Transforming gender constraints in the agricultural sector: The potential of social protection programmes

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Transforming gender constraints in the agricultural sector: The potential of social protection programmes Nicola Jonesa, Rebecca Holmesa, Elizabeth Presler-Marshallb, Maria Stavropouloua a b

Overseas Development Institute, 203 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8NJ, United Kingdom chapel hill, North Carolina, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O

A BS T RAC T

Keywords: Gender Agriculture Social protection Empowerment

Gender inequality continues to constrain women's opportunities in the agricultural sector, both in terms of achieving food security and increasing agricultural productivity. However, investment in gender-responsive programming which promotes women's empowerment can help to overcome these constraints. This article discusses experiences in social protection programming design and implementation with respect to gender equality, food security and agricultural productivity: we find that while a large part of social protection programming remains focused on supporting women's domestic and care roles and responsibilities, there have also been important advances in thoughtful programming which supports more transformative changes in women's roles as producers. These types of programmes typically recognise the multiple risks and vulnerabilities that women face, both in their reproductive and productive roles, and aim to overcome these through integrated programming combining support for basic needs as well as broader empowerment goals.

1. Introduction It is increasingly recognised that gender inequality is strongly linked to food insecurity. It is estimated that worldwide, women and girls represent 60% of those who are undernourished, and national hunger rates correlate strongly with gender inequality rates (von Grebmer et al., 2009; WFP, 2009). Moreover, pervasive gender inequality also has detrimental effects on productivity: research shows that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, yields on their fields would increase by 20–30% (FAO, 2011 ). Over the past two decades the design and implementation of social protection policies and programmes have increasingly supported food security and agricultural productivity goals for the poorest households. Through different social protection tools – such as public employment programmes, subsidies or transfers (income, in-kind, agricultural inputs) – social protection can play important roles in protecting household income and smoothing consumption, especially in times of crisis or seasonal stresses; preventing or mitigating the impacts of shocks through social insurance schemes; supporting productivity by alleviating financial and productive constraints in the agricultural sector and investing in productive activities; and transforming or empowering individuals and households to remove discriminatory barriers to owning productive assets and promoting linkages with complementary services. What is much less understood is how social protection programmes advance women's empowerment and tackle gender inequalities within the agricultural sector. This article seeks to address this gap, drawing on findings from a review of the literature as

well as the authors own primary research in 10 countries across Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa (see Holmes and Jones, 2013 ). We begin by discussing the conceptual linkages between gender roles and responsibilities, food security, agricultural productivity and the mediating role that social protection programmes can have. We then turn to an overview of the evidence base on the strengths and weaknesses of social protection programme design and implementation with respect to gender, food security and agricultural productivity. Due to data availability, this discussion largely focuses on social assistance programmes. We conclude by recommending key areas for further attention if the transformative role of social protection programming is to be realised for women and their communities in the agricultural sector. 1.1. Conceptualising linkages between gender relations, food security, agricultural productivity and social protection Access to social protection programmes can be particularly important for women given that gender discrimination continues to affect not only women's own nutrition and food security needs, but also their agricultural productivity. Understanding the ways in which gender inequality pervades the agricultural sector means recognising that women and men experience risk and vulnerability differently, they have different coping strategies available at their disposal to manage risks and empowerment is key to increasing resilience. Women's roles and responsibilities – such as a dominant responsibility for domestic tasks and childcare, women's lower status in the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2016.09.004 Received 31 March 2016; Received in revised form 3 August 2016; Accepted 24 September 2016 Available online xxxx 2211-9124/ © 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Please cite this article as: Jones, N., Global Food Security (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2016.09.004

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The next section looks at the evidence from programming experience in practice.

