EGM/SPS/REPORT

November 2018

ENGLISH ONLY

UN Women
Sixty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 63)
‘Social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for gender
equality and the empowerment of women and girls’
New York, New York
13-15 September 2018

Report of the Expert Group

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The preparation of this report was led by Nana Akua Anyidoho and Eva Fodor, Co-Chairs of the
Expert Group Meeting. The Co-Chairs are sincerely grateful to all Expert Group Meeting
participants for their substantive contributions, especially acknowledging the support of Tara
Patricia Cookson in the drafting process.

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 Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4
Global context ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Strengthening linkages between social protection, public services, and infrastructure for gender
equality ..................................................................................................................................................... 6
Human rights principles ............................................................................................................................ 8

An enabling environment for gender equality in social protection, public services, and
infrastructure .................................................................................................................................. 9
Recommendations on institutional structures and social norms ........................................................... 10
Recommendations on financial sustainability ........................................................................................ 10
Recommendations on data and statistics ............................................................................................... 11

Social protection ........................................................................................................................... 11

Recommendations for the extension of social protection systems ....................................................... 12
Recommendations for the design and implementation of social protection systems ........................... 13
Recommendations for the sustainability of social protection systems .................................................. 13

Public services ............................................................................................................................... 14

Recommendations for gender-responsive public services ..................................................................... 15
Recommendations on public service workers’ rights ............................................................................. 15
Recommendations for the financing and cost of public services ........................................................... 16

Sustainable infrastructure ............................................................................................................ 16

Cross-sectoral recommendations for gender-responsive infrastructure ............................................... 17
Recommendations for gender-responsive, sustainable transportation systems ................................... 18
Recommendations for gender-responsive, sustainable energy systems ............................................... 19
Recommendations for gender-responsive, sustainable water and sanitation systems ......................... 19

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Introduction
This report is the outcome of an Expert Group Meeting on the priority theme of the 63rd Commission on
the Status of Women (CSW), Social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable
infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The 63rd CSW brings
together three thematic areas that are not always considered together, at least in the world of
policymaking. A growing body of evidence produced by feminist researchers across the globe strongly
indicates, however, that they cannot be viewed in isolation from one another. Coordinated and well-
funded systems of social protection, public services, and sustainable infrastructure are imperative to
achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment (SDG 5). In fact, they form the backbone of the
entire 2030 Agenda: from health and wellbeing (SDG 3) to quality education for all (SDG 4), from poverty
eradication (SDG 1) to the reduction of inequalities (SDG 10), and from decent work and inclusive
growth (SDG 8) to combating climate change (SDG 13).

Global context
In the nearly sixty-three years since the first Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was convened
at Lake Success, New York, women and girls have made significant progress towards the realization of
their rights. Through the provision of social pensions, cash transfers and other child-related benefits,
more women have access to social protection than ever before. More girls attend school, maternal
mortality rates are falling as women in rural places gain access to obstetric care, and women’s increasing
representation in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields means that the
walls around these traditionally “masculine” fields are slowly crumbling.

At the same time, however, the current economic, social, and political climate gives much cause for
concern. In the name of austerity, many advances in the provision of social protection and the extension
of public services are under threat of cutbacks, even as economic inequality between and within
countries is in fact growing: Following a decade of significant decline, poverty in Latin America is again
on the rise, 1 and rural-urban stratification persists; 2 poverty is increasingly concentrated in fragile
contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa where by 2050 86 percent of the world’s poor are projected to
reside; 3 and Indigenous peoples in high-income countries such as Canada, the US, and Australia are
reported to live in “third world conditions.” 4

These trends and conditions are not inevitable, nor so costly that they cannot be addressed. Indeed,
growing inequality occurs in the context of increasing corporate power and rampant tax evasion and

1 Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. (2018). Segundo informe anual sobre el progreso y los desafíos
regionales de la Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible en América Latina y el Caribe. (LC/FDS.2/3/Rev.1), Santiago.
2 Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. (2018). Social Panorama of Latin America, 2017 (LC/PUB.2018/1-
P), Santiago.
3 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (2018). Goalkeepers 2018 Data Report.
4 United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya (2013). “Statement upon conclusion of
the visit to Canada.”

