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Social protection systems are key to addressing social risks. Their development has been very different across countries and within regions. These differences arise from their design, the capacity of the States leading them and the context in which they operated (including economic dynamics, characteristics of labour markets and social structures, including gender regimes). In most parts of the global South, developments were incomplete, insufficient, segmented and uncoordinated. ILO (2017) states that by 2015, barely 45.2% of the world population had access to at least one social protection benefit. However, while this percentage rises to 84.1% in the case of Europe and Central Asia, it falls to 12.9% in Sub-Saharan Africa[1].

Historically, there have been gender gaps in social protection, even in schemes that developed stronger institutions and broader coverage. Social protection systems built around the individuals’ position in the labour market reproduced, quite directly, gender gaps in employment. On one hand, women have historically faced more obstacles to qualify for social protection benefits and/or qualify for less benefits due to their lower and poorer labour participation, their increased relative participation in informal work and their lower average wages. On the other hand, the huge amount of women’s time dedicated to unpaid domestic and care work is still a sphere that lacks any kind of social protection. Likewise, rural and migrant women, as well as sex workers and domestic workers, face structural barriers to social protection.

Against this backdrop, several proposals have been developed based on the idea of guaranteeing basic social protection floors for all. In fact, in 2012, the ILO approved Resolution 202 (Social Protection Floors Recommendation) that sets forth a kind of guiding framework for achieving universal social protection. “Reaffirming the human right to social security, the recommendation calls for the establishment as a priority of social protection floors, comprised of basic income security and essential health-care guarantees for all in need, throughout the life cycle, as a fundamental element of comprehensive national social security systems”. (ILO, 2019: iv).

Two elements have been spreading across the world in this logic of guaranteeing minimum social protection floors, particularly in terms of guaranteeing monetary income. One of them refers to the programs of conditional cash transfers (CCT) These programs, mainly conceived as tools to face the issue of income poverty, have simultaneously sought the following, according to their own definition: to address, in the short-term, the lack of income, put an end to the intergenerational reproduction of poverty in the long run, and to promote women’s economic empowerment. The latter, due to the fact that although these programs target children and adolescents, in practice, the benefits are received by mothers.

The impact of these programs on women has been ambiguous. On the one hand: i) these programs have resulted in a transfer of broad monetary resources to poor women which ultimately improved, in most cases, their living conditions and their households; ii) considering the fact that it’s a regular income, and in most cases, bank-based, it has been used as a backing for other financial mechanisms such as bank credits; iii) in some circumstances these programs have strengthened women’s position in the negotiation processes of economic resources inside households; and iv) in other circumstances, they have also provided women with better tools to face recurring gender-based violence.

But, at the same time: i) although these programs are highly feminised, specific gender considerations have been left out of the design, implementation and monitoring; ii) they consolidate the maternal side of social policy that addresses women in their role as mothers, rather than on account of being women; iii) conditionalities linked to children’s education and health reinforce women’s role as caretakers; and iv) in certain circumstances, they can discourage women’s participation in the labour market.

Another mechanism whereby the extension of basic protection floors has been promoted in terms of income, are the reforms on pension systems, which, in some regions, have specifically focused on women. For example, in Latin America, some countries have moved forward in terms of: i) guaranteeing universal basic pensions that have particularly benefitted women who have historically faced more difficulties to qualify for pension benefits within the framework of tax systems; ii) guaranteeing basic income thresholds which also benefits women in particular, who usually receive lower pensions due to their weak contributory records; and iii) recognition of unpaid work.

These partial advancements towards the universalisation of social protection benefits combine with the historical aforementioned obstacles and with new trends heading in the opposite direction. In this sense, three current challenges are worth mentioning. Firstly, the trend to privatise social protection (mainly, but not solely, in the education and health areas, including the promotion of public-private partnerships to build basic social infrastructure and even for service provision).

Secondly, the austerity paradigm in fiscal policies that undermines funding for social protection. Many countries in the global South are facing the following fateful combination of situations: tax structures that collect very few funds and  in a regressive way, mainly because rich people, huge national companies and transnational corporations use several tax dodging and tax abuse mechanisms; consequently, recurring fiscal deficits are met with austerity measures and indebtedness; the need to privatise social service provision and/or collect funds from the private sector to meet the demands deriving from social risks, in austerity contexts.

Thirdly, the challenges imposed by the “future of work” forms of employment that are increasingly moving away from the usual formal paid “registered” work which has been the basis of tax-based social protection systems. Conversely, the forms of employment available through the new technologies, with an increasing decentralisation of production, remote work and platform jobs start to distort the labour relations and lead workers to increasingly more situations of lack of social protection.

This issue of the DAWN Informs deals with both the historical and new challenges faced to move towards guaranteeing the right of social protection to all.

References

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2017) World Social Protection Report 2017-19. Universal social protection to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Geneva: ILO.

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2019) Universal social protection for human dignity, social justice and sustainable development. Geneva: ILO.

Rodríguez Enríquez, Corina. 2011. “Conditional Cash Transfer Programs and Gender Equality. ¿What is the situation in Latin America?” Santiago: ECLAC Women and Development Series 109

[1] In fact, except for Latin America where 61.4% of the population has access to at least one social protection benefit, in the rest of the global South, levels of coverage are significantly lower: North Africa 39.2%, Asia and Pacific 38.9%, Africa 17.8%. (ILO, 2017: Figure 1.3).