ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on life-cycle causes of female poverty and the associated restrictions of access to health care. It discusses the forces that lead women in all stages of the life-cycle to be more likely than men to be poor. Being female in a patriarchal capitalist society, which devalues women's labor and often neglects their needs, has a variety of adverse consequences throughout the life-cycle. Public health coverage through the Medicaid program reaches only about 40 percent of the poor, including fewer than 40 percent of poor children. Health risks to pregnant teenaged women significantly exceed health risks to pregnant women generally. Anemia, malnourishment, emotional stress, toxemia, and premature or prolonged labor are health conditions affecting teenaged pregnant women at disproportionate rates. Displaced homemakers, mid-life and older women who have lost their homemaking and family roles as a result of marital separation, divorce, or death of their husband, are estimated to number between four and six million.