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avoidance by the global elite. Resources do exist to finance gender-responsive social protection systems,
public services, and the infrastructure that connects women to them.

At the same time, in the global north and south, east and west, patriarchal, anti-liberal sentiments are
gaining a steely grip on state governments that trend towards authoritarianism. The result is a crack-
down on rights, democratic institutions and the civil society that is so vital to maintaining human
freedom, dignity, progress, and social justice. Of particular concern is an anti-gender ideology that seeks
to strip away the hard-earned progress that feminists have made in extending equal opportunities to
women, and celebrating differences in human identity and expression.

In this context, policy discourses and practices are promoted that would have women relegated to the
home, physically reproducing an isolated nation while a select group of elite men control the resources
and decision-making processes that shape private and public life. Where they do exist, social
protection—in particular social insurance programs—are implemented in such ways (for instance,
privileging non-migrant, middle-class, married, formally employed women with children) as to widen
inequalities between women across income, ethnic, racial and other dividing lines. Central to these
exclusionary politics is a rejection of evidence that demonstrates that ensuring women’s rights,
wellbeing, and participation is key to healthy, peaceful and prosperous families, economies, and
societies.

Major shifts are taking place in household structures, family dynamics, and the wider population, all of
which have significant implications for women. In many places, single-mothers are increasingly
responsible for covering the costs of raising healthy, productive children. A significant and growing
challenge is that the population of many countries in the Global North is ageing, and the available caring
workforce is insufficient to meet the rising care needs. This additional burden of care will fall on women,
who continue to provide the majority of care, even as policy choices that assign little or no pay to this
vital work perpetuate women’s experiences of material and time poverty.

Women’s informal work, in both rural and urban contexts (for instance, as family farm workers or as
part of the labor force of the informal economy) is often “invisible,” at least to policymakers. In these
cases, women are rarely extended the same social protections that cover workers in formal labor
markets, thus exposing them to poverty during their reproductive years and in old age. In some low-and
middle-income countries, these gendered dynamics of poverty are at least partially ameliorated by the
provision of non-contributory (tax-financed) child-related benefits and old-age pensions, but coverage
remains uneven.

The effects of uncaring economic and social policy choices are indeed far-reaching, leading people to
leave deprived rural regions in pursuit of economic opportunities and greater social freedoms in cities.
Young women and mothers migrate in search of work to support their families back home and, in doing
so, may lose access to their national social protection systems without gaining access to those in their
country of work and destination. Moreover, men’s migration, especially from rural areas, often
exacerbates women’s work burdens and may present further challenges if women’s access to social

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protection and public services is linked to finances, skills or social assets that are not available to them in
the absence of those men. Millions of other women attempt to escape conflict, disaster, poverty, and
the deleterious impacts of climate change on livelihoods by undertaking torturous journeys, some of
which end in camps in which social protection, public services, and infrastructure are infrequently
designed with women and girls’ bodies, responsibilities, and security in mind.

Despite these challenges, there is reason for hope and room for action. Feminist organizations, trade
unions, and women’s rights defenders are persistent in demanding that governments and private
corporations respect the fundamental principles of human rights and democracy, notably the rights of
women and all people to enjoy equal opportunities, irrespective of their gender, race, language, ability,
religion, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, or any other status. Nonetheless, states must
ultimately take responsibility for social protection, public services and sustainable infrastructure, by
providing these themselves and by regulating and monitoring non-state providers to ensure their
compliance with human rights principles and agreements.

Drawing on the lessons of women’s rights organizing and the evidence base of feminist research, this
CSW EGM report addresses three core areas where states must step up to ensure that we go forwards
instead of backwards, and that progress on the Sustainable Development Goals is made and benefits
both halves of the population. Social protection systems are key instruments that governments have to
buffer people from poverty in the face of unexpected hardship and exogenous shocks, and to promote
healthy, productive, egalitarian, and prosperous societies. However, feminist research has made clear
that effective social protection is much more than stand-alone, narrowly-targeted programs; gender-
responsive quality public services must be embedded within social protection systems in order for them
to function at full capacity. Likewise, sustainable infrastructure is needed to connect women to services,
markets and resources.

