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Social Protection and Gender: Policy, Practice, and Research

  • Publication | 2026
Global Food and Nutrition Security

This chapter reviews evidence on gender and social protection in low- and middle-income countries, synthesising nine recent reviews (304 papers). Social assistance, especially cash transfers, shows consistent positive impacts on women's health, economic outcomes, empowerment and protection from intimate partner violence; childcare provision strongly boosts women's labour force participation, while evidence on social insurance remains scarce. Promising design features include targeting women, complementary programming and replacing conditionalities with soft nudges. The authors call for expanding social care and insurance and integrating gender into climate- and conflict-responsive social protection. Existing reviews agree on the following points to increase positive gender impacts:

  • Designate women as beneficiaries and build community acceptance for this design decision
  • Make benefits unconditional and of sufficient value
  • Pair financial transfers with complementary services tailored to local needs, such as nutrition counseling, agricultural training, business development grants or life-skills training 
  • Implement in ways which remove practical gendered barriers to participation a d maximize inclusion / agency
  • Conduct pre-program gender assessments and monitor gendered operational components
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Authors
Hidrobo, M., Peterman, A., Kumar, N., Lambon-Quayefio, M., Roy, S., Gilligan, D.O. & Paz, F./ eds. Hanna & Olken
Geographic coverageGlobal
Available from

09 Jun 2026

Knowledge service | MetadataGlobal Food and Nutrition Security | Sustainable Food SystemsGender Equality and Food Systems | Gender policyliterature review
Digital Europa Thesaurus (DET)gender-sensitive aidsocial protectiongender equality
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