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Embracing Disruptions, Responding to Uncertainties, Valuing Agency: Situating a Feminist approach to social protection

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Abstract

Elizabeth Reid, Marilyn Waring, Corina Rodriguez Enriquez and Meena Shivdas examine social protection explaining what ‘social protection’ means, and the design and delivery of social protection interventions. They outline a feminist approach to social protection based on recent research on unpaid care work and applied strategies on women and children's rights to land and other resources and opportunities.

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Notes

  1. The Commonwealth is an association of 54 countries from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, the Pacific and North America with shared values of democracy and development and a common legal heritage.

  2. The point that ‘care has its own rhythm and logic’ was made by Naila Kabeer at the AWID Forum 2012.

  3. Bachelet Report page 9, quoting the United Nations Chief Executives Board.

  4. Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler suggest a conceptual and an operational definition of social protection, which has been widely used in the literature. Conceptual: All public and private initiatives that provide income or consumption transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalized with the overall objective of reducing the economic and social vulnerability of poor, vulnerable and marginalized groups. Operational: All initiatives, both formal and informal, that provide social assistance to extremely poor individuals and households; social services to groups who need special care or would otherwise be denied access to basic services; social insurance to protect people against the risks and consequences of livelihood shocks; and social equity to protect people against social risks such as discrimination or abuse.

  5. Protection measures provide relief from deprivation and include traditional safety net instruments, social assistance and social services for poor individuals or groups who need special care. For example, old age pensions or pensions for widows. Preventive measures seek to prevent deprivation and deal directly with poverty alleviation. They include social insurance for people who have fallen, or might fall, into poverty and can include formal systems and informal mechanisms, such as women's self-help groups and cooperative microcredit societies. Promotive measures address the longer-term dimensions of social policy, which seek to enhance livelihood strategies through asset protection and access to common property resources. Examples include employment guarantee schemes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India and the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) in South Africa. Transformative forms of social protection are designed to address the underlying social structures that are at the root of social vulnerabilities. More than a programmatic approach, transformative social protection entails changes to the regulatory framework to protect socially vulnerable groups against discrimination and abuse, such as women and children affected by the HIV epidemic. The GROOTS initiative in Kenya, which protects women's land rights, is an example.

  6. Bangladesh – HIV+carer for IV drug user husband; Botswana – carer tending to aunt; Canada – woman prisoner cared by mother; Guyana – sex worker caring for dying sister in hospital; India – sex worker caring for aunt; Jamaica – gay man caring for partner; Namibia – grandmother caring for orphaned grandchildren, positive carer tending to extended family; New Zealand – transgender cared by partner, parents and sister; Nigeria – positive Muslim woman cared by sister; Papua New Guinea – mother caring for dying daughter, carer looking after sister and brother-in-law; Uganda – child carer looking after mother and raising siblings.

  7. ‘Capability servitude’ describes a condition where a person's dignity and freedom are circumscribed by an inability to break away from a situation of constant work and no leisure, especially for unpaid women carers in HIV-affected households (Waring et al., 2011).

  8. For a comprehensive review of research findings, see Rodríguez Enríquez (2011). For findings specific on each programme/country, confront references in that publication.

  9. See Yakin Ertürk in this issue of Development.

  10. See Marilyn Waring in this issue of Development.

  11. Esther Mwara Muiru, AWID Forum 2012.

  12. Hania Sholkamy ‘What would a Feminist CCT Programme Look Like? Pathways of Women's Empowerment’, http://www.pathwaysofempowerment.org/Egypt_CCTs.pdf.

References

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Proposes ways to rethink social protection as a core goal for development and economic policy

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Reid, E., Waring, M., Enriquez, C. et al. Embracing Disruptions, Responding to Uncertainties, Valuing Agency: Situating a Feminist approach to social protection. Development 55, 291–298 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2012.30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2012.30

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