In its newly released publication, Making social protection work for gender equality: What does it look like? How do we get there?, the International Labour Organization (ILO) highlights that gender-responsive policy design and coordination between social protection and other policies are crucial to address structural inequalities and ensure effective access for women to social protection benefits and services.
The paper, which was presented during an online panel discussion follows a life-cycle approach in which it highlights how every stage of the life cycle requires careful consideration of gender-specific risks and needs when implementing social protection schemes.
The ILO paper also shows that gender gaps in legal and effective social protection coverage and benefit adequacy continue to be pronounced. Globally, only one in two women (50.1 per cent, compared to 54.6 per cent of men) has access to some form of social protection, while the other half is still excluded from social protection altogether.
A significantly smaller share of women – 28.2 per cent globally – enjoy comprehensive legal coverage, remaining 11.1 percentage points behind men, of whom 39.3 per cent are covered. These coverage gaps are especially concerning in the face of multiple crises and challenges, such as the climate crisis, conflicts and pandemics, which disproportionally affect women and girls and may further exacerbate already existing gender inequalities.
During the discussion, ILO Director and panel chair Shahra Razavi delivered the opening remarks and presented the paper’s key findings with Christina Behrendt, Head of Social Policy at the Universal Social Protection Department.
“Social protection policies must place gender equality centre-stage if they are to work in favour of women. For too long, gender meant maternity benefits and social assistance programmes. Such a focus does not take into account the full range of life-cycle risks and structural impediments women face, such as unemployment or having young children in their household in the absence of a partner,” explained Shahra Razavi.
Building gender-responsive social protection systems requires integrated policy approaches since social protection systems can only partially cushion inequalities generated through discrimination in the labour market, access to skills training or assets, and fiscal policies that do not create fiscal space for investments in social protection.
“While the sustainability of fiscal policies is important, there is a contradiction – fiscal policy often results in cuts to social protection and services, which are necessary to protect the developmental objectives that fiscal consolidation is supposed to protect in the first place” said James Heintz, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts.
Drawing on diverse country experiences, as well as international social security standards and principles, the paper shows promising pathways for reinforcing social protection for women across diverse economic and employment situations, life-cycle stages and family types. As a secure route out of poverty and a foundation for a decent standard of living, social protection enhances women’s capabilities and agency. Realizing this potential is contingent on creating powerful synergies: between social protection and labour protection, between transfers and services, and between social protection and other policies, especially care, employment, formalization and fiscal policies.
“What workers in the informal economy need is integrated approaches. Social protection has to be part of an integrated system of improving livelihoods and incomes, and structural economic change at the end of the day,” highlighted Laura Alfers, International Coordinator at WIEGO.
Deepta Chopra, Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, concluded “We need to think about the fact that poverty is not about incomes but also inputs: women’s time burdens, for example. These programmes need to go beyond giving cash and if we talk about rights-based approaches, we need to go beyond women as mothers and even workers, but women as citizens”.
