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In recent times, poverty analyses and policies against poverty have incorporated women as a relevant factor. Nevertheless, some criticisms have been raised against them: first, most of the time, they have relied on an instrumental perspective which does not guarantee better conditions of gender equity; second, poverty analyses have generally become reactive tools that seek to compensate for a current situation, not to prevent it from occurring in the future. This paper therefore proposes to go beyond poverty analyses to identify distinctive features of households derived from social constructions that have an effect on vulnerability, particularly in households headed by women. We point out the importance of an analysis from a gender perspective in order to identify the features which make households more vulnerable to suffering or worsening their conditions of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study on the relation existing between the concepts of vulnerability and victimization. Victimization is not limited to the situation of a person who has suffered from a crime. "Tacit" victimization --as we have labeled it-- may be suffered by any person due to endogenous and/ or exogenous causes; among the latter, poverty is one of the most harmful. In this sense, tacit victimization which derives from vulnerability must be tackled by means of public policies of social orientation. The State must comply with this purpose, in stead of spending Money on patrol cars and weapons, because the millions of victims that erratic public policies cause surpass the thousands of crime victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]