Strengthening linkages between social protection, public services, and

infrastructure for gender equality
There are many linkages between social protection systems, public services, and sustainable
infrastructure (see Figure 1). For instance, the efficacy of social protection programs depends on quality
and affordable healthcare services and the transport options required to arrive there; and girls’
educational attainment requires an adequate supply of qualified teachers, a decent work environment,
and sanitation facilities that enable menstrual hygiene management. Social protection, public services
and infrastructure must thus be designed and implemented in ways that reflect the realities of where
and how women live and work, and of their multiple roles. This requires coordination between sectors
in order to address women’s whole lives.

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Figure 1: Interconnections between the three focus areas 5

It is not only coordination that is required, however. In order for social protection systems, public
services, and infrastructure to serve all people equally, Sustainable Development Goal 5 – gender
equality, “the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men, girls and boys” 6 –must
be a guidepost to the other SDGs. Gender equality is not simply a matter of formal equality between
women and men in the eyes of the law; in order to be substantive, gender equality requires a
“fundamental transformation of economic and social institutions, including the beliefs, norms and
attitudes that shape them, at every level of society, from households to labor markets and from
communities to local, national and global governance institutions.” 7

In anticipation of the 63rd CSW, we urge states to take action on SDG 5 in the interlinked fields of social
protection, public services, and sustainable infrastructure. We urge them to do so by recognizing the
multiplicity of women’s roles and their intersections; incorporating women’s needs, interests, and
priorities in decision-making processes; and transforming social and economic structures. 8 These actions

5 Chopra, D. and Campos Ugalde, A.C. (2018) Initiating women’s empowerment; achieving gender equality: Interlinkages
amongst social protection, infrastructure, and public services. Background paper prepared for the Expert General Meeting of
the 63rd Commission on the Status of Women.
6
UN WOMEN. (2001), “OSAGI: Concepts and definitions”, UN WOMEN, available at:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/conceptsandefinitions.htm (accessed 24 August 2018).
7 UN WOMEN. (2015), Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2015: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights, UN Women, New
York, NY.
8 Chopra, D. and Campos Ugalde, A.C. (2018) Initiating women’s empowerment; achieving gender equality: Interlinkages
amongst social protection, infrastructure, and public services. Background paper prepared for the Expert General Meeting of
the 63rd Commission on the Status of Women.

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promote a more equitable distribution of power, and ensure that social protection, public services, and
sustainable infrastructure are gender-responsive, rather than gender-blind.

Human rights principles

Human rights principles, including labor rights, guide our recommendations for social protection
systems, public services, and sustainable infrastructure that benefit all women and men, including those
who reside in countries where they are not citizens. This approach is based on the universality and
indivisibility of rights and, as such, calls for strategies that recognize and strengthen the interlinkages
between social protection, public services, and sustainable infrastructure.

We urge states to design, finance, implement, monitor and evaluate social protection systems, public
services, and sustainable infrastructure according to established human rights norms and standards.
These include the principles of substantive equality and non-discrimination advanced by the Convention
on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the International Covenant
on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the ILO Declaration of Fundamental Principles and
Rights at Work, and the recognition of multiple and intersecting inequalities articulated in the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development. In practice, this means attending to:

• Accessibility, which includes provision of information about available programs, services and
infrastructure, as well as the physical accessibility of these;
• Affordability, which means that receipt of benefits and use of services and infrastructure is not
prohibited by cost;
• Adaptability, which means that programs, services and infrastructure are suited to meet
different cultural values and technological barriers (including literacy);
• Gender-responsiveness, which means that programs, services and infrastructure do not rely on
discriminatory gender norms, but rather recognize and aim to change their discriminatory
outcomes (e.g. the unequal division of unpaid care work between women and men);
• Quality, which means that governments strive to ensure that programs, services, and
infrastructure are appropriate and safe, and not stratified according to gender, social class, or
geographical location, among other factors;
• Transparency, which means that all relevant information is made public and potential and
current beneficiaries and service users have the right to access it;
• Participation, which means that citizens are able to influence the outcomes of decision-making
processes through democratic means;
• Accountability, which means that authorities have clearly defined responsibilities, provide
justifications for decisions taken, and that these are enforced;
• Progressive realization, non-retrogression, and utilization of maximum available resources,
which means that governments have an obligation to take steps, to the maximum of their
available resources, to realize economic and social rights; and that, to the extent possible, social

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 protection, public services and sustainable infrastructure are publicly funded, publicly delivered
and managed, and accountable to the public.

