Melissa Hidrobo

Making complementary agricultural resources, technologies, and services more gender-responsive

Rural women in low- and middle-income countries face multiple constraints in accessing and benefiting from essential complementary resources, technologies, and services for agricultural production and participation in the agrifood system. This paper highlights recent thinking around these constraints and how to overcome them. The complementary factors we consider are: (1) networks and social capital, (2) information and communications technologies, (3) other agricultural tech nologies, (4) agricultural extension and advisory services, (5) financial services, and (6) social assistance. We first analyze constraints women face in accessing and benefiting from these complementary factors and describe the potential benefits of reducing these constraints and gender inequities in the agrifood system. We then provide evidence on what has been effective for improving women’s access to and ability to benefit from the six complementary factors. We conclude by highlighting the importance of considering the different preferences of men and women when designing policies and interventions; challenging customs, norms and perceptions; and reforming formal rules and institutions toward more inclusive agrifood systems.

Educational impacts of an unconditional cash transfer program in Mali

Social protection and gender: policy, practice and research

Gender considerations in the design and delivery of social protection programs are critical to meet overall objectives of reducing poverty and vulnerability. We provide an overview of the policy discourse and research on social protection and gender in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on social assistance, social care, and social insurance. Taking a ‘review of reviews’ approach, we aggregate findings from rigorous evaluations on women’s health, economic, empowerment, and violence impacts. We show there is robust evidence that social assistance has beneficial effects across all four domains. In addition, there is emerging evidence that social care has positive impacts on women’s economic outcomes, but scarce evidence of its impacts on other domains. Aggregated evidence on the impacts of social insurance are lacking. Key design elements facilitating positive impacts for women relate to gender targeting; quality complementary programming; replacing conditionalities with soft nudges; ensuring the value, frequency, and duration of benefits are sufficient; and gender-sensitive operational components. We close with a discussion of evidence gaps and priorities for future research.