UN Women Discussion Papers

This paper uses harmonized collections of national labor force datasets to compare the size and shape of the paid care sector around the globe. The paper then explores the relationship between the size of the care sector and various measures of need for care, finding very little evidence of relationship. Finally, the paper explores wages and working conditions for paid care workers in a subset of countries for which data is available.

This discussion paper assesses the evidence base of the “men for gender equality” field in light of three aspects of its emergence as a field, namely: its un-interrogated use of the category of “men”, its recourse to social psychological accounts of gender norms, and the implications of its NGO form for its ability to collaborate with and be accountable to resurgent intersectional feminist mobilizations.

Nicaragua has the second-highest emigration rate in Central America, behind El Salvador, and 40 per cent of Nicaraguan households receive remittances. In contrast to migrants from other Central American countries, however, Nicaraguan migrants are more likely to move within the region to Costa Rica than to the United States. This paper is concerned specifically with the implications of migration within Central America for family life. Focusing on the case of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the paper argues that the provision of care in Nicaraguan transnational families occurs in the context of multiple insecurities, both historical and contemporary. In this sense, migration represents both a solution to the insecure climate of care provision and a source of further insecurity. The paper frames this analysis within scholarship on the privatization of care work, caregiving in transnational families, and historical patterns of diverse family configurations. It then draws on more than 24 months of ethnographic research between 2009 and 2016, including interviews and participant observation with migrants living in Costa Rica and their families in Nicaragua, to show how Nicaraguan families develop strategies based on a history of informal and flexible caregiving. In particular, marriage informality and grandmother caregiving are highlighted. While these informal strategies allow families to navigate the challenges migration and family separation entail, they also contribute to continued vulnerability and reinforce the gendered burdens of caregiving within transnational families.

Cash transfers are often considered a gender-sensitive development tool because women have traditionally been the target for large social cash transfer programs. However, targeting women does not automatically yield favourable outcomes for women and girls. While there is emerging evidence from the development sector to suggest that cash transfers can positively impact women and girls across an array of protection and empowerment dimensions, the results are often mixed and poorly understood. The evidence base on gender and cash in humanitarian settings, where the use of cash is on the rise, is even more limited. Without proper gender considerations, there is a concern that cash transfers may fail to reach those left furthest behind, potentially limiting rather than generating opportunity for greater gender-transformative change. This paper begins by presenting an overview of the latest research on cash transfers, gender protection, and empowerment outcomes. It continues by discussing some of the programme design features to consider when seeking to improve gender outcomes. Finally, the paper concludes with a set of research questions that can help shape future research and practice in this area.

This study addresses the percolation and domestication of the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – Transforming our World” in Germany with a view to understanding its impact on domestic gender equality policies. Concentrating on federal-level policymaking, the main finding of the study is that the 2030 Agenda and SDG 5 have, as of yet, not had a discernible impact on domestic gender equality struggles. This is surprising, since the 2030 Agenda offers a holistic conception of sustainability, and thus has the “value added” advantage of merging and transcending the rather disjointed gender, social justice, and ecological sustainability policy strands. Based on 28 interviews with government officials, CSO representatives, and researchers, the study observes multiple disconnects. There is a lack of cohesion and consistency across ministries and civil society actors, resulting in a horizontal disconnect. There is a vertical disconnect between the 2030 Agenda as a multilateral agreement and its domestication. Perhaps because the 2030 Agenda is a soft-law tool, it has limited clout for transformative change; it is moreover seen to be weaker on gender equality commitments than other pertinent international agreements. An obvious conclusion of the study is to strengthen institutional linkages. The vision of gender equality needs to resonate with all actors supporting sustainable development. This could support women’s struggles in addressing Germany’s structural gender disadvantages.

This discussion paper views the whys and hows of feminist engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a broader context: the key UN-related processes from the time women began getting involved with them in the 1970s. This contextual analysis for the period from the 1970s up to 2010 illuminates a central argument of the paper: namely, that feminist movement building is not a simple volitional act but is enmeshed in the fluxes and changes of its external environment and institutions. This historical background sets the stage for a more in-depth discussion of the recent period of the SDGs. Given the long history and persistence of gender inequality and violations of girls’ and women’s human rights, such a perspective is essential for a more balanced understanding of where we need to go and how to advance more sustainable transformations. The feminist movement is no stranger to adverse economic, social, and political environments. This paper argues that the ability of feminist organizations to hold their own in this fierce world, to defend human rights, and to advance economic, ecological, and gender justice requires not only clarity of vision and a track record of analysis and advocacy, but also stronger communications skills, greater organizational resilience and effectiveness, and the ability to build and nurture effective alliances in which younger people play strong roles.

