Gender Equality

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.

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 paper investigates how women’s right to live free from violence operates in the context of insecure immigration status. It is based on qualitative research addressing intimate partner violence against women with insecure immigration status in England and Sweden, analysed within a human rights theoretical framework. Empirical data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 31 survivors from 14 different non–European Union countries and 57 professional stakeholders from local, national, and international organizations. The paper identifies a tension between human rights and immigration control that is present in theory, policy frameworks, and migrant women’s lived experiences. It contends that this tension has led to a proliferation of rights’ statuses for migrant women who are exposed to intimate partner violence. A solution is offered in the form of an expansionist model of human rights whereby presence in a territory is the basis for recognition as a rights-bearing subject.

This paper traces the restructuring of rural families’ agricultural production, the intra-household division of labour, and land usage in the interim between the global oil price rise of 1979 and its precipitous fall by 2015. These decades witnessed smallholder export crop production becoming increasingly uncompetitive in the world market due to the high costs of transporting bulky crops over the vast expanses of rural Africa. With the decline of cash cropping, men, women, and youth were drawn away from farming towards off-farm cash-earning in a wide variety of non-agricultural activities. Now, male heads of household no longer monopolize cash earnings in rural households to the same extent as in the past. Women’s and youth’s earnings afford them more household decision-making autonomy. Demographically, the HIV/AIDS crisis has imposed strain on rural households, and impacted land usage and inheritance, affecting women detrimentally in some countries, whereas state reform of inheritance laws has improved women’s situation in other countries. Generally, officially published national-level rural labour statistics harbour gender bias and under-reporting of female labour expenditure. Domestic work continues to be the preserve of women. Marriage patterns are changing, with some women experiencing a reluctance to marry men due to men’s lost income-earning capacity and women’s increased wariness of contracting AIDS. In this context, matrifocal families have gained salience.

This discussion paper examines how the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been integrated into the national debate on gender equality in Ecuador. It identifies which policies from the Agenda have been taken into account and which have been rejected. It also examines how the actors involved in clarifying the scope of these policies—women’s movements, sexual diversity organizations, public officials, and United Nations agencies working on gender equality—have coordinated their activities with the Agenda. In so doing, it attempts to answer the following questions: How does the 2030 Agenda interact with the gender equality agenda in Ecuador? Where do they intersect and what are their points of contention? How has the global agenda influenced national policies and actions on gender equality and women’s rights? The paper also assesses whether newer feminist and sexual diversity organizations in Ecuador are aware of and incorporate the 2030 Agenda and, conversely, whether the Agenda addresses the debates and demands made by such organizations in recent years. Lastly, it provides some recommendations on how to better translate the goals and targets on gender equality from the 2030 Agenda into Ecuador’s national gender policies.

The challenges that we face can be addressed only through stronger international cooperation. The Summit of the Future in 2024 is an opportunity to agree on multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow, strengthening global governance for both present and future generations. The present policy brief contains suggestions for practical steps to fulfil our long-standing commitment to meet the demands of the present in a way that safeguards the interests of future generations and preserves their ability to effectively enjoy all human rights. These include: an envoy to serve as a voice for future generations at the global level; better use of foresight, science and data; a declaration to define and make concrete our duties to future generations; and a dedicated intergovernmental forum to advance implementation of the declaration and share best practices. These suggestions build on Our Common Agenda and subsequent intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder consultations, reflected in the “Elements paper for the declaration for future generations”, prepared by the Permanent Missions of Fiji and the Netherlands to the United Nations. The brief responds to the questions raised by Member States during the consultations, including how to define future generations, how to balance our commitment to them with our duties to present generations, how the proposals advance our existing goals for sustainable development, gender, and human rights, and what outcomes are recommended for the Summit of the Future on this issue. This is the first of the Summit of the Future Policy Briefs.

Small Island Development States’ (SIDS) natural features, relative isolation, typical dependence on external resources and limited domestic capacity to absorb shocks make many of them especially vulnerable to crises, including climate-change related environmental disasters and health emergencies. This policy brief argues that one such crisis, precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has amplified and perpetuated dynamics of gender inequality in Samoa, a Pacific SIDS. We posit that care and household work, the burden of which falls disproportionately on women, is a central nexus in these dynamics, which in turn affect Samoa’s ability to cope with and spring back from this crisis. Based on this Samoan experience, we argue that care and household work deserves special attention from policymakers, especially in SIDS, because of its potentially central importance for gender-equity as well as for crisis-resilience and recovery.

Climate change is already impacting negatively on the health and well-being of individuals across the globe, and this burden is likely to become more important and debilitating over time. Due to deep-rooted systemic inequalities, the growing negative consequences disproportionately affect diverse women, girls and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. The same structural and cultural factors that render them more vulnerable also limit their meaningful participation in mitigation and adaptation planning and marginalize their needs. This policy brief argues the case that to enable gender-transformative, intersectional and rights-based approaches, climate change, gender and other social determinants of health must therefore be considered and addressed jointly where possible. A systems-based approach can improve the understanding of important synergies and co-benefits, feedback loops, trade-offs and unanticipated consequences that are critical to priority-setting and effective responses. It can also foster critically needed cross-sectoral collaboration among the policymakers and advocates who work on climate, health and gender equality.

To respond to demographic and societal changes, the effects of policies on men and women and on all generations have to be considered. Gender mainstreaming is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, for instance legislation, policies and programmes, prior to implementation. This allows the development of strategies in which concerns and experiences specific to women and men are an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes.

Child support—a monetary transfer from a non-resident parent to a lone parent to assist with the cost of raising children following union dissolution—is a critical source of income for the increasing proportion of lone-mother families, especially those at risk of experiencing poverty and material hardship. However, in a wide range of countries, a significant proportion of lone mothers do not receive financial support from their children’s father. Drawing on cross-national evidence and the Luxembourg Income Study Database (LIS), this policy brief highlights the importance of child support for lone-mother families and factors that may prevent lone mothers from receiving this transfer. It concludes with a series of recommendations to ensure regular and adequate child support is provided.