Knowledge sharing actualize resistance towards gendered inequality within the structure of social protection systems.
Cookson ’23, (Tara Patricia, Assistant Professor of Gender, Development, and Global Public Policy @ University of British Columbia, Nina Ebner, Doctorate @ University of British Columbia, author, feminist geographer, Yardain Amron, University of Columbia, Canada, Graduate Degree in Human Geography, Kritika Kukreja, University of British Columbia, Canada, “Social protection systems and gender: A review of the evidence”, Feminist Economics, p. 10-11, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14680181231180507 // MZ)
A paramount but under-studied institutional issue is the financing of social protection systems from a gender perspective. In a reflection on lessons learned in the Caribbean, Iyahen (2017) notes that economic stagnation and high debt burdens undercut opportunities for much-needed investments in gender-responsive social protection systems, and that under such constraints, knowledge sharing spaces that bring together gender equality advocates with high-level policy decision-makers are critical. Another study looking at 28 OECD countries found that women did not benefit at the same rate as men from stimulus packages following the 2008–2009 financial crisis due to sectoral segregation; moreover, cuts to social protection deepened women’s unpaid care burden, making them less able to take advantage of employment opportunities where these existed (Kushi and McManus, 2019). A call was issued for studies exploring how to finance gender-responsive social protection systems in the context of increasing labour informality, tax avoidance and capital flight (Bastagli and Hunt, 2020). Few studies explicitly addressed the issue of coordination of national social protection systems with other policy areas. One of these was the Rubery (2015) article on social protection and labour policy discussed above. Another identified a need for coordination between social protection systems and infrastructure – principally access to water – in order to address the gendered impacts of climate change (Mushunje and Sewpaul, 2018). Women interviewed reported that as men migrated out of rural communities, women were faced with managing crops; while they had diversified their income streams where possible, they identified a need for social assistance and consistent irrigation to prevent food insecurity during periods of drought.