Marriage as both a legal and social institution has long been the subject of critique for its role in the oppression of women. However, the institution has undergone significant change in western jurisdictions, particularly in the last few decades, which have seen (among others) divorce reform, the rise of prenuptial agreements, and the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. These—coupled with social changes in attitudes towards gendered roles within marriage—have arguably resulted in an evolution of the institution. This paper explores the extent to which the legal institution of marriage in western jurisdictions has changed to reflect greater gender equality. It draws on a number of key illustrative examples: the gendered division of labour, division of assets on divorce, the introduction of same-sex marriage, and some examples from the expanding “menu” of relationship recognition. While significant advances have been made, particularly in terms of formal legal equality, this paper argues that there are still important respects in which gender equality is lacking in contemporary marriage in the West. The aim of this paper is to give a broad overview of marriage and relationship recognition, and the examples are necessarily jurisdictionally limited and not intended to be reflective of the legal position across all western jurisdictions.

By the end of 2016, an estimated 6.5 million Syrian citizens were internally displaced, and more than 4.8 million Syrians had fled to neighbouring countries. While roughly half of all displaced and refugee Syrians are female, around three quarters of the estimated 550,000 Syrian asylum seekers who have arrived in Germany since the outbreak of the conflict are male. This gender imbalance is mainly due to the dangerous flight routes to Germany and the high costs of smugglers. Due to changing German asylum policies and practices, lengthy procedures and bureaucratic obstacles, a growing number of Syrian families who had intended to reunite in Germany now remain separated for two to three years or even longer. Others were even forced apart post-arrival. This paper examines the impacts of shifting policies in relation to family reunification and internal dispersal on the experiences of female Syrian asylum seekers in Germany. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Germany in 2012–2016. Through the analysis of women’s accounts and of policy measures, it sheds light on how female Syrian asylum seekers and recognized refugees have coped with diverse challenges before arriving, during long-lasting separations, after subsequent reunifications in Germany, or after arriving alone.

This paper examines the interplay between the obligations related to the ‘family’ that States have assumed through various human rights treaties adopted over the decades, and the recent commitments undertaken under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. International human rights instruments recognize the ‘family’ as the fundamental unit of society and include a variety of rights and obligations pertaining to the family. These obligations must be respected in all laws, policies and interventions pertaining to the family. Under the 2030 Agenda, States committed to achieving sustainable development in its three dimensions in a balanced and integrated manner. Through the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and its 169 targets, the 2030 Agenda seeks to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. Given this context, this paper explores critical questions such as: If families have changed over time, what is a ‘family’ today? How do critical human rights principles such as equality and non-discrimination, the best interests of the child and the right to live a life free of violence shape the understanding of family? How should these human rights obligations guide the adoption of public policies that impact the family? How should policies and programmes ensure respect of the rights of all families, tailored to the diversity of families within a country?

Adequate and dignified care provision for elderly populations is becoming an urgent policy issue, not only in high-income countries, but also in many middle- and low-income ones. This discussion paper documents and analyses varieties of eldercare policies, and their readjustments, in East Asia and Europe.

Migration reconfigures care relationships as people adapt to employment, entitlements and care practices in a new context. While a rich genre of analysis of “global care chains” draws attention to how disadvantaged female migrant care workers from the global South fill the “care deficit” in high-income countries, these analyses tend to privilege care services and arrangements in the global North and the migrant as the provider of care. In contrast, there is little research on how migrants from developing countries meet their own and their families’ care needs, irrespective of whether they are paid care workers in the destination. In particular, we know little about the care needs of unskilled or semi-skilled migrant workers and refugees who occupy the less privileged circuits of contemporary global mobility and who are often marginalized from state social policies that address care needs. This paper offers an analysis of the effects of migration on the care needs and relationships of Ethiopian migrant mothers and their families and their access to childcare in destination countries. Specifically, it draws on empirical research on the experiences of Ethiopian migrant domestic workers who have children while in Lebanon and the experiences of Ethiopian women refugees with children who have resettled in Australia.

