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]