Does social protection have an effect on gender dynamics? Maybe! (blogs LSE)

LSE Blog published a blog post about the new Academic Collaboration research project, ‘Can Social Protection Empower Women? Patriarchy, Economic Agency and Redistribution Policies in Egypt’ which is primarily a methodological endeavor. Context is key to social knowledge, yet theories and methods are often summoned from location to location, from one time to another, and used to derive evidence of effect. The measurement of women’s empowerment is a case in point. In a recent IFPRI impact evaluation of Egypt’s national cash transfers program, the researchers found that questions & results did not work as expected.  This survey found that women who had received the cash payment and whose families seem to have benefitted from the transfer in fact reported reduced autonomy and that they made fewer decisions.