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Towards Gender Equality: A critical assessment of evidence on social safety nets in Africa
1. TOWARDS GENDER EQUALITY:
A critical assessment of evidence on social safety
nets in Africa
Presented by:
Neha Kumar, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
Authors: Amber Peterman, Neha Kumar, Audrey Pereira & Daniel O. Gilligan
2. SOCIAL SAFETY NETS & GENDER: THE LINKAGES
• Social safety nets have rapidly expanded in Africa as a core
strategy for addressing poverty and vulnerability
• Poverty, vulnerability and well-being have inherent gender
dimensions, thus gender considerations have historically
motivated and driven certain design features of SSNs.
• These have mostly been instrumental (motivated by functional and
operational features)
• But more recently, intrinsic value of improving women’s wellbeing and
gender equality is starting to gain traction.
3. SOCIAL SAFETY NETS EXPANDING IN SSA
• Average country has 15 SSNs
• 10% of the population covered
Source: Beegle K, Coudouel, A & E Monsalve (Eds) (2018). Realizing the Full Potential of Social Safety Nets in Africa. World Bank.
4. “Comprehensive social protection
systems need to be gender-responsive
to a) ensure they do not further
exacerbate gender inequality and that
they b) promote gender equality.”
~Africa Ministerial Pre-Commission
on the Status of Women (CSW) 2019
5. THE EVIDENCE?
• Until recently, few evaluations of SSNs in
Africa examined implications for gender
equality and woman's empowerment
• However, recent reviews broadly agree
that SSNs have the potential to facilitate
gender equality and women’s
empowerment, but that these impacts
are not automatic and depend critically
on program design and context
• The evidence identifying design features
and the impact pathways is also
extremely thin
6. 01. Are social safety nets increasing women’s
wellbeing along key domains in Africa?
02. If so (if not), do we know what design
features matter?
03. What evidence commitments are needed
to meet aspirational goals?
KEY QUESTIONS
Beneficiary in Zambia’s Cash Transfer Scheme
7. • Strategy: Review of reviews, key websites,
backward & forward citations, google scholar
searches, emails to experts
• Inclusion criteria: Published & grey, Africa, 2000
onwards, experimental & quasi-experimental
• SSNs: Economic transfers (cash, in-kind,
vouchers, conditional, unconditional etc.), public
works (cash for work), school feeding
Outcomes (women aged 18+ years):
1. Food security
2. Economic outcomes
3. Empowerment
4. Psychological wellbeing
5. Gender-based violence
35 studies on
25 SSNs across
17 countries in Africa
REVIEW METHODOLOGY
8. WHAT DO WE FIND . . . ?
Women wait at a pay point in Ghana’s LEAP 1000 cash transfer program
9. Domain Studies/ Countries / Indicators Evidence
Food security
(dietary diversity, nutrition
and food security)
• 5 studies
• 5 countries
• 40 indicators
• 2 studies (40%) show positive impacts
• No mixed or negative impacts
• Very few studies report food security
disaggregated at the individual level
Economic
(LFP, savings, expenditure,
assets, credit, etc)
• 14 studies
• 11 countries
• 141 indicators
• 7 studies (50%) show positive impacts
• 3 studies (21%) show mixed or negative impacts
• Overrepresented by evidence on LFP
Empowerment
(decision making, self-efficacy,
agency)
• 16 studies
• 11 countries
• 159 indicators
• 5 studies (31%) show positive impacts
• 2 studies (13%) show negative impacts
• Dominated by results on decision making
Psychological wellbeing (QoL,
stress, mental health)
• 9 studies
• 6 countries
• 45 indicators
• 5 studies (56%) show positive impacts
• 1 study shows a negative impact
• Not an often-stated objective, but results
indicate potential
Gender-based violence
(controlling behaviors,
emotional, physical, sexual)
• 5 studies
• 5 countries
• 28 indicators
• 4 studies (80%) show positive impacts
• No mixed or negative impacts
• Overrepresented by IPV
10. KEY REFLECTIONS ON RESULTS
• We find little evidence of positive impact on women’s food security and nutrition
outcomes, despite large evidence on positive impacts on these outcomes at
household and child level
• Labor force participation is reported by large # of studies though it performs
worse than other economic indicators such as savings or expenditures –
indicative of potential supply-side as well as gender norm barriers around
working.
• Women’s empowerment reported by large # of studies but shows the weakest
impact—measures dominated by decision-making power.
• Psychological wellbeing, while not an often-stated objective for SSNs, the strong
positive impacts indicate the potential for linking the two.
• Most promising (and no negative) effects observed for gender-based violence.