Bearing these principles in mind, we contend that it is the state’s responsibility to ensure universal
coverage and access to social protection, essential public services, and fundamental infrastructure,
noting that universal coverage is not possible without having removed all barriers, be they economic or
social, to accessing said protections, services and infrastructure. Universal coverage and access require
the development of gender-responsive state capacities to provide, finance, and deliver these services as
well as to ensure the rights of workers in these sectors, many of whom are women.

To be sure, states are imperfect actors. Yet, as duty bearers, governments are best placed to ensure
universality and sustainability in protections, services and infrastructure. In contrast, non-state
corporate actors are not mandated by human rights conventions in the same way, are rarely
democratic, and largely are driven by profit. False expectations are often held out that public-private
partnerships (PPPs) can overcome state shortcomings. However, experience in water and sanitation
infrastructure shows that PPPs are rarely more efficient than state provisioning, 9 and in fact are highly
likely to exclude poor populations, 10 especially those in rural and remote areas 11 (in which case states
may be the only actors willing and able to deliver at sufficient scale). Similar dynamics are observed with
care services; when these are privately provided in the absence of strong state regulation, service
quality is highly variable and tends to leave rural and poor families behind. 12 As secondary players, non-
state actors should adhere to the principles of human rights, under the oversight of the state. In all
cases, women’s rights groups, trade unions, and other human rights-based organizations are key to
ensuring that services reach all communities.

Building on these human rights principles, we structure our recommendations around four themes: 1)
creation of an enabling environment for gender equality in provision of social protection, public services,
and infrastructure; 2) social protection systems; 3) public services; and 4) sustainable infrastructure.

An enabling environment for gender equality in social protection, public

services, and infrastructure
We urge states to recognize that gender-responsive spending on social protection, public services, and
infrastructure are essential to achieving not only gender equality but also to promoting economic

9
IEG (Independent Evaluation Group). 2014. World Bank Group Support to Public-Private Partnerships: Lessons from
Experience in Client Countries, FY02-12. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.
10 UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). 2015. Trade and Development Report 2015: Making the
International Financial Architecture Work for Development. Geneva: UNCTAD.
11 Gunatilake, H. and M. J. Carangal-San Jose. 2008. “Privatization Revisited: Lessons from Private Sector Privatization in Water
Supply and Sanitation in Developing Countries.” Economic and Research Department Working Paper 115. Asian Development
Bank, Manila.
12 UN Women. (2018). Turning Promises into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New
York.

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dynamism and long-term fiscal sustainability. As such, we call on governments to protect and strengthen
social protection systems, to invest in quality public services, and to move towards sustainable
infrastructure – and to do so in a way that promotes the rights of women and girls.

Recommendations on institutional structures and social norms

We recommend that states:
1. Use human rights and decent work principles to guide policy design, implementation,
monitoring and evaluation across the social protection, public service, and infrastructure
sectors.
2. Institutionalize linkages between decision-making and implementation bodies (e.g. inter-
ministerial and executive committees) within the social protection, public services, and
infrastructure sectors such that infrastructure development, social protection, and public service
delivery are coordinated to promote gender equality.
3. Put in place adequate mechanisms for women’s rights organizations, community-based groups,
workers’ and employers’ organizations, producer organizations, women beneficiaries, and
women users of services and infrastructure to meaningfully and effectively participate in the
design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of social protection programs and public
services, and in the development and maintenance of infrastructure.
4. Consider daily mobilities and access to social protection and public services (including water,
sanitation and energy) from the outset of reconstruction operations in disaster and conflict
settings.
5. Ensure that governments are the primary actors responsible for the provision of social
protection, public services and infrastructure, and that they partner with community-driven
initiatives. Governments must regulate the activities of non-state actors (e.g. philanthropies,
NGOs, private sector) to ensure adherence to human rights principles, including in regards to
universal coverage, quality of services and infrastructure, and transparency and accountability.