household and community and limited decision-making and bargaining power – mean that women and men often experience different levels of vulnerability to the same shocks and stresses (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2011). For example, ill health tends to have a disproportionate impact on women as women are affected by their own illness but also have responsibility for looking after sick family members (Ibid.). Women and men are also vulnerable to different types of shocks and stresses (Ibid.). For example, the death of a women's husband can lead to a loss of her assets, such as land, because of discriminatory property rights or laws (Peterman, 2010). Women and men also have different abilities to withstand shocks and stresses. Women have less access to productive assets and resources, are concentrated in low-wage casual employment and access different social networks which undermines their resilience to cope with stresses and shocks (OECD, 2012). For instance, women typically have less access to irrigation or water-harvesting methods to reduce the effects of drought (World Bank et al., 2009) and fewer women have insurance to mitigate the effects of extreme weather or ill health (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2011). As such, women and men employ different coping strategies, and in times of crisis underlying gender biases may mean that assets belonging to women or female-headed households are more vulnerable to distress sale than those belonging to men, having long-term effects on asset accumulation and management over time. Women’s assets (such as jewellery or small livestock) may also be sold first, as in some contexts they are more liquid (Dillon and Quiñones, 2010). The flip side of vulnerability is resilience, and this is strongly interconnected with women's empowerment – a prerequisite for women to be able to reduce their vulnerability to shocks and stresses and build resilient and sustainable livelihoods in the rural sector. Recognising the multiple aspects of empowerment, Kabeer (1999) suggests a three-pronged approach to understanding the complex dimensions of empowerment: changes in women's access and control over resources, improved opportunities for agency, and ultimately enhanced wellbeing outcomes. Women's empowerment is thus central to improving food security and agricultural productivity at the household and community level – from women's improved access to and control over resources, such as access to agricultural inputs and assets, to changes in their ability to exercise voice and decision-making, such as over household food and income. However, it is increasingly understood that simply increasing women's access to economic resources does not automatically translate into greater decision-making or bargaining power (Das et al., 2013). Instead, integrated approaches which increase women's access to economic resources in combination with progress in other areas of women lives, such as legal ownership of assets, decision-making on productive assets and increased tenure security, have important positive effects on women's productivity and empowerment (Santos et al., 2013). As such, social protection has a potentially important role to play in contributing to food security and agricultural productivity in a genderresponsive way. Social protection can address inequalities in the agricultural sector if adequate attention is paid to the different types of vulnerability and risks women and men face and if they can contribute to empowering women as producers, not simply reinforcing women's reproductive and domestic roles and responsibilities as consumers. Table 1 below highlights the pathways through which social protection can support food security and agricultural productivity in a gender-responsive way, through reducing gender inequalities and/or promoting women's empowerment. The Table highlights that social protection programmes can contribute to the three spheres of empowerment discussed above: access to and control over resources (through, for example, cash transfers which increase women's access to income and financial services and targeted inputs), agency (through, for example, targeted income transfers and training which increase decision-making and improved nutritional practices), and outcomes (e.g. improved household food security and agricultural productivity).

