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Experts' workshop on gender-responsive and age-sensitive social protection

(Past event)

Event type: Workshop

Related research: Gender-responsive and age-sensitive social protection

events6 May 2019
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Florence, Italy 50121

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Despite the importance of both gender and age in order to achieve social change, there is little evidence on how social protection systems and programmes can be more gender-responsive, as well as sensitive to different age groups’ specific risks and vulnerabilities.

To identify and address these gaps in our knowledge, 35 experts from the fields of academia, practice, and programming gathered at UNICEF’s Office of Research in Florence on the 6th of May for an experts’ workshop on gender-responsive and age-sensitive social protection.

The event discussed the evidence base on gender, adolescence and social protection, and create linkages between evidence, policy and programming actors. A series of draft think pieces by key experts in the fields of gender and social protection, commissioned by UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, was also presented at the workshop.

Panel discussions explored:

  • How a life course lens is critical for effective and efficient social protection systems, including for adolescents;
  • How social protection programmes and strategies have – or have not – considered gender dynamics in their design and implementation;
  • Design and implementation considerations in gender-responsive social protection;
  • Social protection in the context of humanitarian, climate change, and complex crises.

This experts’ workshop is part of the DFID-funded programme on gender-responsive age-sensitive social protection. The GRASSP think piece series, which discusses the intersection of these three important areas, was be published on the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti website in in early 2020.


Experts

Prerna Banati
Regional Advisor, Adolescent Development

UNICEF Innocenti

Amber Peterman
Researcher

UNICEF Innocenti

Elena Camilletti

UNICEF Innocenti

Maja Gavrilovic

UNICEF Innocenti

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The 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995) will be a time for reflection on how Governments have delivered on their commitments to advance the goals of equality, development, and peace for all women, everywhere. The Commission on the Status of Women in March will review and appraise the progress made since, including assessing current challenges affecting implementation. 2020 also marks a year for action as the Economic and Social Council (ESC) called on all States to undertake comprehensive national-level reviews of progress made and challenges encountered since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration. 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This leads to the question, ‘what does the evidence tell us and what do we not yet know?’ During the inception phase for GRASSP, which ran through late 2018 and 2019, the research team at Innocenti compiled a wealth of evidence on gender inequalities. This evidence highlights the unequal burden of poverty on women and girls, how women are lagging behind on labour market outcomes, and the impact of many other adverse socio-economic outcomes, including unequal responsibility for care and domestic work. Across 11 expert think pieces, further evidence shows how social protection can have intended and unintended positive effects on development outcomes, often for women and girls. There is also evidence on how social protection policy design and implementation can be considered more or less gender-sensitive along a gender integration continuum. Despite this learning, much of the evidence, as yet, does not explore the impact of age, when adolescent girls may be direct or indirect recipients of social protection. In order to break the inter-generational and interlinked cycles of gender disadvantage and inequality, we need to know more about these age-sensitive impacts across the life-course for women and girls, including which age groups benefit most from gender-responsive social protection, and how design and implementation can be tailored for them. Implementation is another critical stage in the social protection delivery cycle where we don’t have much evidence. For example, are programmes being delivered in the way they were designed and  do they respond to women’s needs? There is limited evidence on the factors that influence the development of gender-responsive social protection systems, including the political economy needed for reform. While evaluations show the positive effects of social protection, indicators used to assess the transformative potential of social protection are limited. We do not know enough about design and implementation features linked to both positive and negative effects. Furthermore, the role of bureaucrats and frontline workers in shaping outcomes on the ground is well-noted in feminist literature and brings an additional set of measures and opportunities for learning.Mother leaders of a cash transfer programme in the community of Tanandava, MadagascarHow will GRASSP fill these evidence gaps? Over the next four years, GRASSP will fill some of these gaps by working across multiple regions and using a mix of research methods, to capitalize on this demand for evidence and to support action for gender-responsive and age-sensitive social protection. Three streams of work will: Reconceptualize the intersection of gender and social protection using a life-course lens, and review the existing literature using this approach;Evaluate the impacts and assess the role of design implementation features in social protection programmes to contribute to gender equality;Unpack the political economy and practicalities of public policy reform involving gender-responsive social protection.GRASSP’s multi-country approach to research compares similar policies and programmes implemented in very different contexts. This improves understanding of the generalisability of good practices, and how these can be scaled within, and transferred between, countries with gender-responsive and age-sensitive social protection. The mix of quantitative and qualitative research strategies allows us to not only to understand the incidence and pervasiveness of gender inequalities (and the programmes to address these), but also the lived experiences of individuals, households, policymakers, and other stakeholders either receiving or delivering these policies. GRASSP is a multi-stakeholder partnership between UNICEF country offices, national Governments, universities, international organisations, and donors. This collaboration exploits synergies to advance the gender-responsive social protection research agenda through rigorous evidence to inform decision-making and stimulate debate, with the aim of putting gender equality at the forefront of social protection research, discourse, policy, and practice. We look forward to the work unfolding and engaging with many collaborators and interested researchers, advocates, practitioners, and policy makers as we go along!   Dominic Richardson leads Social Policy and Economic Analysis at UNICEF Innocenti, where he oversees work on cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa, multiple overlapping deprivation analysis, the Innocenti Report Card Series, and research on family policies and child well-being. Ramya Subrahmanian is Chief of Child Rights and Protection at UNICEF-Innocenti, where she oversees work on migration, violence against children, and child protection.Explore UNICEF Innocenti’s work on Gender-Responsive and Age-Sensitive Social Protection. Read 11 think pieces by gender and social protection experts written to stimulate discussion on the topic.