ILO, in collaboration with Gallup, surveyed men and women in 2016 to understand their perceptions about women and work. The results, based on interviews with nearly 149,000 adults in 142 countries and territories, suggest that women might find support in their quest for productive employment and decent work coming...

This brief looks at the factors that need to be considered while designing and implementing gender-sensitive social protection...

El Panorama Laboral 2015 de América Latina y el Caribe advierte que se registra un “cambio de tendencia” en los indicadores de empleo, con un deterioro en la situación laboral de las mujeres y los jóvenes e indicios de que podría estar subiendo la informalidad a través de “una...

Over two million women and girls with disability live in Australia – that’s approximately 20 percent of all women and girls. Like everyone else, we all have different lives and experiences. We also have different personal experiences of disability. As a group, however, women and girls with disability experience...

This report provides the latest ILO data on women’s position in labour markets, examines the factors behind these trends and explores the policy drivers for transformative change. The report provides a picture of where women stand today in the world of work and how they have progressed over the...

How do conflict, disaster and employment all tie into social protection for women? In this video, Priti Darooka from the Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights discusses the need for intersectional analysis when talking about universal, rights-based social...

Cash transfer programmes have been implemented in many countries as a key component of their national social protection floors and because these programmes provide a modest but regular income to poor households, they have the potential to reduce poverty and to enhance women’s economic empowerment. However, there have been...

Social policy is fundamental to the quest for social justice, women’s rights and gender equality. Defined broadly as a set of public interventions that affect the welfare and well-being of citizens, social policy is typically understood to cover issues such as income security, health, housing and education. It is...

Twenty years after the landmark Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and at a time when the global community is defining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the post-2015 era, the international consensus on the need to achieve gender equality seems stronger than ever before. Empowering women and...

This paper documents the pervasiveness of women’s lack of income security in old age across a large number of countries, but also points to a number of important policy measures that can be taken to address gender pension gaps. It focuses on how pension systems interact with other social...

A feminist social protection programme recognises and enhances women’s identity as citizens and enables them to assume the roles they choose and fulfil the obligations they value. It is an approach that defines, targets and alleviates poverty in accordance with the views, priorities and experiences of the women beneficiaries...

This publication summarizes existing knowledge on the impact of cash transfers on women. These transfers are of relevance for gender equality, first, because as a group, women spend fewer years in paid employment than men, receive lower wages, and live longer. All three differences increase women’s risks of poverty....

This collection examines the human rights to social security and social protection from a women’s rights perspective. The contributors stress the need to address women’s poverty and exclusion within a human rights framework that takes account of gender. The chapters unpack the rights to social security and protection and...

Summary In 1991, the Philippines delegated responsibility for “people’s health and safety” to the local level. In exercise of this power, an executive order 003 (“EO 003”) was issued in Manila, in 2000 which declared that the city would take an “affirmative stand on pro-life issues”. In response to...

A comprehensive approach to social policy that combines universal access to social services with social protection through contributory and noncontributory transfer systems is the best way to realize economic and social rights for all without discrimination. Currently, only 27 per cent of the world’s population enjoys full access to...

The communication represented the first instance of maternal mortality to be addressed by the international system of human rights, and examined accountability of health provision, in relation to compounding forms of discrimination. The victim was a poor woman of Afro-Brazilian ethnicity. The ethnic, socio-economic and gender factors were widely...

Consequences of childbirth led to a medical condition that would temporarily prevent rigorous physical activities, and subsequently have implications for the complainant’s work duties upon returning to Plan International Benin after maternity leave, due to the necessity of daily motorcycle travel. During extended maternity leave, she was dismissed on...

This case addressed the circumstances of thirty-three women who had been dismissed from various forms of employment on the basis of being pregnant. Article 53 of the Political Constitution of the Republic of Colombia allows for the direct application of international law by domestic legal bodies. Ratified conventions and...

Summary The present report highlights the importance of social protection measures in the Millennium Development Goals agenda. It also stresses that social protection measures designed, implemented and evaluated within the framework of a rights-based approach are more likely to ensure the achievement of the Goals and to result in...

This report focuses on cash transfer programmes (CTPs) from a human rights perspective. CTPs are non-contributory programmes  providing payments in the form of cash to individuals or households. The primary objective of  CTPs is to increase the real income of beneficiaries in order to enable a minimum level of  consumption within...

Social protection programmes that mainstream the inclusion of women require policy makers  to assess the underlying causes of exclusion, and take deliberate measures to address women’s gender-specific risks and vulnerabilities. For example, States must pay particular attention to eligibility criteria and targeting methods used to ensure that the programme...

Summary: Four male applicants, above the age of 60 but below 65, mounted a constitutional challenge to Section 10 of South Africa’s Social Assistance Act 13 of 2004 and the relevant Regulations, which set the age for accessing an old age grant at 60 for women and 65 for...

Any element of social policy which hopes to be successful needs to take gender equality into account. This is true for social protection systems, and there has been good work done on this, notably by the ILO and others. This consideration of gender-sensitive social protection systems can be taken...

The good and the bad: summarizing the evidence on social protection and gender equality Social protection programmes with conditionalities have undoubtedly connected with issues of women’s rights to equality. Indeed, the achievements of conditional cash transfers are proven and tangible, especially for women and girls, who are disproportionately at...

Is the empowerment of women through conditional cash transfers illusory as women are ‘empowered’ by these programmes only as the nodal points receiving cash for the family and not as independent persons with their own economic, social and cultural rights? First, it is important to distinguish between the positive...