Recommendations on financial sustainability

We recommend that states:
1. Pursue strategies to mobilize additional resources (SDG 17) to realize gender-responsive
universal social protection, improve the affordability and quality of gender-responsive public
services, and improve the accessibility of gender-responsive sustainable infrastructure.
2. Apply the principles of human rights to global sources of financing including development
assistance and new financial sources such as carbon taxes.
3. Establish and implement gender-responsive policy frameworks that include extending urban
infrastructure and social protection coverage for informal workers to enable livelihoods of
women in the informal economy.

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Recommendations on data and statistics
We recommend that states:
1. Ensure that data collection, planning, monitoring and evaluation is gender-responsive, includes
the generation and use of qualitative and sex-disaggregated quantitative data, and recognizes
women’s positioning within diverse family forms and communities and the multiplicity of their
roles across the life course, including as carers, workers and active decision makers.
2. Collect data on where and when gender-based violence occurs, and use these data to inform the
design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of social protection programs, public
services, and infrastructure investments such that gender-based violence is addressed and
prevented.
3. When collecting and processing beneficiary and service user data and information, ensure that
internationally accepted standards of privacy and data protection are observed, and that data
and information is not disseminated to other parties or used for other purposes without
beneficiary or user consent.

Social protection
Social protection systems are important mechanisms for sheltering people from the ills of free-market
capitalism. They are more likely to be successful and gender-responsive when they are established and
operated according to the principles and standards that human rights require and the obligations they
impose. 13 To this end, any move toward increasing private social protection provisioning at the expense
of public provisioning should be treated with great caution, as should the impulse to sacrifice social
protection funding during periods of austerity. States must progressively implement universal social
protection systems, taking deliberate, concrete and targeted steps towards this goal.

Some social protection benefits, such as contributory pensions and paid maternity leave, are generally
attached to formal, paid employment; this means that many women, whose multiple roles include
unpaid care work, have no access to them. Non-contributory benefits that are not attached to
employment, such as cash-transfers, have increased in prominence over the past two decades, and as a
result, more women have access to social protection than before. However, benefit levels remain
modest, and there is considerable variability in the effect of cash transfers on gender equality, which
ultimately rests on the social context, the details of the program (for instance, whether or not it includes
behavioral conditions), and the extent to which the cash transfer program is accompanied by
investments in public services and infrastructure.

Social protection systems must respond to gendered and other vulnerabilities, as well as their
intersections, smoothing economic inequalities that accrue over women’s life course, and contributing
to gender equality and women’s empowerment. For instance, during women’s reproductive years,
access to comprehensive, quality, and culturally appropriate sexual and reproductive health services,

13 Sepúlveda, M., and Nyst, C. (2011). The Human Rights Approach to Social Protection. Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Finland.

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maternal and child health care, and maternity leave, have a significant positive effect on women’s
health and economic autonomy. Later in life, old-age pensions play a key role in preventing poverty and
ensuring income security in old age. 14

Feminist research on social protection programs has made clear that standard methods of evaluation
(including the problematic “gold standard” of randomized controlled trials) all too often render women’s
experiences invisible. To ensure that a social protection system or program does not discriminate
against women, attention should be paid to the outcome of an action, rule or requirement, rather than
simply its intent, and this may require gender analysis and qualitative methods.

