Webinar: “Financing gender-responsive social protection”

Organisers:

UK Department for International Development, DFID

The Social Protection Inter-Agency Cooperation Board (SPIAC-B)’s Joint Statement to this year’s UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) calls on governments and partners to “invest in financing gender-responsive social protection systems, to extend their coverage and adequacy”. In its Agreed Conclusions, the CSW urges stakeholders to “Take steps to significantly increase investment to close resource gaps…” and to optimise “fiscal expenditures to extend social protection coverage”.

Why do the levels of resources spent on social protection matter to gender equality? How does the social protection financing “mix” (e.g. type of tax, other revenue etc.) matter to women’s outcomes? What are the main challenges, opportunities and initiatives underway on financing gender-responsive social protection?

This webinar brings together leading experts to discuss the implications for women’s outcomes and gender equality of:

the options for securing adequate levels of social protection financing – both contributory and non-contributory;
alternative social protection financing instruments; and
related challenges, such as existing gender inequalities in the world of work and the explicit/implicit gender bias in existing tax and spending policies.

The webinar will also discuss revenue-expenditure links and the role of gender budgeting initiatives in gender-responsive social protection financing.

Speakers:

Evelyn Astor, Economic and Social Policy Advisor, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Lisa Kolovich, Economist Africa Department, International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Flora Myamba, Independent expert on social protection in Africa

Moderator:

Francesca Bastagli, Head of Social Protection and Social Policy, Overseas Development Institute, ODI

Language: English

Register: online.

This webinar is part of a webinar series around the sixty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63), that took place in New York from 11 to 22 March 2019.

The Social Protection and Gender Equality webinar series is part of a wider ODI project on social protection and gender equality supported by the UK’s DFID. For more details on the project see the ODI website (odi.org)