2. Gender, social protection and agriculture in programming While social protection programming has, following Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler (2004), primarily focused on protective and preventive objectives, it has not entirely overlooked promotive and more transformative goals. These include not only an increasingly broad range of factors that fall into the ‘resource’ component of Kabeer's three-pronged conceptualisation of empowerment, but also efforts to promote her second prong, ‘agency’. We discuss here a range of social protection interventions and how these programmes support food security and women's agricultural productivity. We note that unsurprisingly while programme design is becoming increasingly innovative in terms of addressing some of the key vulnerabilities that poor rural women face, implementation often lags considerably due to limited awareness of design provisions, capacity and budget constraints (Holmes and Jones, 2013 ). Moreover, while many programmes either target women in general or female-headed households as part of their programme design, we also discuss the limitations of such an approach and what other considerations need to be taken into account to ensure gender-sensitive programming. 2.1. Supporting women to smooth household consumption In urban and rural areas alike, social protection programmes have proven to be an effective way of reducing poverty, increasing household savings, and reducing the need to resort to adverse coping strategies. Given that women hold primary responsibility for day-to-day running of the household, including providing food and arranging for children's education, improving their access to resources is critical to building a sense of empowerment. While the consumption-smoothing approach primarily addresses women as consumers and beneficiaries rather than producers, it has a variety of longer-term implications for women's empowerment – not least the reduction in anxiety and concomitant increase in feelings of hope, happiness and satisfaction reported by many qualitative studies (Handa et al., 2009; OPM, 2013a). For example, Kenya's Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP) – which aims to provide a safety net in the form of an unconditional cash transfer for chronically poor pastoralists in four counties – has increased food consumption, as well as spending on healthcare and education. It has also reduced the likelihood of households falling into the bottom income decile and enabled them to avoid distress sales of livestock by facilitating savings and access to credit (OPM et al., 2013; HSNP, 2014). Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), principally a public works programme that reaches more than 7 million people, has also had important impacts on consumption patterns and coping strategies. For example, Holmes and Jones (2013) report that it has improved food intake and reduced distress sales of assets. Old age pensions are also important to facilitate financial independence and protect rural women from destitution, especially important as women on average live longer than men and widows are at high risk of losing their land and their homes. In India, for example, pensions have enabled widows to contribute to household income (HelpAge India, 2009) . 2.2. Increasing women's control over household spending There is also evidence that when social protection programmes target women as beneficiaries, those women are able to increase their bargaining power within the household and their control over household spending (van den Bold et al., 2013; Bhagowalia et al., 2012; Soares and Silva, 2010). In Mexico, for example, the Oportunidades programme, which targets women as CCT beneficiaries, was found to strengthen women's financial decision-making and financial security 2

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Table 1 Conceptual linkages between social protection, gender and agriculture.

• • • • • •

Type of social protection intervention

Social protection objectives

Contribution to agricultural productivity

Gender inequalities and empowerment addressed

Protective social protection (social assistance) Cash or in-kind transfers Subsidised access to social services Food transfers, including school feeding Preventive social protection Insurance Livelihood diversification Savings clubs; funeral societies

Meet basic needsSmooth income and consumptionSupport access to basic services (e.g. health and education)

Providing a minimum level of income can reduce risk (real and perceived) in agricultural activitiesReduce use of adverse risk-coping strategies such as distress sales of assets

Prevent shocks pushing households into, or further into, poverty

Reduces use of adverse risk-coping strategies such as selling productive assets, migrationMitigates risks in the agricultural sector (e.g. weather, loss of livestock, etc.)

Promotive social protection

Increase household income/inputs/ assetsProvide employmentCreate community infrastructure

Increased household income and asset base can alleviate credit and savings constraints, and be invested in productive activitiesAccess to inputs and assets can directly increase agricultural productivityInjects resources into local economyCreates community infrastructureIncreases access to marketsPromotes off-farm investment in microenterprises

Transformative social protection Promotion of rights (including women's rights, minority rights, etc.) Anti-discrimination campaigns and awareness-raising

Address structural inequalities by addressing underlying social vulnerabilities and discriminatory practices and behaviours

Promotes equitable access to productive resources such as landReduces discrimination in access to and ownership of productive resources or labour opportunities

Common complementary activities Skills and knowledge training Links to social programmes and services such as childcare, support to stop gender-based violence Links to economic programmes and services such as agricultural extension services, creation of associations or cooperatives

Enhance skills and knowledgeIncrease demand for /access to social and economic servicesAccess to social networks previously excluded from (e.g. farmers’ associations) and / or services

Improve skills and knowledge in the rural (e.g. off-farm) and agricultural sector to improve productivityPromote skills and knowledge related to social issues and rightsImprove access to services such as agricultural services, childcare services, health, education

