Poverty in the New World Dream: Families and Gender in Southern Dunedin, New Zealand, 1890-1920

Abstract

This article considers how poverty was distributed among the different inhabitants of the southern suburbs of a New Zealand city, in the context particularly of motherhood, fatherhood, dependence and independence, childhood, home, and old age. It addresses the demographic patterns and economic practices that meant that women and men, and the single and the married, encountered poverty differently; and it assesses the relationship between family life cycle and poverty in terms of gender. Finally, it considers the significance of the male-breadwinner wage norm and the way that this practice resulted in an uneven distribution of poverty not only across a society but also within families.