The feminization of poverty is a concept that has been around for a long time – according to some accounts, since the late 1970s. It describes a situation where the number of women in poverty is increasing at a much faster rate than for men, so that poor people are disproportionately female. It's not something we have heard much about recently. Yet women remain among the poorest of the poor in Canada. Over the past two decades, the percentage of women living in poverty has been climbing steadily. As Canada enters the 21st century, almost 19% of adult women are poor – the highest rate of women's poverty in two decades. About 2.2 million adult women are now counted as low-income, compared with 1.8 million who had low incomes in 1980.
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