Targeting social assistance to women can increase their control of income in the household, also increasing status and confidence in householdSmoothing income and consumption promotes food security and improved nutritional practices, typically regarded as women's responsibilities Few formal contributory social insurance mechanisms accessible to poor people (due to income constraints), especially womenWomen tend to be over-represented in informal savings and rotating credit schemes, mainly used for consumption and not productive investment Increased agricultural productivity through: * women’s access to financial services and productive resources* increased control/ decision-making over income, selfconfidence, respect in the household when transfers/subsidies targeted at women* equality in wagesReduces women’s time burdens, creates opportunities for women such as access to markets, create employment in productive activities or provision of social services Promotes women’s empowerment and access to productive assets, e.g. by changing discriminatory inheritance lawsPromotes women's equal access to labour markets, equal pay, access to and ownership of productive assets through awareness-raising of women's rights (e.g. informal level), policies, etc. Address limitations in women's skills, education levels in the off-farm and agricultural sectorImprove women's access to productive services, reduce time constraints, improve human capital development, improve production practicesIncrease women's empowerment, self-confidence, voice and agency, and ability to claim rightsPromote women's legal empowerment, collective voice and action

/asset/inputs transfers • Social inputs subsidies • Productive • Public works programmes

• • • • •

households tended to invest in extending agricultural activities and building up assets (ibid.). Moreover, evidence suggests that prevailing patriarchal gender norms continue to limit women's financial decisionmaking, even when programming has attempted to factor these into design. For example, in Kenya, even where women HSNP beneficiaries were initially found to control the transfer, with time, traditional gender norms were reasserted (OPM et al., 2013).

(Latapi and de la Rocha, 2004; Adato et al., 2000). Similar effects have been found for other cash transfer programmes in different contexts around the world (Bronzo, 2008; OPM et al., 2013; Valente, 2010; Wasilkowska et al., 2013). However, while programming increases women's control over spending, it does not, for the most part, change spending patterns, which tend to remain highly gendered. Specifically, while existing social protection programming allows women to invest more heavily in their children's human capital – feeding them a better diet and sending them to school more often – there is only limited evidence that it enables them to make the longer-term investments in production that would facilitate their exit from poverty (for programmes that do not directly target women but households or household heads more generally, evidence on the transformative potential of social assistance initiatives is limited for both men and women (e.g. Samson, 2015)). This may be in part due to individual preferences, as well as to the fact that expenditure patterns reflect dominant social norms and practices regarding property rights (Doss, 2011). Findings related to Ethiopia's PSNP are a case in point: female-headed households prioritised education, paying school registration fees and keeping their children in school as long as possible (Slater et al., 2006), while male-headed

2.3. Improving women's agricultural productivity Although there is a growing body of evidence that targeted social protection programmes can directly and indirectly improve agricultural productivity (Tirivayi et al., 2013), the gendered dimensions of these change pathways is poorly understood. One route, however, through which social protection can increase agricultural productivity is education and training, ranging from location-specific information on best practices in irrigation to basic literacy. Ethiopia's PSNP, for instance, has used public labour to build farmer training centres in each PSNP location; these have significantly enhanced women's access to agricultural extension services as well as non-farm adult education (Seyoum, 2012). 3

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production by giving households access to credit for agricultural inputs, a cash flow in lean times, and the ability to diversify into other livelihood options such as livestock or small-scale business (Jennings et al., 2013). Bangladesh has several programmes that promote women's access to savings and credit. For example, CFPR-TUP embeds its credit offerings to poor women in a larger ‘credit plus’ portfolio that includes a range of interventions from health insurance to rights-awareness training. Results thus far have been very positive, with 63% of participants joining or intending to join a regular microcredit programme after just 18 months (Ahmed, 2009).

