This think piece interrogates the conceptual and empirical currency of a ‘feminization of poverty’ which effectively assumed the status of ‘global orthodoxy’ at the Fourth Women’s World Conference in Beijing in 1995, when it was proclaimed that 70% of the world’s poor were women, and that this figure was rising. Although evidence to substantiate these assertions remains wanting, the ‘feminization of poverty’ meme has been remarkably enduring. Aside from a lack of robust data which points to increased poverty among women relative to men in the past twenty years, I contend that there are problems with the implicit focus on income poverty to the exclusion of other privations, and with the more explicit aligning of the ‘feminization of poverty’ with the ‘feminization’ of household headship. This article offers thoughts on how to enrich the ‘feminization of poverty’ construct with attention to evidence for a ‘feminization of responsibility and/or obligation’. It also supports the wider range of gender targets and indicators anticipated for the post-2015 agenda as a basis for addressing the ‘feminization of poverty’, broadly defined.