TWN Info Service on UN Sustainable Development (Oct24/02)
19 October 2024
Third World Network

UN: Two billion women & girls worldwide lack access to social protection
Published in SUNS #10099 dated 18 October 2024

Penang, 17 Oct (Kanaga Raja) — A staggering two billion women and girls worldwide are without access to any form of social protection, according to UN Women, the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.

In a report published ahead of International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on 17 October, UN Women said while levels of social protection have increased since 2015, gender gaps in such coverage have widened in most developing regions, suggesting that the recent gains have benefited men more than women.

The report painted a rather stark picture of the gendered nature of poverty, saying that women and girls are over-represented among the poor at every stage of life, with the largest gaps during their childbearing years.

Women aged 25-34 are 25 per cent more likely to live in extremely poor households than men in the same age group.

Conflict and climate change exacerbate this inequality. Women in fragile contexts are 7.7 times more likely to live in extreme poverty compared to those in non-fragile environments, said UN Women.

UN Women also said that gender-specific risks and vulnerabilities are often neglected in the aftermath of shocks.

For example, it said very high rates of inflation since 2022, which have led to spiraling food and energy prices, hit women particularly hard.

Yet, out of nearly 1,000 social protection measures adopted by governments across 171 countries in the months that followed, only 18 per cent targeted women’s economic security.

On a positive note, the report provided some examples of progress. It said countries such as Mongolia have extended maternity leave benefits to informal workers, including herders and the self-employed, while also strengthening paternity leave to support gender equality in care-giving responsibilities.

It said in countries like Mexico and Tunisia, steps have been taken to include domestic workers in social security systems. In Senegal, the National Health Insurance scheme has extended and adapted its services to cater to rural women, with support from UN Women.

In a foreword to the report, Ms Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, said: “Our world is living through a moment of repeated shocks. The climate emergency is escalating. Conflicts and tensions have flared, and food, fuel and financial crises have taken a devastating toll on communities around the world. Progress on gender equality has stalled, and poverty has worsened.”

She said women and girls bear the brunt of a turbulent, often unjust world. “Fewer economic resources, greater responsibilities for unpaid care and domestic work, and limited voice and agency push many behind.”

Ms Bahous said that social protection systems must recognize and address these challenges head-on to reduce poverty among women and girls, increase their resilience to shocks and help transform the norms, structures and institutions that perpetuate their disadvantage.

According to the report, in recent years, repeated shocks have rocked the world, from the COVID-19 pandemic to food, fuel and financial crises. “Violent conflict is a deadly reality for billions of people.”

It said that climate-related disasters and environmental crises continue to escalate, taking a disproportionate toll on the poorest countries and the most marginalized women and girls, even as they have contributed least to the problem.

“Destabilizing long-term economic trends exacerbate inequalities within and between countries, with prevailing development models failing to create decent jobs and livelihoods for many people, while concentrating wealth and power among a few.”

An ongoing cycle of economic crises, mounting debt and austerity prevents much-needed investment in social protection and public services, said the report.

“The effects include a worsening latent care crisis that leaves millions of children and care-dependent adults without support while imposing hard choices and enormous costs on women and girls.”

These events intersect with a larger “epochal crisis” rooted in an economic system that has failed to generate sufficient decent jobs, drives climate change and environmental destruction, and limits public investments in human well-being and sustainable development, it added.

The report said women and girls bear the brunt of all these crises, reflecting inequalities in access to economic resources, greater responsibilities for unpaid care and domestic work, heightened exposure to gender-based violence, and limited voice and agency.

Advancing towards inclusive, comprehensive, gender-responsive social protection systems is essential for putting the Sustainable Development Goals back on track, it emphasized.

It said operating alongside macroeconomic and employment policies, such systems can reduce poverty and help transform economies and societies to be more equitable, sustainable and just.

“Unleashing this potential requires pursuing transformation both as an outcome of social protection and as essential to every stage of policy and delivery processes.”

Core elements comprise improving the resilience and empowerment of women and girls in households and communities, making public institutions fully responsive to their rights and needs, and leveraging reforms to rebuild trust between citizens and the State, said UN Women.

