This policy brief for UNDP considers whether cash transfer programmes can serve as vehicle to deliver, or connect with, other services that enhance girls and women's capabilities

Jones, nicola

Molyneux, Maxine

English

UCL Discovery

1  Social Transfers: Strengthening Girls’ and Women’s Potential as Protagonists in Development Nicola Jones1 and Maxine Molyneux2  Social transfers — transfers of small amounts of cash or assets to impoverished households3 — are heralded as one of the great success stories of international development. Various programmes reach more than three quarters of a billion people in low- and middle-income countries today and are recognised for providing critical support to families to meet basic consumption needs and improve access to key services (World Bank, 2009; DFID, 2011; UNICEF, 2012). More contentious, however, is the extent to which they have meaningfully empowered girls and women, enabling them to take up new roles in their households and communities.   Targeting girls and women makes economic sense Pioneering cash transfer programmes in Latin America (such as Mexico’s Oportunidades and Brazil’s Bolsa Família) have attracted considerable attention not least because they put the transfer directly into women’s hands, drawing on a strong evidence base that shows that women are more likely than men to invest additional income in family welfare (e.g. Hoddinott and Haddad, 1995; Quisumbing and Maluccio, 2000).    While these programmes are primarily concerned with improving children’s school attendance and health, women have reported that access to cash or assets in their own name not only gives them welcome support to their role as caregivers but also has the potential to strengthen their bargaining power and position in the household (Hossain and Blackie, 2011; Holmes and Jones, 2013). Research undertaken as part of Egypt’s conditional cash 2  transfer (CCT) pilot, which focuses on mothers and female-headed households, found that women had increased their capability to ‘direct their lives’ (Pathways of Women’s Empowerment, 2010: 2), while women in the occupied Palestinian territories in a beneficiary perception study emphasised that the programme had freed them up from the constant surveillance of their male relatives, not just husbands but also brothers and brothers-in-law (Jones et al., 2013).   In recent years there has been greater attention within social transfer programmes to integrate design features to enhance women’s empowerment and gender-equitable outcomes as well as to support their role as mothers. Key objectives include the following:  Reducing gender disparities in education The importance of education in providing a vital route to empowerment (personal, social, economic) is well established and is acknowledged to be “foundational for all the other development goals”.4 In recognition of this, a number of CCTs have sought to address the gender gaps in education.5 Mexico’s Oportunidades and Turkey’s Social Risk Mitigation Project (both CCTs) paid higher benefits for girls, to tackle their disadvantages in enrolment (Fiszbein and Schady, 2009). Malawi’s Zomba cash transfer experiment also focused on reducing adolescent girls’ education drop-outs and risky behaviours. In this programme, drop-out rates at baseline fell from 11 per cent to 6 per cent within the first year, with significant increases in re-enrolment rates among previous drop-outs. There were also positive effects on the sexual and marital decisions of beneficiaries, including declining rates of early marriage and adolescent pregnancy (Baird et al., 2009).   Supporting women’s access to reproductive health services 3  Reproductive health is an area where progress for girls and women has been much more limited, with serious consequences for their well-being and future opportunities, as highlighted in the 2013 State of the World’s Population Report: Motherhood in Childhood. While earlier cash transfer programmes focused predominantly on children’s health, CCTs are also increasingly providing pregnant women and new mothers with medical check-ups and nutritional and reproductive health advice.6 In Haryana State in India, the Apni Beti Apna Dhan programme  provides financial incentives for female births to stem the sex ratio imbalance and for delaying the marriage of girls until the age of 18 (ICRW, 2011).   