Gender-responsive age-sensitive social protection
Project | Creating transformative social safety nets
Project overview | Key findings | Research pillars | Publications | Podcast | Short reads
While social protection can profoundly improve people’s lives – ensuring well-being and addressing vulnerabilities to risks, shocks and stressors – it falls short of its potential to advance gender equality.
Women and girls face distinct risks and vulnerabilities. Harmful and discriminatory gender norms lead to gender inequalities, such as the disproportionate rate of unpaid care and domestic work undertaken by girls and women relative to boys and men. When the goals, design and implementation of social protection policies and programmes fail to take gender into account, they miss the opportunity to catalyse transformative change and sustainably reduce poverty.
But there has been limited systematic evidence on the contribution of social protection to gender equality; role of design, implementation and contextual factors; and the integration of gender in social protection systems.
To fill in this evidence gap, UNICEF Innocenti undertook a multi-year Gender-Responsive Age-Sensitive Social Protection (GRASSP) research programme from 2019-2024, funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). A total of 11 case studies were conducted across nine countries: Angola, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mexico, Tanzania, Uruguay and Viet Nam.
Key findings
Social protection can reduce income poverty and food and economic insecurity, address financial barriers to accessing social services, and promote positive development outcomes throughout the life course – particularly for women and girls. Social protection also has the potential to act as a vehicle for eradicating the harmful social norms, and power imbalances that perpetuate gender inequality. The following are overarching and key findings distilled from GRASSP research studies:
- Cash transfer programmes and cash-plus programmes (cash transfer programmes combined with other support) had positive impacts on food security, assets and women's economic participation and these were largely observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. They improved access to schooling, the utilization of health care and sexual and reproductive health services and reduced sexual violence and conflicts between spouses within the household. They also enhanced the ability of women to make decisions and control their own lives.
- However, in many contexts, men remained the primary decision makers for household decisions related to finances, assets and property.
- More work needs to be done to prevent adverse impacts on women and children’s time use. In some countries, there was an increase in their unpaid work and care burden.
- Proper and adequate implementation of social protection programmes which include gender-focused interventions, is necessary for achieving the desired gender intent and advance gender equality. However, gender-focused interventions are usually poorly conceived and under-resourced.
- Norms remain a powerful undercurrent that can undermine the implementation of gender features and the impacts of social protection programmes on gender equality. The ideal is to implement sustained gender transformative social protection which addresses the prevailing gender norms.
- At the system level, there is a need to understand and address the gendered dynamics of poverty through sustained collaboration with civil society and women’s organisations, and incentives for policy actors to pursue gender objectives in social protection policies.
Research pillars
pillars
Provides clearer conceptualization and measurement of gender equality outcomes with the aim of strengthening gender responsive planning, monitoring and evaluation of social protection programmes and systems. See papers:
Elaborates existing evidence and further elaboration of strategies to scale up gender-responsive age-sensitive social protection. See reports:
- Impact of social protection on gender equality in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review of reviews (external link)
- Protocol: Impact of social protection on gender equality in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review of reviews (external link)
- Cost-effectiveness Analysis of Gender-responsive Social Protection: Current Evidence and Future Recommendations
- Applying the Gender Integration Continuum to Social Protection: A Guidance Note for Assessing the Level of Gender Integration in Social Protection Policies and Programmes
- Institutionalizing Gender in Social Protection Policy
- Measuring Gender Equality: Review of Existing Measures and Reflections for Future Research
Develops evidence on the impacts of social protection on gender equality outcomes; including how and why this is achieved. This includes an exploration of the influence of design and implementation processes and contextual factors. Evidence is generated from six countries: Angola, Burkina Faso, DRC, Ethiopia, Mali and Tanzania. See reports:
- Tanzania: Ujana Salama: A Cash Plus Model for Safe Transitions to a Healthy and Productive Adulthood. Post-intervention impacts
- Angola: The Impact of Valor Crianca – Social Cash Transfer Pilot Programme in Angola
- Ethiopia: Implementation of Gender Provisions in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme: What works, how and why?
- Burkina Faso: Impacts of the Child-Sensitive Social Protection Programme in Burkina Faso
- Mali: Impacts of a Shock-Responsive Cash-Plus Programme to Women’s Savings Group Members in Mali
- DRC: The Impact of the Cash Transfer Intervention in the Commune of Nsele in Kinshasa
- Synthesis brief: Delivering Gender-Responsive Social Protection
- Synthesis brief: Gender Norms and Gender-Responsive Social Protection
- Working paper: Paid maternity Leave and Women’s Labour Force Participation
Investigates if and how gender can be institutionalized into social protection systems. The research looks at factors such as political economy (for example, institutions and interests), norms and financing, along with the processes that systemic reform play, in creating social protection systems that incorporate sustainable change for gender equality. Evidence is generated from five country cases: Angola, Ethiopia, Mexico, Uruguay and Viet Nam. See reports:
- Viet Nam: An Investigation of Gender Mainstreaming in Social Protection Policy: Understanding the processes, actors and institutions that shaped integration of gender into social assistance policy reforms in Viet Nam
- Uruguay: Integrating a Gender and Life-course Perspective in Social Protection Reforms: Three case studies from Uruguay
- Ethiopia: Institutionalization of Gender in the Design of the Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme
- Angola: Integrating Gender and Child Rights into Social Protection Reforms: Three case studies from Angola
- Mexico: Integrating gender and child rights into social protection reforms of Mexico’s most emblematic programmes
Project publications
The GRASSP podcast
Episode 1: What is gender-responsive age-sensitive social protection?
Episode 2: Evaluation methods for gender-responsive and age-sensitive social protection
Episode 3: Exploring the Gender Equality Outcomes of Social Protection Programmes