Driving gender-responsive social protection approaches: preliminary lessons from a retrospective analysis

Written by Ecorys UK, Itad and OTT, with funding from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

 

The Gender Responsive Social Protection (GSP) programme is a five-year initiative funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). It aims to enhance outcomes for the most marginalised women and girls and address the gap in policy and practice on the integration of gender and social protection approaches.

Ecorys UK and Itad are undertaking an independent formative evaluation of the programme in three stages.

Stage one – a retrospective analysis – found that despite a challenging context, the GPS programme:

• has made positive contributions to raising the profile of gender-responsive social protection in its three partner institutions – FCDO, the World Bank and UNICEF,  
• has increased demand for gender-responsive social protection in areas within partner institutions,
• has provided strategic technical assistance to influence programme design in various country offices, and
• has supported policy dialogue on gender-responsive social protection in countries.

Given these gains, this article shares 5 findings and lessons from the evaluation that we hope will be useful for others working in gender-responsive social protection programming.

 

1. A ’dual’ approach to technical assistance and knowledge exchange and learning (KEL) could be an effective model for multi-partner evidence-to-policy programmes.

The GSP programme partners provide technical assistance to lower- and lower-middle-income countries through different mechanisms. At the same time, programme research will be used to inform technical assistance practice, as well as evidence-based gender-responsive social protection policies and planning within and beyond the programme.

Early evidence suggests that this KEL-technical assistance dual approach is an effective model for multi-partner evidence-to-policy programmes.

A particularly successful example was the Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) component of the Social Protection Approaches to Covid-19 (SPACE) technical assistance service (funded by FCDO, GiZ, and DFAT). SPACE-GESI provided a robust combination of technical assistance and KEL, merging direct country engagement (advice and support based on the specific needs of country offices), publications (framing documents, analysis and guidance, policy briefs) and learning events.

A new Social Protection Technical Assistance, Advice and Resources (STAAR) facility that has been modelled on the successful SPACE-GESI technical assistance-KEL approach will start operating in 2022.

 

2. Identifying specific and shared goals for KEL is likely to drive greater impact.

KEL between programme partners is a central plank of the GSP programme design to enhance outcomes and influence. The programme developed a KEL strategy and a cross-partner working group.

The GSP programme components are increasingly coming together to work more integrally, particularly through knowledge exchange and learning. KEL is therefore crucial to ensure the GSP components add up to more than the sum of their parts in order to exchange evidence, learning and practice to drive more deliberate gender responsive social protection approaches in each institution and among their stakeholders.

At the same time, the programme’s KEL ambitions must remain realistic in relation to the capacity and bandwidth for joint work by partners and allow space for partners to be responsive to opportunities as they arise.

The evaluation found that it would be helpful to have a stronger vision of what KEL success looks like for the programme. This would help align partners around shared goals and enable closer collaboration to achieve more ambitious programme level results.

 

3. Funding gender specialist posts within organisations has been instrumental to achievements.

The energy, commitment and dynamism of individuals acting in key roles within UNICEF, the World Bank and the FCDO have been a driving force behind programme gains. This illustrates the value of placing key human resources in strategic places.

The creation of the Social Protection and Gender Advisor positions in UNICEF and The World Bank helped draw attention to gender responsive social protection within the organisations.  

The advisors have also delivered on their specific mandate to ensure that gender features in all relevant discussions on social protection across different teams, as well as supporting country staff to introduce a gender focus.

The individuals recruited for these roles are not only technically strong, but they are also proactive, engaged, able to build relationships with other staff and identify opportunities to introduce and drive gender in social protection forward.

 

4. Leveraging existing social protection mechanisms to increase gender responsiveness: the Rapid Social Response (RSR) ‘Gender Window’ at the World Bank.

The World Bank RSR grant facility is a useful example of how an existing mechanism can be leveraged to drive greater integration of gender in existing operations. The grant has been operating since 2009. In 2018, with GSP programme funding, the World Bank set up a Gender Window under this facility.

The Gender Window supports projects that can help reduce gender gaps and boost socioeconomic outcomes for women and girls by developing and promoting gender-smart social protection policies, systems and programmes to address the multiple sources of vulnerability and disadvantage that limit women’s and girls’ outcomes and opportunities.

79% of RSR Gender Window grants awarded to date are linked to wider Bank lending operations, which have the potential to bolster the gender focus of larger operational lending projects.

The profile of gender-responsive social protection at the World Bank has been significantly raised in the past two years through the GSP programme. There has been high demand for these Gender Window grants from the Bank’s Task Team Leaders, which suggests a growing interest in raising the visibility of gender in social protection projects and programming by the Bank.

As a result of this work gender has been integrated into the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice’s new five-year strategy refresh (the Compass). There is also an opportunity to influence the Bank's Gender Action Plan through evidence generated by GSP programme supported actions.

 

5. A Gender-Responsive Age-Sensitive Social Protection (GRASSP) research framework is proving useful for defining gender integration into programmes.

The GRASSP research programme (led by UNICEF’s Office of Research, Innocenti) aims to strengthen the gender-responsiveness of social protection systems by building a robust evidence base on what works, how, and why, to enhance results for women and girls.

As part of the GSP programme, GRASSP research is set out to provide robust evidence and research to support operations, strengthening interventions and technical responses.

A key GRASSP output so far is its conceptual framework that is already proving useful as a mechanism to understand and improve the integration of gender into social protection programmes.

GSP partners, academics and researchers have started to use the framework in different areas such as shock-responsive social protection, gender sensitive Covid-19 responses and climate issues. It has also helped build momentum toward a shared programme-level conceptual and analytical framework.

Innocenti  is now moving forward with GRASSP research to be conducted in the following countries: Tanzania, Ethiopia, DRC, Burkina Faso, Mexico, Uruguay. It will be important to explore how and in what ways this research informs policy and practice, and how other programme partners draw on evidence generated to support their TA.

 

Next steps

The evaluation is now collecting data for Stage two. Through case studies, the evaluation will explore in greater depth the contributions that technical assistance provided by partner institutions has made to gender responsive social protection in the focus countries.

It will also examine whether the programme’s research and additional evidence products have been able to reach relevant stakeholders within partner institutions and beyond, and how they are being used to inform policy and programming.

 

For more information about the evaluation, contact [email protected].