GENDER GAPS

Before COVID-19, extreme poverty had declined significantly, even if the pace of reduction was slowing, said the report.

Extreme poverty fell from 10.9 per cent of households globally in 2015 to 9.6 per cent in 2019. For women and girls, the rate fell from 11.4 per cent in 2015 to 10.1 per cent in 2019.

COVID-19 derailed this progress, with extreme poverty rising to 10.7 per cent in 2020 for all households and to 11.1 per cent for women and girls.

The report said the slow and uneven recovery from the pandemic is evident in the fact that 9.4 per cent of the world’s population remained in extreme poverty in 2024.

UN Women’s projections for 2024 indicate that nearly 10 per cent of women and girls live in households in extreme poverty compared to just over 9 per cent of men and boys. That translates into 22 million more poor females than males.

It said using the higher international poverty lines of $3.65 and $6.85 per person per day raises these proportions to 25.4 per cent and 47.5, respectively, for females, and 24.7 per cent and 46.8, respectively, for males.

The report said if current trends continue, 8 per cent of women and girls will continue to live in extreme poverty in 2030, compared to 7.6 per cent of men and boys.

In 2023, for the first time, more than half the global population (52.4 per cent) was covered by at least one social protection benefit – an increase of almost 10 percentage points since 2015, said UN Women.

At the same time, the report said that 3.8 billion people remained entirely unprotected, with women and men in low-income countries increasingly left behind.

“While high-income countries have edged closer to universal coverage and middle-income countries have made important strides in closing gaps, coverage in low-income countries was below 10 per cent, with little progress since 2015.”

The report said gaps in social protection coverage and adequacy are acute in countries where people experience heightened vulnerabilities, including due to conflict- or climate-related humanitarian crises.

Among conflict-affected countries with data, effective coverage was as low as 7.5 per cent in Afghanistan, 12.6 per cent in Mali (14 per cent among men compared to 10 per cent among women), 6.3 per cent in Myanmar and 7 per cent in Yemen (9.2 per cent among men compared to 4.1 per cent among women).

Similarly, a 2022 review of 122 countries found that among countries with the highest climate risks, less than 10 per cent of people considered vulnerable were covered by social protection programmes, compared to coverage rates of 78 per cent in countries with the lowest climate risks.

UN Women also found that gender gaps in social protection coverage, adequacy and comprehensiveness persist across countries and contexts.

Globally, in 2023, 50.1 per cent of women were covered by at least one social protection benefit (SDG indicator 1.3.1) compared to 54.6 per cent of men. This translates into 2 billion women and 1.8 billion men without access to any form of social protection, it said, adding that gender coverage gaps are largest in low- and middle-income countries.

It said between 2015 and 2023, these gaps widened across all income groups – with the exception of high-income countries – suggesting that the extension of social protection coverage during that period has benefited men more than women.

In geographic terms, it said coverage is lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, while gender gaps are widest in Central and Southern Asia.

The report also found that according to the latest available data, a mere 28.2 per cent of the world’s children (0 to 15 years) are receiving child or family benefits.

It said this is of particular concern given the heightened poverty risk of families with children and the potentially lasting effects of childhood deprivations over lifetimes and even generations.

Shocks and crises deepen risks and vulnerabilities among children in poor households, often with particularly detrimental impacts on girls, it added.

In 2023, only 16.7 per cent of unemployed people received cash benefits with little progress since 2015, said the report.

While legal coverage rates are slightly higher among women compared to men, the implementation gap between legal and effective coverage is likely to be large. Women often face greater barriers in accessing unemployment benefits due to higher levels of part-time and temporary work as well as more interrupted employment histories.

Young women, migrant women as well as those in self-employment, agriculture and on digital platforms are particularly unlikely to access unemployment benefits when losing their jobs or earnings, said UN Women.

Where robust unemployment protections are absent, public works programmes are sometimes used to provide work and cash benefits to those who are unemployed, under-employed or earning low incomes, it added.

“While such programmes have often been introduced as temporary measures in response to natural disasters or economic crises, some countries have maintained them on a more permanent basis.”

