household surveys show that women of prime working age are more likely than men to live in a poor household in out of countries with data properly designed fiscal wage and social protection policies including minimum wages family and child allowances and oldage pensions can be powerful tools to reduce poverty redress womens socioeconomic disadvantage and guarantee their right to an adequate standard of living these are particularly important in the context of changing demographic family and household structures and in the face of economic shocks but the burden of doing this work is unequally distributed