As noted by Tirivayi et al. (2013), cash transfers and other social protection programmes can also directly increase agricultural productivity by encouraging investment and facilitating accumulation of assets. While these outcomes are dependent on the size, regularity and duration of the transfer – with larger, more regular and longerlasting transfers leading to more robust outcomes – programming can improve access to productive inputs such as seeds and fertiliser, and assets such as livestock or equipment; it can also alter labour patterns in ways that improve farming outputs – for example, through the reduction of time-poverty. Links to complementary programmes can also be important. In Ethiopia, for example – where PSNP participation was found to increase livestock holding considerably more after five years than after one year – access to credit and a livelihoods promotion programme had especially positive impacts on PSNP beneficiaries’ asset accumulation (Tirivayi et al., 2013). Likewise, Zambia's Child Grant Programme (CGP) and Malawi's Social Cash Transfer (SCT), a UCT aimed at ultrapoor, labour-constrained households, have significantly increased investment in land, livestock and farm implements (Tirivayi et al., 2013; AIR, 2013). There is also some nascent evidence which suggests that women – particularly those in female-headed households – may be especially likely to benefit from linkages between social protection and agriculture, perhaps because their smaller initial base increases the impact of even small transfers. For example, in Malawi, female-headed households benefiting from the Social Cash Transfer were more likely than male-headed households to accumulate livestock and agricultural tools (Covarrubias et al., 2012). Similarly, in Kenya, female-headed households participating in CT-OVC, especially those headed by widows, were particularly likely to increase their ownership of sheep and goats, as well as to invest in agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertiliser to increase their productivity (FAO, 2014; Asfaw et al., 2013). Likewise, in Bolivia, women pensioners receiving BONOSOL were more likely than their male peers to invest in seeds and fertiliser (Martinez, 2004 as cited in Tirivayi et al., 2013). However, despite evidence indicating that social protection programming can improve women's agricultural productivity, overall it appears that this linkage is underexploited (see for example Pavanello et al., 2016). Not only are transfers often too small and too irregular to facilitate longer-term investment, but because programmes aimed at the intersection of agriculture and social protection have tended to be gender blind, they have tended to under-serve women. For example, while agricultural extension services and training have the potential to significantly increase yields (as evidenced by Zimbabwe's PRP), female farmers are rarely included, with most training taken up by male farmers. Programmes that provide input subsidies are also largely taken up by male farmers. In Malawi, for example, women benefited far less than men from the Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme (Dorward et al., 2008).

2.5. Improving gender-responsive community infrastructure and assets Some social protection programmes explicitly recognise the linkages between infrastructure and women's empowerment and are supporting the development of broader gender-responsive community assets. These assets improve women's access to a variety of resources – some ‘hard’ resources, like water and fuel, and ‘soft’ resources, like time and safety (World Bank, 2009). Care must be taken, however, to ensure that projects designated ‘women's infrastructure’ have been designated as such by women. In Ethiopia, the PSNP specifically calls for priority to be given to projects that produce community assets that reduce women's work burden (Berhane et al., 2013). Examples include the construction of community water points and fuelwood sources to reduce women's time burden, and using public works labour to cultivate the land of labour-constrained female-headed households (Holmes and Jones, 2013; USAID, 2012). Similarly, Zambia's Food for Work programme, which was almost entirely taken up by women (as men typically refused to work for non-cash payments) built pit latrines in rural communities. Given the incidence of sexual violence, the latrines have helped to reduce the distance that women have to walk and thus their vulnerability to assault (Kabeer, 2008). One of the main difficulties facing asset creation programmes is the issue of choice – women and men tend to prioritise different types of infrastructure. Even where both sexes prioritise the same asset (e.g. roads) there can be critical differences in the types of roads they want. In Peru, for example, because women walk everywhere, they wanted footpaths rather than roads suitable for motor transport (Okola, 2011). Similarly, in India, where MGNREGA has been criticised for emphasising job creation over infrastructure development (Mahaptra et al., 2008), women beneficiaries have tended to favour healthcare, childcare, and sanitation projects. However, because they have limited access to decision-making fora, public works projects have tended to prioritise roads, water management, and tree plantation. Similarly, in Ethiopia – recognising that choice of public works infrastructure largely reflects women's low rate of representation in relevant committees – the government has recently diversified the list of acceptable PSNP assets to include schools and clinics, which women tend to prioritise in discussions (Holmes and Jones, 2013).