Recommendations for the extension of social protection systems

We recommend that states:
1. Recognize and attach social protection rights to all care work, including unpaid care work,
through both contributory and non-contributory benefits; provide the right to income support
for carers; make pensions more equitable; provide access to quality public services, including
health and care services, across the life course; and ensure portability of social protection for
migrant workers.
2. Recognize invisible and undervalued work for pay or profit performed by women in rural and
urban areas (e.g. contributing family workers), provide contributory and non-contributory social
protection mechanisms for them, and actively promote the visibility of these workers through
their registration with formal social protection systems.
3. Extend social protection systems to adequately protect workers in all forms of employment,
including informal employment, part-time employment, precarious employment, self-
employment, rural and domestic work, and work in the “gig” economy. 15
4. Expand state-financed non-contributory (tax-financed) benefits (e.g. family benefits, maternity
and parental leave) and ensure their adequacy, reliability and regular indexation.
5. Guarantee universal access to affordable, quality and public healthcare for all women and men,
including the promotion of women’s sexual and reproductive rights through provision of the full
range of family planning methods and maternal and obstetric care.
6. Where social protection programs are linked to formal employment, ensure that adequate
mechanisms are in place and enforced to protect women in cases of family dissolution and
widowhood (e.g. child support, pension rights, property and inheritance rights).

14
Protecting women’s income security in old age. Toward gender-responsive pension systems. UN WOMAN. Policy Brief No. 3:
http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2015/unwomen-policybrief03-
protectingwomensincomesecurityinoldage-en.pdf?la=en&vs=553

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The “gig economy” is an environment in which temporary positions are common and individuals and organizations contract
with independent workers for short-term, piecemeal work assignments, compensation for which typically does not include
pensions, health coverage, paid sick leave other benefits typically associated with employment.

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 7. Ensure that protective social protection is gender-responsive in contexts of displacement,
disasters and conflict.
8. Take concrete actions towards ensuring provision of decent work for all, according to the ILO
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and international labor standards
(including through gender-responsive public works programs) as a critical component in the
realization of rights for both women and men, and a mechanism for increasing women’s
autonomy.

Recommendations for the design and implementation of social protection systems

We recommend that states:
1. Design social protection systems to promote a more equal distribution of unpaid care work
between women and men (for instance, through adequately paid paternity leaves and parental
leaves that encourage men to share in reproductive work). Where conditionalities are used,
these should take into account women’s unequal care responsibilities.
2. Avoid the use of narrow targeting mechanisms, which are prone to exclusionary errors and
which can disrupt social cohesion, lead to stigmatization, and contradict the principle of
universality.
3. Base cash transfers and family benefits on human rights principles, avoiding behavioral
conditions and combining benefits with the provision of essential services such as childcare and
training.
4. Ensure women’s income security during old age through contributory and non-contributory
pension systems that provide adequate and rights-based benefits for all women, and reduce
gender gaps in access and benefit levels.
5. Ensure that rights to benefits are clearly defined, transparent, and non-discretionary; address
information barriers; and institutionalize mechanisms for grievance and complaint that are
accessible for all women beneficiaries and feed into program adaptation and redesign.
6. Ensure substantive participation of women’s machineries, women’s rights groups, and trade
unions in dialogue concerning the design and evaluation of social protection systems.
7. Collect, analyze and report on gender-responsive qualitative data and sex-disaggregated
quantitative data (including time-use surveys) and use both of these forms of data to inform the
design, evaluation, and adaptation of social protection systems.

Recommendations for the sustainability of social protection systems

We recommend that states:
1. Embed gender-responsive social protection systems in national legal and institutional
frameworks to ensure that they are rights-based and to protect them from political
manipulation.
2. Strive to fully finance social protection systems from progressive national and international tax
systems, and move towards progressive spending on social protection that is more likely to
benefit women.

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 3. Expand fiscal space and generate resources toward gender-responsive social protection, even in
times of austerity.
4. Ensure that social protection measures are complemented by high quality public services and
linked to adequate infrastructure.

Public services
Women typically interact with public services more than men in their gendered roles as caregivers.
Given this, we urge states to adopt the principles of human rights and gender-responsiveness in
designing and implementing public services, notably those related to health, education, child care, and
elder care. The principle of independent living for persons with disabilities should also inform states’
action in designing and implementing accessible public services. This means ensuring a comprehensive
set of services that responds to the distinct but equally important needs of women and girls and men
and boys, across the life course. Moreover, the availability of public services is not enough; services
must be also be of high quality, acceptable, affordable and accessible.

