A/HRC/41/33 47. Mandated treatment programmes designed for care and cure are occasionally used to deprive women of their liberty. Studies show that women are confined in the penal systems in some States based on the idea that they need treatment for addiction, trauma, and/or “disorders” without any real evidence that these conditions exist. Sometimes confinement is in prisons, but more often in community correctional facilities. The ideology justifying mandated treatment for women is based on stereotypes that some women, especially women from certain racial groups, or those living in poverty, are dependent, “disordered”, “sexually deviant” or “bad mothers”. This is a trend that has the potential to increase the number of women in detention, prolong their custody under correctional supervision and even to make their detention more restrictive. 48. Widowhood, at any age, may be extremely gendered, with rites crafted against women and carried out through confinement, isolation, defacement and disinheritance. Confinement during the mourning period, supposedly to grieve over the bereavement or to protect them from potentially violent practices influenced by superstitious beliefs about the “inauspicious” presence of widows, may involve prohibiting them from leaving the home and participating in economic and public activities or performing important household tasks. Those restrictions could be further aggravated to the extent of exiling them and confining them in marginalized areas (see para. 28 above). In addition to the intersection of gender and marital status, widows without children or an adult male relative to provide them with leverage within the extended family are more vulnerable to persecution and confinement. Women’s economic “unfreedom” C. 49. The feminization of poverty is widely recognized and documented. Worldwide, women are more likely than men to live in poverty and on average earn 23 per cent less than men, perpetuating a considerable lifetime income and welfare gap between them. 29 The Working Group has highlighted the stereotypes about women’s role in society that have a substantial impact on their participation in the labour market (A/HRC/35/29/Add. 1, para. 69). Almost 80 countries maintain restrictions on the types of work that women are permitted to undertake, while in 18 countries, husbands can legally prevent their wives from working. Accordingly, women are more likely than men to be unemployed and currently only 50 per cent of women are in the labour force compared to more than 75 per cent of men (see A/HRC/38/46). Women are also less likely to have access to assets within the household, as there are often inequalities in the distribution of resources and entitlements. In a number of countries, women and girls still have different or limited ownership and inheritance rights from men and boys, meaning that a large number of poor women may be living in households that are not categorized as poor. 50. When poverty is understood to be a factor not purely of income or wealth, but also as measured by the choices, opportunities and resources available to a person over the course of their lifetime, women’s poverty appears even starker. 30 Time poverty owing to women’s disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work limits their ability to engage in income-earning activities. Their financial dependence on their partners and other family members increases their vulnerability to poverty and reduces their voice and bargaining power within the household. Unequal access to and control over resources, power, opportunities and services underpin women’s poverty, which can lead to their deprivation of liberty. 1. Lack of access to resources and services 51. Stakeholders have identified material poverty as a key factor in women’s deprivation of liberty and especially their incarceration. Laws that penalize and criminalize those living 29 30 12 See UN-Women, Turning Promises into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2018) available at www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/sdg-report. See Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, “What does feminization of poverty mean? It isn’t just lack of income”, Feminist Economics, vol. 5, No. 2 (1999).