This paper seeks to advance our understanding of the gendered implications of rural land dispossession. It does so through a comparative analysis of five cases of dispossession that were driven by different economic purposes in diverse agrarian contexts: the English enclosures; colonial and post-colonial rice irrigation projects in the Gambia; large dams in India; oil palm cultivation in Indonesia; and Special Economic Zones in India. The paper identifies some of the common gendered effects of land dispossession, showing in each case how this reproduced women’s lack of independent land rights or reversed them where they existed, intensified household reproductive work and occurred without meaningful consultation with—much less decision-making by—rural women. The paper also demonstrates ways in which the gendered consequences of land dispossession vary across forms of dispossession and agrarian milieu. The most important dimension of this variation is the effect of land loss on the gendered division of labour, which is often deleterious but varies qualitatively across the cases examined. In addition, the paper illustrates further variations within dispossessed populations as gender intersects with class, caste and other inequalities. It concludes that land dispossession consistently contributes to gender inequality, albeit in socially and historically specific ways. So while defensive struggles against land dispossession will not in themselves transform patriarchal social relations, they may be a pre-condition for more offensive struggles for gender equality.

The challenges of building pathways to sustainability and enhancing gender equality are both urgent. This work explores why they must be addressed together, and how this might be done. It puts forward a ‘gendered pathways approach’, as a conceptual framework for addressing the interactions, tensions and trade-offs between different dimensions of gender equality and of sustainability. The publication provides a historical review of how diverse concepts—or narratives—about women, gender and sustainability have emerged and come to co-exist. It acknowledges tensions and trade-offs in different pathways and addresses the policy and political challenges of transforming pathways towards greater gender equality and sustainability. Ultimately, the authors argue, feminist movements and collective organizing, emerging in diverse ways and places across the world, offer the greatest hope both for challenging unsustainable pathways and for charting new ones that lead us in more sustainable, gender-equal directions.

This publication identifies a series of macro-level tools to create a supportive environment and generate the resources to promote Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to gender equality. A key argument is that financing for gender equality can be self-sustaining because of the feedback effects from gender equality to economy-wide well-being. The author explores investments into physical and social infrastructures, as well as monetary policy tools to promote gender equality.

How trade liberalization affects women’s position in the labour market and what role public policy should play to make the process work better for women are among some of the most debated issues in academic communities and in policy-making arenas. This work sheds light on these contentious issues by analysing the trends in labour market outcomes of women and men in China in the decade after its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The publication reviews the changes associated with China’s economic reforms and opening to international trade and investment since the process started in the late 1970s. Since the early 2000s, a wide range of policy measures have been introduced to strengthen labour market regulations, reduce inequality and increase social security. However, most of these policy initiatives were ‘gender neutral’, paying inadequate attention to the institutional constraints that disadvantaged women in the labour market.

This publication examines government policies toward the crucial nexus of work-family reconciliation, focusing on employment-based leaves and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. It starts by discussing the socio-economic context in Latin America. To illuminate regional trends and best practices, the authors provide more detailed case studies of policy reforms in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

This publication examines policies for the support of families with children, in particular child-related financial transfers and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The analysis is mainly focused on countries with institutionalized welfare states—primarily Western European and other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries—because that is where child-related benefits and services have the longest history. The work highlights a number of core insights relevant to policy planning and decision-making for child-related transfers and ECEC services.

Gender equality is one of the key challenges confronted by pension systems around the world. In a context of gendered labour markets, contributory pension systems face several constraints to guarantee universal and adequate pension benefits for women. Women’s life courses are characterized by longer periods dedicated to taking care of others, lower labour market participation, more part-time work and lower earnings. All these features compromise their pension entitlements in pension systems that link benefits to paid work, contributions and earnings. This publication deals with the challenges and constraints that pension systems face to be gender equitable and the policy alternatives to address these challenges. This work shows that crucial policy choices for the protection of women concern the conditions for entitlements in pension systems (based on either work, need or citizenship), the types of transfers that are promoted between women and men, the policy tools available to offset gender differences in paid work, earnings and unpaid work (such as contribution credits) and the protection of the most vulnerable social groups through redistributive benefits.