Public services in the care sector has historically been the backbone of women’s employment around
the world, although work within it has become more precarious with the constriction of funding and
limiting of public services hiring. A robustly funded public services sector can have an important impact
on breaking down the unequal division of unpaid care work between women and men. At the same
time, stark occupational divisions exist within public services; men are predominant in energy and
transportation, and women tend to occupy care sector jobs, especially the least well-remunerated.
Additionally, women who work in care sectors—in particular in health and social work, including long-
term care—are prone to illnesses and injury and report some of the highest levels of violence compared
to other industries and sectors due to lack of regulations to prioritize (mostly women) workers’ physical
and mental wellbeing. The well-being of and the realization of decent work for care workers is obviously
important in and of itself, but also because of the link between conditions of work in the care sector and
the quality of care delivered to recipients, many of whom are women. In this regard, special attention
needs to be given to the numbers of transnational migrant care workers who fall through the gaps of
legislation and policies, and some of whom are consequently subjected to horrific abuse.

With changing demographics that takes different forms across regions comes new needs for public
services, especially for child and elder care. While we recognize that these needs may stretch the
capacity of states, we caution that public-private partnerships and other forms of privatization should
not be entered into in regards to primary and essential public services. In secondary areas they may be
undertaken with caution and under regulation and oversight from the state. In particular, fee-for-service
healthcare runs contrary to the principles of human rights and, as a result, entails frequently prohibitive
costs in terms of access and quality for low- and middle-income families.

The recommendations in this section are based on the principle of gender-responsive quality public
services that emphasizes both workers’ rights to decent and quality work as well as communities’ rights
to access quality public services. It is further underpinned by the understanding that universalism should

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be pursued across different dimensions, and thus gender inequality should be considered as much of an
obstacle to accessibility as income inequality. Finally, the privatization of these services does not make
them less ‘public’; therefore, even while services may be privatized in different ways and to varying
degrees, governments ultimately have responsibility for essential services and for ensuring adherence
by private providers to the human rights principles.

Recommendations for gender-responsive public services

We recommend that states:
1. Ensure that laws, policies and social norms do not prevent access to public services (e.g.
permission for reproductive health, norms around education for girls, and cultural stigma that
prevents people from utilizing services).
2. Put measures in place that prevent institutional violence and abuse, including discrimination,
denial of services, and forced procedures (e.g. coerced sterilization), especially for women with
disabilities or from minority ethnic groups.
3. Design and implement gender-responsive training programs for public service workers to ensure
that human rights standards for respectful, high-quality, and ethical service delivery are met.
4. Overcome geographical barriers to ensure provision in rural and isolated areas of public services
(including water, sanitation, energy with reliable transport systems to access those services on a
regular and emergency basis) and implement improvements through cooperation with the
infrastructure sector.
5. Take appropriate measures to prepare for and respond to conflicts and natural disasters.
6. Ensure access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for married and
unmarried adolescent girls and boys, women and men, without discrimination.
7. Ensure provision of quality child and elder care services that follow the principles of human-
rights and non-discrimination.
8. Ensure that high-quality and accessible public services are linked to social protection measures,
and are based on adequate physical and human infrastructure.
9. Ensure that labor inspection services are robust and prepared to address gender wage gaps.

Recommendations on public service workers’ rights

We recommend that states:
1. Invest in expanding quality public services and care jobs, including health care workers, long-
term care workers, early childhood educators and teachers, and enforce human rights principles
and decent work standards, in the context of public-private partnerships.
2. Expand social and legal protections to cover all paid care workers as well as unpaid volunteer
workers in public sectors, including family workers.
3. Establish and enforce regulations regarding reasonable staffing ratios to prevent work
intensification and overburdening of care workers.
4. Protect existing public funding and expand the fiscal space to ensure adequate financing of
decent work and quality care within the public services sector.

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 5. Put mechanisms in place to ensure that work environments are free of discrimination, sexual
harassment and violence, including appropriate grievance mechanisms and support systems for
victims.
6. Take concrete actions to improve the quality and safety of care sector jobs, following the
principles of human rights and decent work, including the right to equal pay for work of equal
value and the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.
7. Recognize the specific vulnerabilities faced by domestic workers, and take concrete actions with
regard to promoting rights at work, improving working conditions and social protection, and
formalizing the sector.
8. Initiate intergovernmental action to prevent and prosecute the abuse of migrant care workers.
9. Provide leadership training to women and other avenues to women’s upward mobility and
career development.