Facilitating access to complementary services While social protection programme objectives are broadening, there is also a clear recognition that programmes need to strengthen linkages to complementary services and programmes (Holmes and Jones, 2013). In Brazil, Chile and Colombia there is a commitment to intersectoral cooperation through CCTs (Soares and Silva, 2010). A single registry supports the integration of households into programmes dealing with food security, housing, banking, credit, and judicial services. In Bangladesh, asset transfer programmes promote women’s savings accounts and aim to link women to credit sources as they graduate from the programme. Similar bridges to credit schemes are also being scaled up in Palestine’s cash transfer programme. In other contexts, programme designers have also sought to address key social vulnerabilities that undermine women’s agency, including providing access to domestic and sexual violence prevention and protection services (Colombia and Chile).   Providing skills training, knowledge and raising awareness about rights 4  Programmes that treat poverty and vulnerability as multidimensional have also sought to go beyond risk management through income support and by developing women’s skills and knowledge through training and awareness-raising. Asset transfer programmes in Bangladesh and CCTs in Egypt, Ghana, Peru and the Philippines promote regular interactions between social workers and beneficiaries to increase women’s knowledge of their legal rights, parental responsibilities and skills, health and nutrition. The more enlightened of these include men in some of the education sessions, recognising that addressing gender inequalities needs to involve men equally.   Promoting women’s community participation   While the focus of social transfers has largely been at household level, there is growing interest in the spillover effects in the community. Qualitative research indicates that with increased cash women are more likely to participate in family and community events (helped by having enough funds to cover new clothes or gifts essential to inclusion) and are also deemed more creditworthy by friends and peers (Jones et al., 2013). More formally, women’s social inclusion by acquiring citizenship rights has been tackled by several cash transfer programmes (e.g. in Brazil, Ghana, Peru) that make participation conditional on obtaining ID registration, which is necessary to access, other social services and political rights. These programmes and others in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique, encourage women to be involved in leadership roles, either as community facilitators or on beneficiary welfare committees. All-women groups, such as Mothers Clubs, can also provide secure spaces for women to get together to share interests and concerns.  Key challenges remain 5  While there is evidence that social transfer programmes have enhanced women’s agency in some contexts, many still take too little account of gender relations, women’s needs and their dual roles as carers and income generators (Molyneux, 2006; Waring et al., 2013)  Bradshaw, S with Quirós Víquez, A (2008), Chant, S. (2006)    Moreover, failure to acknowledge, let alone promote, the productive capacity of women and their families reduces the opportunities for beneficiaries to graduate out of the programme and poverty (Jenson, 2009; Molyneux, 2007).   With regard to women’s agency, programmes have often been criticised for their paternalistic approach to poverty reduction, where participants, especially women, are treated as passive beneficiaries rather than as rights holders and active citizens. There is, however, a fledgling movement within social transfer programmes, to integrate social accountability mechanisms, including grievance mechanisms to participatory dialogues and social audits, into programme governance frameworks (e.g. Ringold et al., 2012). When women are treated as citizens and have opportunities to voice their views throughout the social transfer programme cycle they will be better able to become the ‘makers and shapers’ of development as well as promoters of programming in closer alignment with their needs (Cornwall and Gaventa, 2001).    References  Baird, S. et al. (2009). ‘The Short-Term Impacts of a Schooling Conditional Cash Transfer Program on the Sexual Behavior of Young Women’, Policy Research Working Paper, No. 5089. Washington, DC, World Bank. Bradshaw, S with Quirós Víquez, A (2008) ‘Women Beneficiaries or Women Bearing the Cost? A gendered analysis of the Red de Protección Social in Nicaragua’, Development and Change 39.5: 82344  6   Chant, S. (2006) ‘“The Feminisation of Poverty” and “the Feminisation of Anti-poverty” Programmes: Room for Revision?’, Journal of Development Studies 44.2: 16597  Cornwall, A. and J. Gaventa (2001). From Users and Choosers to Makers and Shapers: Repositioning Participation in Social Policy. Birmingham,, Governance and Social Development Resource Centre. DFID (2011). ‘Cash Transfers’, Evidence Paper. London, Policy Division, Department for International Development. Fiszbein, A. and N. Schady (2009). Conditional Cash Transfers: Reducing Present and Future Poverty. Washington, DC, World Bank. Hoddinott, J. and L. Haddad (1995). ‘Does Female Income Share Influence Household Expenditures? Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire’, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 57(1): 77–96 Holmes, R. and N. Jones (2013). Gender and Social Protection in the Developing World Beyond Mothers and Safety Nets. London, Zed Books. Hossain, A. and R. Blackie (2011). Summary of CLP Output Targets and Expected Gender Access. Bangladesh, Chars Livelihoods Programme, IML. International Center for Research on Women (2011). Commentary by Gillian Gaynair, 05/26/11. “Cash Incentive Program Aims to Delay When Indian Girls Marry”  http://www.icrw.org/media/news/motivation-prevent-child-marriage Jenson, J. (2009). ‘Lost in Translation: The Social Investment Perspective and Gender Equality’, Social Politics, 16(4): 446–483. Jones, N. et al. (2013). ‘Beneficiary and community perspectives on the Palestinian National Cash Transfer Programme’, Country Briefing. London, Overseas Development Institute. 7  Molyneux, M. (2006). ‘Mothers at the Service of the New Poverty Agenda: Progresa/Oportunidades, Mexico’s Conditional Transfer Program’, Social Policy and Administration, 40(4): 425–49. Molyneux, M. (2007). ‘Change and Continuity in Social Protection in Latin America: Mothers at the Service of the State?’, Gender and Development Programme Paper. No 1. Geneva, UNRISD. Pathways of Women’s Empowerment (2010). ‘What Would a Feminist CCT Programme Look Like?’, Pathways Middle East Case Study. Brighton, Institute of Development Studies. Quisumbing, A. and J. Maluccio (2000). ‘Intrahousehold Allocation and Gender Relations: New Empirical Evidence from Four Developing Countries’, Discussion Paper, No. 84. Washington, DC, Food Consumption and Nutrition Division, International Food Policy Research Institute. Ringold, D., A. Holla, M. Koziol and S. Srinivasan (2012). Citizens and Service Delivery: Assessing the use of social accountability approaches in human development. Washington, DC, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank. Soares, F.V. and Silva, E. (2010). Conditional Cash Transfers Programmes and Gender Vulnerabilities? Case studies for Brazil, Chile and Colombia Conditional Cash Transfer programmes. Brasília, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth and London, Overseas Development Institute. UNICEF (2012). Integrated social protection systems: enhancing equity for children. New York, United Nations Children’s Fund, <www.unicef.org/socialprotection/framework/files/UNICEF_SPSFramework_whole_doc.pdf> (accessed 16 December 2013). 8  Waring, M., Mukherjee, A., Reid, E. and Shivdas, M. (2013). Anticipatory Social Protection: Claiming Dignity and Rights. London: Commonwealth Secretariat.  World Bank (2009). Agriculture and Rural Development, Gender in Agriculture: Source book. Washington, DC, World Bank.   1 Senior Research Fellow in the Social Development Programme at the Overseas Development Institute and lead qualitative researcher for the DFID-funded Transforming Cash Transfers Project (transformingcashtransfers.org). 2 Director of the Institute of the Americas, University College London, and Research Director of the Transforming Cash Transfers Project. 3 DFID (2011) includes cash transfers, public works programmes and asset transfers under the umbrella category of social transfer programmes.  4See http://www.unicef.org/mdg/gender.html. 5 Interestingly too, and in recognition of changing dynamics in gender parity in education, where boys are less likely to attend school, in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Jamaica, cash transfers explicitly promote their enrolment (Fiszbein and Schady, 2009). 6 These include  Brazil’s Bolsa Família, Bolivia’s Bono Juana Azurduy, Egypt’s Ain El-Sira, Indonesia’s Program Keluarga Harapan, Peru’s Juntos, the Philippines’ Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP). 

Social Transfers: Strengthening Girls and Women's Potential as Protagonists in Development

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Social Transfers: Strengthening Girls and Women's Potential as Protagonists in Development

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