2.4. Improving women's access to financial services Another critical yet often overlooked vulnerability that prevents women maximising their productive capacities is their unequal access to financial services. While few financial programmes fall under the rubric of social protection, some social protection programmes that have adopted a more integrated approach have begun to weave credit and savings plans into their core offerings. When targeted at women, these interventions lead to significant improvements in food security and consumption (Dupas and Robinson, 2008; Stewart et al., 2010; as cited in Tirivayi et al. (2013)), demonstrating that increasing women farmers’ access to financial services has the potential to move beyond protective objectives towards more promotive and transformative impacts. In Zimbabwe, for example, one of the aspects of the PRP that was most valued by beneficiaries was the creation of internal savings and lending (ISAL) groups. Importantly, the ISALs complemented crop

2.6. Improving women's access to the labour market There is considerable evidence to suggest that social protection programming can facilitate households’ , and particularly women's, entry into the non-agricultural labour market, primarily by improving their access to capital and allowing them to rebalance time between agricultural and non-agricultural work (Tirivayi et al., 2013). This has a wide variety of implications for rural women's empowerment, ranging from increasing their access to resources to fostering greater agency. For example, a study of the South African pension system found that non-elderly adult family members were more likely to migrate for better remunerated urban work than their peers from non-pensioner households, as the pension helps grandparents to provide childcare to grandchildren and to finance costs of migration (Posel et al., 2004). 4

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beneficiaries to continue contributing to existing social networks, but did not significantly promote inclusion in new networks (OPM, 2014). Similar results were seen with Zimbabwe's HSCT (OPM, 2013b).

Across Africa, CTs are also facilitating women's engagement with the cash economy. For example, in Zambia, the CGP has enabled beneficiaries, especially women, to move out of agricultural wage labour – considered an activity of last resort – and into off-farm family businesses, which are better remunerated. Specifically, Daidone et al. (2014) found that the programme led to a 17% reduction in women's agricultural wage labour and significantly increased their permanent non-farm wage employment and earnings. It also reduced labour intensity in terms of days of agricultural labour undertaken by women, and increased the time men spent working on their own farms (AIR, 2013). Similar impacts have been found in Kenya, where women receiving the CT-OVC were 7% more likely to engage in petty trade such as selling farm produce or food items (Asfaw et al., 2013) and where women receiving the HSNP were more likely to have diversified incomes (OPM et al., 2013).

2.9. Measures to tackle care-related time poverty Social protection programming is also beginning to address women's time poverty which is often a key barrier to their economic and social empowerment. Recognising, as Quisumbing and Pandolfelli (2010) note, that women's reproductive work is one of the main reasons why they are often less productive than men (and are often unable to participate equally in some social protection programming), more recent public works programmes have been designed to foster women's inclusion. For example, in India, the MGNREGS public works programme was designed to include provision of crèche facilities at rural work sites if more than five children below the age of six were brought by their working mothers; it also suggested that a woman, paid an equal wage, should be employed to look after children. However, in practice actual provision of a crèche at work sites is very rare (Gupta, 2009; Jandu, 2008; Khera and Nayak, 2009). A survey in four northern Indian states (Pankaj and Tankha, 2010) found that only 28% of women with children under five brought them to the work site, whereas 62% left their children at home with older siblings or relatives and 10% left them without proper care. Zimbabwe's Protracted Relief Programme (PRP) also included a variety of elements directed at reducing women's care-related time poverty. For example, recognising that women typically bear the brunt of ill-health, regardless of whether they themselves are ill, the programme included among its interventions the provision of homebased care for people living with AIDS (Jennings et al., 2013).

