Changing rural women's lives through gender transformative social protection


Book Description

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.




Promoting Gender-Transformative Change Through Social Protection


Book Description

Promoting gender-transformative change through social protection entails the deliberate design and implementation of policies and programs that effectively address the unique needs and challenges faced by women and girls. These initiatives not only aim to alleviate poverty and reduce vulnerability but also to challenge and transform the underlying gender norms and power dynamics that perpetuate inequality. By adopting a gender-responsive and inclusive approach to social protection measures, such as cash transfers, healthcare services, and employment opportunities, societies can harness their potential to advance gender equality and empower women. By ensuring equitable access to resources and opportunities, facilitating economic empowerment, enhancing access to education and healthcare, promoting women's decision-making autonomy, and challenging discriminatory gender roles and stereotypes, social protection programs can serve as catalysts for profound social and gender transformations, resulting in more equitable and just societies. "Promoting Gender-Transformative Change through Social Protection" is a seminal resource that comprehensively examines the intersection of gender and social protection. This book caters to scholars, practitioners, and students seeking a profound understanding of the crucial role, implementation, and impact of gender-transformative social protection. It covers diverse topics, including an introduction to gender-transformative change and social protection, analyzing gender inequality within social protection systems, the intersectionality of gender in social protection, gender-responsive policies and programs, addressing gender bias in implementation, empowering women through social protection initiatives, case studies of successful gender-transformative interventions, and monitoring and sustaining transformative change. By offering expert perspectives and practical insights, this handbook serves as an indispensable guide for individuals navigating the complexities of promoting gender equality through social protection. It empowers readers to effect change, foster inclusive societies, and contribute to the advancement of gender-transformative approaches within social protection frameworks, both locally and globally.




Introduction to gender-sensitive social protection programming to combat rural poverty: Why is it important and what does it mean? – FAO Technical Guide 1


Book Description

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.




Gender and Social Protection in the Developing World


Book Description

Millions of pounds of international development funds are invested annually in social protection programmes to tackle poverty. Poverty is perpetuated by risk and vulnerability, much of which is gendered. Despite this, little attention has been paid to gender-sensitive policy and programme design and implementation. Gender and Social Protection in the Developing World introduces a much-needed gender lens to these debates. Drawing on empirical evidence from poor households and communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the book provides rich insight into the effects of a range of social protection instruments. It concludes that with relatively simple changes to design and with investment in implementation capacity, social protection can contribute to transforming gender relations at the individual, intrahousehold and community levels. With a foreword by Stephen Devereux.




Gender transformative approaches for food security, improved nutrition and sustainable agriculture – A compendium of fifteen good practices


Book Description

The Compendium is a product of the Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches for Food Security and Nutrition implemented by FAO, IFAD and WFP and funded by the European Union. The compendium of 15 good practices of gender transformative approaches (GTAs) includes the individual templates of the 15 good practices, provides a synthesis of the main features of the 15 GTAs presenting the core characteristics of 15 GTAs and describing the implementation arrangements, implementation cycle, the potential results of GTAs and their key success factors and challenges. It also includes ideas as to how GTAs could be taken to scale. The purpose of the Compendium is fourfold: (i) to take stock and draw lessons from experiences from existing practices of GTAs; (ii) to be a resource for agencies already working with GTAs to identify opportunities for strengthening their GTA work or to link up with complementary interventions; (iii) to provide guidance on how to apply GTAs in any organization or institution working for enhanced food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture; and (iv) to raise awareness of and advocate for GTAs by showcasing examples of good practices or successful approaches that contribute to positive gender-related and non-gender-related changes towards food security, improved nutrition and sustainable agriculture and rural development.




On Norms and Agency


Book Description

Based on focus groups and interviews with nearly 4,000 women, men, girls, and boys from 20 countries, this book explores areas that are less often studied in gender and development: gender norms and agency. It reveals how little gender norms have changed, how similar they are across countries, and how they are being challenged and contested.




A Community of Practice Approach to Improving Gender Equality


Book Description

Promoting gender-transformative change through social protection entails the deliberate design and implementation of policies and programs that effectively address the unique needs and challenges faced by women and girls. These initiatives not only aim to alleviate poverty and reduce vulnerability but also to challenge and transform the underlying gender norms and power dynamics that perpetuate inequality. By adopting a gender-responsive and inclusive approach to social protection measures, such as cash transfers, healthcare services, and employment opportunities, societies can harness their potential to advance gender equality and empower women. By ensuring equitable access to resources and opportunities, facilitating economic empowerment, enhancing access to education and healthcare, promoting women's decision-making autonomy, and challenging discriminatory gender roles and stereotypes, social protection programs can serve as catalysts for profound social and gender transformations, resulting in more equitable and just societies. "Promoting Gender-Transformative Change through Social Protection" is a seminal resource that comprehensively examines the intersection of gender and social protection. This book caters to scholars, practitioners, and students seeking a profound understanding of the crucial role, implementation, and impact of gender-transformative social protection. It covers diverse topics, including an introduction to gender-transformative change and social protection, analyzing gender inequality within social protection systems, the intersectionality of gender in social protection, gender-responsive policies and programs, addressing gender bias in implementation, empowering women through social protection initiatives, case studies of successful gender-transformative interventions, and monitoring and sustaining transformative change. By offering expert perspectives and practical insights, this handbook serves as an indispensable guide for individuals navigating the complexities of promoting gender equality through social protection. It empowers readers to effect change, foster inclusive societies, and contribute to the advancement of gender-transformative approaches within social protection frameworks, both locally and globally.




Sustainable Development Goals and Human Rights


Book Description

This open access book analyses the interplay of sustainable development and human rights from different perspectives including fight against poverty, health, gender equality, working conditions, climate change and the role of private actors. Each aspect is addressed from a more human rights-focused angle and a development-policy angle. This allows comparisons between the different approaches but also seeks to close gaps which would remain if only one perspective would be at the center of the discussions. Specifically, the book shows the strong connections between human rights and the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Already the preamble of this document explicitly states that "the 17 Sustainable Development Goals ... seek to realise the human rights of all". Moreover, several goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda correspond to already existing individual human rights obligations. The contributions of this volume therefore also address how the implementation of human rights and SDGs can reinforce each other, but also point to critical shortcomings of the different approaches.




Transforming Gender and Food Security in the Global South


Book Description

Drawing on studies from Africa, Asia and South America, this book provides empirical evidence and conceptual explorations of the gendered dimensions of food security. It investigates how food security and gender inequity are conceptualized within interventions, assesses the impacts and outcomes of gender-responsive programs on food security and gender equity and addresses diverse approaches to gender research and practice that range from descriptive and analytical to strategic and transformative. The chapters draw on diverse theoretical perspectives, including transformative learning, feminist theory, deliberative democracy and technology adoption. As a result, they add important conceptual and empirical material to a growing literature on the challenges of gender equity in agricultural production. A unique feature of this book is the integration of both analytic and transformative approaches to understanding gender and food security. The analytic material shows how food security interventions enable women and men to meet the long-term nutritional needs of their households, and to enhance their economic position. The transformative chapters also document efforts to build durable and equitable relationships between men and women, addressing underlying social, cultural and economic causes of gender inequality. Taken together, these combined approaches enable women and men to reflect on gendered divisions of labor and resources related to food, and to reshape these divisions in ways which benefit families and communities. Co-published with the International Development Research Centre.