CIAO DATE: 02/2011
January 2011
This report has grown out of Oxfam’s commitment to tackling the poverty of black and minority ethnic (BME) women in the UK. It aims to improve our understanding of BME mothers’ experiences of poverty, to address the way in which the poverty of BME mothers is hidden from conventional data collection, to raise awareness amongst policy-makers and practitioners of the material circumstances of low-income BME mothers, and to improve the ways in which poor BME women are supported to secure greater assets and resources. The report shines a light into a neglected area: the financial lives of BME mothers. Census data shows that BME women are over-represented in the poorest households in the UK, while previous studies have found that women often bear the greatest burden of material hardship in low-income households. Using a methodology to measure poverty within the household, this study opens up the financial arrangements of BME families and explores how life on a low income impacts on BME mothers.
Resource link: Exploring BME Maternal Poverty: The financial lives of ethnic minority mothers in Tyne and Wear [PDF] - 647K