2.7. Promoting women's legal empowerment Some social protection programmes with more transformative ambitions have integrated legal awareness and legal support into their bundled programming approach. In Viet Nam, for example, the National Targeted Programme for Poverty Reduction (NTP-PR), which explicitly targets poor and female-headed households, includes provision of legal aid to women. The programme runs activities to increase women's awareness of their legal rights and promote the implementation of related laws, such as the Land Law, which gives women access to land titles (Jones and Tran, 2010). The programme also includes the dissemination of information about women's rights and relevant laws at commune level through the development of information materials for the poor and mobile legal support teams (UNDP, 2009). Similarly, in Bangladesh, the CFPR-TUP programme provides women with information about their rights and relevant laws. Rights-awareness training includes modules on the legal age for marriage, the legal procedure for divorce, and punishment for giving/taking dowry. Programme evaluations have been positive. For example, while at the baseline, only 11% of women beneficiaries knew the minimum legal age for marriage, this proportion had increased to 31% by 2009 (Das and Shams, 2011).

2.10. Enhancing women's voice There is also a range of programming initiatives aimed at improving women's voice and agency through their inclusion in programme governance. In Peru, women are well represented on the project selection committees of the Rural Roads Project (Okola, 2011) and in Pakistan, the flagship CCT Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) is seeking to actively involve women beneficiaries through a social mobilisation pilot (ACT International, 2013). The pilot aims to develop women's committees at different administrative levels, training women to know their rights and enabling women's leaders to participate in monthly meetings, liaise with BISP local offices and other government agencies, and get involved in participatory monitoring activities (Naqvi, 2013). Similar efforts are underway in Bangladesh, where BRAC's CFPR-TUP programme enables women beneficiaries to participate in weekly meetings (at which the cash stipend is disbursed) and discuss problems related to their small businesses, health and social care (Holmes et al., 2010). Women's participation is, however, another area where implementation of programme goals has been challenging. For example, in India, the MGNREGA provides for the inclusion of women representatives in the Gram Sabha, social audit forums, and in state and central-level councils. It also suggests that the timing of the social audit forums should be arranged to maximise the involvement of women and marginalised communities. However, several studies have confirmed low rates of women's participation in these decision-making structures because of practical issues such as not being aware of when they were taking place, as well as long-standing cultural norms which prevent women from attending and speaking up in public forums (see, for instance, Khera and Nayak, 2009).

2.8. Strengthening women's social capital Given that informal networks are the ‘social glue’ of poor communities and, in most rural areas, continue to be the first and best line of defence in terms of financial and social support (Heemskerk et al., 2004), the role of social protection in facilitating women's participation in community events and networks may also buttress their access to resources and agency. In Ghana, for example, the LEAP cash transfer has been found to significantly increase the likelihood of beneficiaries (particularly female-headed households) having savings as well as their ability to cover the costs of gifts. Because gifting, particularly at funerals and other ceremonies, is a key component of community relationships, LEAP has helped poor women become integrated in a system they were previously excluded from. It has also helped them to enter, or re-enter, contribution-based groups such as rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) and burial societies (Handa et al., 2009; OPM, 2013a). These groups, which serve important social functions in many developing countries, also play twin financial roles that can be crucial for helping women increase their productivity: first, they allow and enforce savings for the unbanked; and second, they facilitate members’ regular access to larger sums of money than they could generate on their own, which can be crucial for investing in small business development. However, as is the case with improvements in women's access to financial services, there are limits to what small cash transfers can accomplish in terms of increasing women's social capital. In Lesotho, for example, the Child Grants Programme (CGP) cash transfer enabled

2.11. A graduation approach Although evidence is thin, programmes that include a graduation approach – and focus on eventual independence from programme 5

