women, that antipoverty policies cannot be expected to necessarily improve the position of women and that there is no substitute for a gender analysis, which transcends class divisions and material definitions of deprivation. The instrumental interest in women as the means to achieve development objectives such as poverty reduction may ultimately undermine GAD. Gender appears to have collapsed into a poverty trap; this essay raises a call for help, or at least a discussion about the relative benefits of captivity versus escape.
