A Gendered Analysis of the Social Protection Network in ... - CISAS

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highlights that “gender-sensitive development strategies contribute significantly to economic growth as well as to equity objectives” (Bamberger et al 2001: 3 emphasis added). While noting that equality should be a “development objective in its own right” (World Bank 2001b: 1) the newfound interest in gender may then be seen to have an ‘efficiency’ rather than an ‘equity’ basis. This may result in an emphasis not only on economic growth gains, but on macro level economic gains. This means that the individual costs of such gains, and the extent to which such gains accrue to the individuals who have contributed to them, are largely ignored. Such an approach may use women to gain macro level growth goals, while not improving women’s micro level situations, or while reducing their well being, as was the case with the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the past (see Elson 1995). Even when women gain financially in this scenario the narrow economic focus means that other possible costs may be ignored, as for example when women’s incomes increase via waged labour in a factory that at the same time puts at risk their health. Accepting that women’s relative poverty is experienced as social not just economic inequality means that an improvement in the economic situation does not necessarily bring about a decline in ‘poverty’. A recent review of PRSPs (see Zuckerman 2001; 2002) notes a further conceptual problem in that those PRSPs that have attempted to include gender have taken a Women in Development (WID) rather than a Gender and Development (GAD) approach. The WID approach sees the ‘problem’ of development for women is their exclusion from the process (see Suanders 2002 for discussion). The proposed inclusion of women in development has tended to focus on their incorporation into education and formal sector employment. What WID does not do is critique the development process itself, seeing inclusion as having purely positive ‘development’ outcomes. It also does not consider the underlying reasons for women’s exclusion and as such the unequal power relations on which it is based remain unchallenged. In contrast a GAD approach starts from an analysis of existing gender roles and relations and seeks to challenge them. In terms of the Nicaraguan PRSP, no specific proposals around gender are included in the PRSP, but it does include specific references to women. Where mentioned, women are presented as mothers, in both their caring and reproductive roles, and also as ‘victims’ of male abandonment and violence. In contrast very little mention is made of women as producers and income generators. Women’s fertility is also central within the Nicaraguan PRSP, since population growth may effectively cancel out any economic growth gains. The focus not only places the responsibility for reproduction with the woman alone, it also highlights the need for ‘responsible’ reproduction as targets such as improving access to family planning for ‘women with a partner’ suggests. Although women are the specific target of fertility programmes, more generally they are included in the strategy as the means by which specific targets can be reached – the mechanism by which goods and services can be provided to the family and more specifically children. Civil society has been analysing the PRSP process since the beginning (see CCER 2001; Quirós Víquez 2002). A gendered analysis of the PRSP process has also been on going and the shortcomings of the final policy document have been presented both nationally and internationally (see Quirós Víquez et al 2002). However, to date little attention has been paid to these evaluations and pilot projects have gone ahead without taking into account the concerns raised. The Social Protection Network, the key policy component of the social safety nets pillar, is a prime example of this. 2
Social Safety Nets As debates around the real ability for economic growth to reduce poverty and inequality continue (see Dollar and Kray 2000; and Weisbrot 2000; Oxfam 2000 for debate), it appears that it has been accepted that economic growth will not instantly ‘trickle down’ to the most vulnerable and there is a the need for the protection of vulnerable groups via social safety nets. The Nicaraguan PRSP states that ‘special protection’ must be afforded to children under five years of age and other particularly vulnerable groups, such as ‘abused women’, the disabled and the aged (Gobierno de Nicaragua 2001:34). Social protection in this context takes the form of a transfer of financial and in kind resources (in general food or food vouchers) to those selected as especially ‘needy’. The most fundamental criticism of this welfarist approach is that the ‘protection’ of the most vulnerable does nothing to change the root causes of their vulnerability. Emerging from criticisms of defining poverty as income or consumption, and in recognition that the relationship between income or consumption level and other forms of deprivation such as environmental risks, crime, violence, is often weak, the concept of vulnerability evolved as one attempt to encompass more subjective elements of wellbeing into official discourses (see McIlwaine 2002 for further discussion). Vulnerability was considered useful within the development context as a dynamic concept in relation to the concept of poverty that is static and describes only the situation of people at a particular point in time. Although the poor may be vulnerable, and the vulnerable poor, the two are distinct concepts and vulnerability and poverty cannot be used interchangeably. The overall focus of the PRSP is poverty, more explicitly the PRSP highlights that ‘top priority’ has been assigned to the reduction of extreme poverty. In terms of social safety nets the focus is on the protection of vulnerable groups, however, the PRSP also states that social programs will be crucial for reducing extreme poverty (Gobierno de Nicaragua 2001:24). This suggests that social programmes are being used to fulfil more than one aim, or rather that the real aim is not that which is stated. In the short term the priority is the reduction of extreme poverty in line with international development goals. Resources will be dedicated to moving those below the extreme poverty line, over this line. 3 What this means in practice is that while the numbers in extreme poverty may go down, the numbers in poverty will rise, since these resources are not sufficient to move the extreme poor out of poverty. Moreover the change is not sustainable. The notion of vulnerability accepts that people’s situations change and can be changed. It does not then focus on the resources available to different groups of people to describe their actual position within a society, but to provide insights into how people may use those resources to change their situation. This focus is on assets and asset ownership (Moser, 1996: 24) where assets are defined as labour, human capital, productive assets (such as land and housing), household relations (focusing on income pooling and consumption sharing), and social capital (referring to the capacity to make claims at the inter-household level within communities based on social ties). The dynamic of vulnerability rests on the strategies adopted by the poor to withstand shocks through diversifying and mobilising their asset base (see McIlwaine 2002 for further discussion). Welfare type programmes of giving money or food to those in a ‘vulnerable’ 3 In Nicaragua the1998 poverty line on which PRSP calculations were based was US$ 402.05 per year. The extreme poverty line for 1998 was estimated at US$ 212.22. 3
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A Gendered Analysis of the Social Protection Network in ... - CISAS

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