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support – may be more likely to promote women's exit out of poverty and away from their common roles of consumer/beneficiary to that of producer. However, careful planning is required for these approaches to work, including delineating between households that can graduate and those that cannot (due to age, illness, or other factors) (HLPE, 2012). While there is not yet a robust body of research, programmes focused on graduation typically include larger transfers, in order to enable households to protect their livelihoods from shocks and make the investments that over time promote more robust economic futures. They may also, as in the case of Zimbabwe's PRP, specifically target households with the potential for graduation – i.e., those that are less labour-constrained. Graduation criteria and timing vary and in many cases progress is spiral rather than linear, reflecting setbacks that result from drought or illness, for example (Jennings et al., 2013). More successful graduation approaches also appear to be founded on multi-stranded programming. For example, Bangladesh's CFPRTUP helped more than 90% of its phase I beneficiaries cross the poverty line in six years. It did so not only by tailoring graduation criteria to include children's school attendance, eating two meals a day, owning productive assets, having multiple income sources, and having access to safe drinking water and sanitary latrines, but by making sure that women were supported with benefits ranging from chickens to loans to rights training (Hashemi and Umaira, 2010).

objectives too. More transformative impacts are both rarer and smaller though, although there is also a growing body of evidence that social protection is facilitating the growth of women's empowerment and agency. Part of the problem is that cash or in-kind transfers remain too small and/or irregular. They fail to go far enough in terms of recognising the gender norms that limit women's access to productive inputs and resources, which means that gender-blind programmes such as fertiliser subsidies all too often benefit men only. To address this, there is growing consensus that in order to maximise productive and transformative programme impacts it is vital to weave together the different strands of support that address women's multiple vulnerabilities. There are myriad ways to accomplish this task, ranging from ensuring that infrastructure improvements meet women's needs, to addressing gender gaps in access to financial resources, to improving access to maternity care. Indeed, social protection programmes are increasingly looking for ways to improve synergies – both within their own purview and in conjunction with programmes in other sectors, such as agriculture and infrastructure. The development of integrated programming that supports not only women's access to productive resources but also supports women's agency is therefore vital in future social protection and agricultural programming. This may include providing beneficiaries with a bundle of programmes – some that fall under the category of core social protection schemes (such as cash transfers, educational vouchers, school feeding and crop insurance), and other complementary interventions, including rightsawareness education and credit extension (Holmes and Jones, 2013).

3. Conclusions This article has argued that progress towards food security and agricultural productivity is still constrained by gender inequality. Women face specific and intensified risks and vulnerabilities in the household and community as well as in the agricultural sector. The domestic and the economic spheres are inextricably linked, and gender inequalities continue to constrain women's ability to achieve household food security, the coping mechanisms at their disposal in the face of shocks and stresses, and the ability to pursue opportunities to increase agricultural productivity. Some of the key constraints women continue to face include inadequate and unequal access to assets (land and land rights), training, access to advisory and extension services, agricultural inputs (fertilisers, seeds, livestock, technology), credit and financial markets, low-decision making and – due to their care work responsibilities – lack of time. However, our analysis has also demonstrated that there is increasing evidence, from different regions of the world, that social protection programming is having positive impacts in reducing the vulnerability that women face in their day-to-day lives, on a number of levels. For instance, social protection interventions are improving women's access to financial resources and making progress towards their protective and preventive objectives. This is primarily being achieved through raising household income, improving family nutrition, increasing school enrolment and the uptake of maternal and child health services, and reducing the need for poor households to resort to harmful coping strategies. Women are benefiting from these programmes in several key ways. First, because they have primary responsibility for household management and care responsibilities (for children and elderly), including own-production agriculture in rural areas, programmes are helping women to meet their practical gender needs. Second, because many programmes disproportionately serve female-headed households (precisely because they are over-represented in populations of extremely poor, labour-constrained households), programme-driven poverty reduction outcomes are concentrated along gender lines. Finally, because the vast majority of cash transfer programmes reviewed here target women in male-headed households as direct beneficiaries, they are not only increasing impacts on human capital outcomes, but also supporting improvements in women's financial decision-making. However, programmes continue to reach women primarily as consumers and beneficiaries rather than producers, although there is some evidence that interventions are helping to achieve promotive

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