11. GAPS IDENTIFIED
• Of 35 studies, only 6 able to unpack design features
• Gender of recipient, conditionalities, payment size/frequency/modality,
complementary programming
• Better methodologies are needed for gender analysis
• Disaggregate common indicators at the individual level
• Better measures of concepts such as women’s empowerment
• More gender analysis when the data are available (women vs men)
• Region-specific evidence and synthesis is key to ensure global
evidence does not obscure regional findings
• For example: Nature of poverty, gender norms and SSN design are
vastly different between Latin America and Africa
12. GAPS IDENTIFIED (CONT)
• Cost-effectiveness and value for money analysis is important
for sustainability of SSNs
• Important to understand the cost implications for making tradeoffs
between design and/or operational features, particularly with respect
to gender considerations.
• Incorporating a gender lens as we design SSNs for the future
• How can SSNs in fragile settings be gender sensitive?
• What are the gender implications of technological innovations –
mobile money, financial inclusion?
• SSNs to address migration, urbanization etc – all have gender
implications that need attention
13. CONCLUSIONS
• SSNs in Africa are improving women’s
wellbeing—some domains more
promising than others—evidence
strongly cash transfer dominant
• From existing quantitative evaluations,
we have little understanding of what
design features matter
• Large gaps in understanding simple
dynamics, including coverage (by sex), in
addition gaps in measurement of key
outcomes and true gender analysis – we
must be intentional to close these gaps!
By 2017, every country on the continent had at least one SSN, while the average country had 15, ranging from two (Republic of Congo and Gabon) to 56 (Burkina Faso) (Beegle et al. 2018). Further, national Governments have committed to institutionalizing SSNs, with 32 countries establishing national social protection strategies or policies by 2017 (Beegle et al. 2018). According to the World Bank, the average country on the continent spends 1.6 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on SSNs (representing 4.6% of total Government spending), and covers 10 percent of the population, with cash transfers accounting for nearly 41 percent (and growing) share of the spending (Beegle et al. 2018
NEGATIVE LFP RESULTS: It should be noted that although negative impacts were realized in several studies, in 2 cases, these impacts related exclusively to samples of either women older than 60 (Daidone et al. 2014, in Lesotho) or women working in hard manual labor (Malawi Cash Transfer Evaluation Team 2016a). Therefore, the only impact that can be interpreted as strictly adverse is that in Malawi, which found that the typical wage of young women who received a conditional cash transfer and were out of school at baseline had decreased two years postprogram—although the authors noted that the overall percentage of wage work in the sample was low (Baird, McIntosh, and Özler 2019).
NEGATIVE EMPOWERMENT RESULTS: (not written up in this version of the draft) – Ambler et al. in Malawi finds one adverse impact (daily purchases), but others positive; in Senegal two indicators of reduced women’s DM at midline (these impacts faded at endline) and the Egypt Takful program – adverse impacts found for women’s control over decision-making on children’s schooling and taking children for visits to doctors. However, qualitative evidence from the same program suggests some dimensions of improvement in women’s bargaining power or autonomy, derived primarily from the benefits of the program for the household budget (Eldidi et al. 2018 http://www.ifpri.org/publication/impact-evaluation-study-egypts-takaful-and-karama-cash-transfer-program-part-2
NEGATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING RESULTS: The one study showing adverse impacts on stress among female youth in Tanzania, while not fully explained, reports equivalent (and larger) decrease in stress among male youth in the same sample (PSSN Youth Evaluation Team 2018).
Design features: 1) FAO & UNICEF (2018) Lesotho; 2) Baird et al. 2019 (& 2013) Malawi; 3) McIntosh & Zeitlin (2018) Rwanda, 4) Bastian et al. (2019) Nigeria, 5) Ambler et al. (2019) Senegal & Malawi, 6) Haushofer & Shapiro (2016) (& 2019)
This implies 6 studies, or 8 (if you want to count earlier rounds of Baird et al. as a different study, or two papers on same panel by Haushofer et al. which look at different measures analyzed slightly differently.
Design features: 1) FAO & UNICEF (2018) Lesotho; 2) Baird et al. 2019 (& 2013) Malawi; 3) McIntosh & Zeitlin (2018) Rwanda, 4) Bastian et al. (2019) Nigeria, 5) Ambler et al. (2019) Senegal & Malawi, 6) Haushofer & Shapiro (2016) (& 2019)
This implies 6 studies, or 8 (if you want to count earlier rounds of Baird et al. as a different study, or two papers on same panel by Haushofer et al. which look at different measures analyzed slightly differently.