Gender-sensitive social protection and the MDGs - ODI Briefing Papers 61

• Policy dialogue on the Millennium Development Goals must recognise that the goals are linked by the gender dynamics of power, poverty and vulnerability • Gender-sensitive social protection can contribute to the goals, but only if gender equality is seen as critical to programme effectiveness • Advances in gendersensitive programme design are being made but more investment is needed to build the capacity of programme staff and participants to strengthen implementation outcomes Taken together, the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aim to support human capital development and poverty reduction. However, even though gender inequality exacerbates poverty and vulnerability, gender is explicit in only two of the goals. MDG3 – promote gender equality and empower women – includes targets on gender parity in education, the share of women in wage employment, and the proportion of seats held by women in national legislatures. MDG5 – improve maternal health – focuses on maternal mortality and, since 2005, universal access to reproductive health. This explicit inclusion in just two MDGs is too narrow: gender dynamics cut across all the goals but have been relatively invisible in policy dialogues, sidelining other gender-specific risks and vulnerabilities, roles and responsibilities, and power relations (Jones et al., 2008). Social protection has become an increasingly popular mechanism to address risk and vulnerability in recent years. At the same time, however, social protection has focused largely on protecting the vulnerable against economic risks and vulnerability. Social vulnerability, such as gender inequality and social discrimination, has largely been overlooked in the broader social protection debate (Holmes and Jones, 2009). In reality, economic and social risks are linked and recognising different experiences of poverty and vulnerability is vital if social protection programmes are to help people move out of poverty (ibid; Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler, 2004). Taking only an income approach to poverty reduction is unlikely to lead to gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women, or tackle the development challenges that must be overcome for sustainable poverty reduction. This briefing paper draws on ODI’s research on social protection and gender in eight countries and three regions funded by DFID and AusAID and discusses how social protection interventions (including public works programmes, asset and cash transfers, and targeted social services) can promote an interlinked gender-sensitive approach to the MDGs. It looks at three clusters of Goals: poverty and sustainable development (MDGs 1 and 7); service access, care and care-giving (MDGs 2-7); and voice and agency (MDGs 3 and 8).