Social protection and gender: policy, practice and research

Social protection and gender: policy, practice and research
Author: Hidrobo, Melissa
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2024-06-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Gender considerations in the design and delivery of social protection programs are critical to meet overall objectives of reducing poverty and vulnerability. We provide an overview of the policy discourse and research on social protection and gender in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on social assistance, social care, and social insurance. Taking a ‘review of reviews’ approach, we aggregate findings from rigorous evaluations on women's health, economic, empowerment, and violence impacts. We show there is robust evidence that social assistance has beneficial effects across all four domains. In addition, there is emerging evidence that social care has positive impacts on women’s economic outcomes, but scarce evidence of its impacts on other domains. Aggregated evidence on the impacts of social insurance are lacking. Key design elements facilitating positive impacts for women relate to gender targeting; quality complementary programming; replacing conditionalities with soft nudges; ensuring the value, frequency, and duration of benefits are sufficient; and gender-sensitive operational components. We close with a discussion of evidence gaps and priorities for future research.

Empowering rural women through social protection

Empowering rural women through social protection
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 48
Release: 2018-10-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

The paper reviews evidence on the most widely-used social protection schemes, assessing the extent of their current and potential impact on women's economic empowerment.

Women’s Empowerment and Nutrition

Women’s Empowerment and Nutrition
Author: Mara van den Bold
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions—cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs—on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both. Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transters (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program. Agricultural interventions—specifically home gardening and dairy projects—show mixed impacts on women’s empowerment measures such as time, workload, and control over income; but they demonstrate very little impact on nutrition. Implementation modalities are shown to determine differential impacts in terms of empowerment and nutrition outcomes. With regard to the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment, evidence is also mixed, although more recent reviews do not find any impact on women’s empowerment. The impact of microfinance on nutritional status is mixed, with no evidence of impact on micronutrient status. Across all three types of programs (cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs), very little evidence exists on pathways of impact, and evidence is often biased toward a particular region. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings and remaining evidence gaps and an outline of recommendations for research.

Changing rural women's lives through gender transformative social protection

Changing rural women's lives through gender transformative social protection
Author: Gavrilovic, M., Petrics, H., Kangasniemi, M.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2023-10-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 925138178X

Most rural women and girls experience multiple disadvantages in their lives, because of systematic gender inequalities. Structural drivers, including discriminatory norms, create and maintain gender gaps in development outcomes. Gender transformative programmes seek to address the underlying structural causes of gender inequalities and transform unequal gender roles and relations. This paper aims to orient the future policy, research and programmatic work of national governments, practitioners and development partners on the adoption of a gender transformative approach (GTA) to social protection to improve results on rural poverty reduction, food security and nutrition. Social protection interventions rarely explicitly address social and gender norms and power dynamics at household level and beyond, but there is a growing demand to understand the potential of social protection policies and programmes to contribute to gender transformative outcomes. This paper critically examines the scope for social protection to be gender transformative and discusses the available evidence on gender transformative impacts of social protection. It also aims to identify how programmes can realistically become more transformative in their objectives, design features and outcomes.

Qualitative research on decent rural employment and social protection

Qualitative research on decent rural employment and social protection
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 107
Release: 2018-10-24
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9251099057

Covering Malawi's social cash trasfer programme "Lifting up families", this publication concludes that although the programme enables beneficiares to engage in different income-generating activities, it has no impact on youth employment opportunities.

Integrating gender into implementation and monitoring and evaluation of cash transfer and public works programmes – FAO Technical Guide 3

Integrating gender into implementation and monitoring and evaluation of cash transfer and public works programmes – FAO Technical Guide 3
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2018-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9251310386

Many social protection programmes, including cash transfers, public works programmes and asset transfers, target women as main beneficiaries or recipients of benefits. Extending social protection to rural populations has great potential for fostering rural women’s economic empowerment. However, to tap into this potential, more needs to be done. There is much scope for making social protection policies and programmes more gender sensitive and for better aligning them with agricultural and rural development policies to help address gender inequalities. Recognizing this potential and capitalizing on existing evidence, FAO seeks to enhance the contribution of social protection to gender equality and women’s empowerment by providing country-level support through capacity development, knowledge generation and programme support.To move forward this agenda, FAO has developed the Technical Guidance Toolkit on Gender-sensitive Social Protection Programmes to Combat Rural Poverty and Hunger. The Toolkit is designed to support SP and gender policy-makers and practitioners in their efforts to systematically apply a gender lens to SP programmes in ways that are in line with global agreements and FAO commitments to expand inclusive SP systems for rural populations. The Toolkit focuses on the role of SP in reducing gendered social inequalities, and rural poverty and hunger.

Voice and Agency

Voice and Agency
Author: Jeni Klugman
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2014-09-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464803609

Despite recent advances in important aspects of the lives of girls and women, pervasive challenges remain. These challenges reflect widespread deprivations and constraints and include epidemic levels of gender-based violence and discriminatory laws and norms that prevent women from owning property, being educated, and making meaningful decisions about their own lives--such as whether and when to marry or have children. These often violate their most basic rights and are magnified and multiplied by poverty and lack of education. This groundbreaking book distills vast data and hundreds of studies to shed new light on deprivations and constraints facing the voice and agency of women and girls worldwide, and on the associated costs for individuals, families, communities, and global development. The volume presents major new findings about the patterns of constraints and overlapping deprivations and focuses on several areas key to women s empowerment: freedom from violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, ownership of land and housing, and voice and collective action. It highlights promising reforms and interventions from around the world and lays out an urgent agenda for governments, civil society, development agencies, and other stakeholders, including a call for greater investment in data and knowledge to benchmark progress.

Urban Social Protection and Socio-Economic Empowerment of Women

Urban Social Protection and Socio-Economic Empowerment of Women
Author: Gadissa Mulugeta
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2015-03-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9783659416231

The main ideas of this book is on assessing urban social protection and socio-economic empowerment of poor women through Self-Help Group: the case of People in Need at Gulele Sub-City. The book is aimed at investigating the role of Self-Help group in social protection of vulnerable informal economy workers, the strategies used in empowering of women through Self-Help Group, the challenges that impedes women empowerment. In order to achieve the above stated objectives a case study approach is employed. Both primary and secondary data source were used in gathering the required information. The techniques of collecting primary data source includes semi-structured questionnaires with the Self-Help Group members, Focus Group Discussion with the Self-Help Group leaders, and in-depth interview with the Project Manager of People in Need. It is identified that financial constraints, lack of permanence venue, poor attendance of the member, lack of commitment, lack of working space and lack of legal recognition are among the major challenges that impede women empowerment in the Self-Help Group and the performance of the Self-Help Group approach to bring its desired goal.