For example, the report said that India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act provided employment opportunities to 76 million rural Indian households in 2020-2021, with women accounting for 53 per cent of workers, an increase of 36 per cent from 2004-2005.

Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Nets Programme has evolved into one of the largest and longest-running public works programmes in Africa, reaching nearly 8 million citizens in 2022, it noted.

It also said care-related risks and vulnerabilities faced by women of working age remain inadequately covered.

For example, globally, in 2023, only 36.4 per cent of women with newborns were covered by maternity benefits, with large regional variations, ranging from 94.4 per cent in Australia and New Zealand to a mere 5.9 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa.

It said limited coverage for maternity puts women at a greater risk of poverty during the final stages of pregnancy and after childbirth or forces them to keep working into the very late stages of pregnancy and/or to return to work prematurely, exposing themselves and their children to significant health risks.

“Recent data show that 40.9 per cent of working-age men contribute to an old-age pension scheme; only 29.1 per cent of women do the same,” the report further said.

The gender gap in active contributors is particularly pronounced in Central and Southern Asia, where 28.8 per cent of men are active contributors compared to only 9.8 per cent of women. In sub-Saharan Africa, contribution rates are low for both women and men (4.3 and 8.7 per cent, respectively).

Turning to actual recipients, the report said globally, 77.2 per cent of women above the statutory retirement age receive a contributory or non-contributory old-age pension compared to 82.6 per cent of men.

It said that variations across regions are significant, ranging from close to universal coverage for both women and men in Europe and Northern America to lower levels of coverage with significant gender gaps in Northern Africa and Western Asia, where 48.2 per cent of women compared to 76.7 per cent of men receive an old age pension.

UN Women further found that globally, women’s employment is overwhelmingly informal, with limited legal or social protection.

Addressing this gap requires solutions tailored to the heterogenous nature of informal employment and the reality that women often work in the most precarious informal jobs, it said.

Globally, women carry out almost three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men, amounting to an average of nearly 18 per cent (4.3 hours) of their day compared to 6.5 per cent (1.6 hours) for men, it added.

The report said the COVID-19 pandemic was a warning that social protection systems will increasingly be called upon to address large-scale shocks.

More frequent and protracted crises will exacerbate gender inequality and generate specific risks for women and girls, it added.

“These comprise heightened exposure to different forms of violence, including higher rates of early and child marriage after disasters, livelihood losses, increased care work, more girls dropping out of school, and greater health risks, including through limited access to services.”

However, it said policy discussions on “shock-responsive” and “adaptative” social protection have paid scant attention to gender dynamics.

“In challenging, unpredictable contexts, social protection policies and programmes need to be both flexible and adaptable, while also consistently responding to the needs of women and girls. They should protect women and girls against the immediate impacts of shocks and crises and strengthen their long-term resilience.”

In conclusion, the report said despite progress towards universal, gender-responsive social protection systems, substantial gaps leave millions of women and girls without adequate support for life course risks.

“This is occurring even as shocks become more frequent and the upheaval of broader structural transformations continues.”

To close gaps in coverage, adequacy and comprehensiveness, the report has proposed a twin track approach, where countries advance towards robust gender-responsive social protection systems in the long-term while adapting policies and programmes in the short-term to respond to the rights and needs of women and girls in acute and protracted crisis contexts.

“Specific priorities for systems strengthening include the extension of social protection to women in informal employment and greater recognition of care – both paid and unpaid – as a pillar of social protection systems.”

The report said collective financing and risk-sharing, minimum benefit guarantees, progressive benefit formulae, coverage of dependents in health insurance schemes, subsidies for workers with low contributory capacities and compensation for periods without contributions can all be used to make contributory social protection schemes more inclusive.

Strengthening non-contributory schemes, on which women rely disproportionately, is another important priority, it added.

The report said that particularly where poverty is widespread and dynamic due to recurrent shocks, schemes with broad-based coverage are more likely to benefit women than those narrowly targeted to poverty.

Adequate benefit levels, including adjustments for inflation, as well as regular and predictable payments are key to harnessing the positive gender equality impacts of social transfers, it concluded. +