Recommendations for the financing and cost of public services

We recommend that states:
1. Ensure adequate financing structures for public services (either tax-financed or based on public
social insurance contributions) so that access to public services is free of charge at point of
delivery for all through the life cycle, including those with inadequate financial means and
decision-making power.
2. Ensure gender-responsive accessibility to public services across the life cycle, including through
elimination of complex eligibility requirements and reduction of bureaucratic procedures.
3. Guarantee that individual contributions in tax systems and public social insurance schemes are
progressive, to ensure that the relatively well-off make relevant contributions towards universal
programs for all.

Sustainable infrastructure
While social protection and public services are more likely to be influenced by social considerations, the
traditionally male-dominated spaces of infrastructure, and those public services that depend on
infrastructure, tend to be much more technical and profit-oriented. Recognizing the social aspects of
water and sanitation, energy, and transportation entails re-prioritizing infrastructure investments from
those sectors deemed most economically profitable to the sectors that are critical for enabling women
everyday welfare and livelihoods. This means providing space for and actively supporting women’s
income earning opportunities, notably in the informal sector in which women are overrepresented in
the Global South.

Indeed, a unique and even historic opportunity exists today to engage with the infrastructure sector to
integrate social, gender-responsive and environment-friendly approaches. This is a result of the low-
carbon energy transition that is taking place towards renewable energy, driven by climate change
considerations and governments committing to the Paris Accords and Agenda 2030, which is
transforming the way infrastructure systems and services are being conceptualized, produced,

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distributed and consumed. This engagement consists of proposing alternative pathways and models,
and leapfrogging traditional forms of energy sector development, by simultaneously integrating
innovative low-carbon technologies and gender-responsive processes and solutions.

Though the transport sector is still grappling with charting a clear pathway in developing economies,
there is a wider acceptance of the need to shift from non-renewable sources of energy fueling the
transport sector. Taxation policies frequently penalize public transport and reward private vehicle (car)
ownership. In addition to the environmental costs, this policy choice has gendered costs: women are
less likely to own a car than men, and are more likely to rely on public transport. Moreover, women
have specific mobility needs: they are more likely to “trip-chain,” travel with young children or people
with disabilities, and make trips in off-peak hours—characteristics that should be recognized in transit
planning.

Opportunities to promote gender equality also exist in the management and use of water and sanitation
infrastructure (SDG6). Women and girls bear a disproportionate responsibility as primary users,
providers and managers of water and sanitation at the household level, yet they do not enjoy
commensurate representation in related decision-making. 16 Globally, decisions on “big water” issues—
such as large-scale infrastructure investments, water allocations or water trading—remain largely
gender-blind. Sustainable water and sanitation public services and infrastructure must be designed with
women’s participation and with women’s unique needs in mind, including that women usually carry
water in the absence of pipes, must sit or squat to use a toilet, are responsible for small children’s toilet
use, spend an average of forty years managing menstruation, and face gender-specific risks to their
safety when using public sanitation facilities or when in search of water. 17

Cross-sectoral recommendations for gender-responsive infrastructure

We recommend that states:
1. Design towns and cities taking into consideration women’s engagement in retail trade in the
urban informal economy in the Global South. Specifically, city planning must include designated
and fairly allocated markets that make adequate provision for vehicular and pedestrian
transport, storage, security, electricity, water, refuse collection, and toilets—facilities that
should be developed in consultation with women informal workers as well as local governments
workers, and affected communities for any large infrastructure, and are therefore adequate in
coverage, quality, and affordability.
2. Integrate women’s needs and preferences (including those of women with disabilities) from the
outset in Smart Cities and Smart Mobilities planning processes.

16 Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda: Gender-responsive water and sanitation systems, UN Women. Available at:
http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2018/issue-brief-gender-
responsive-water-and-sanitation-systems-en.pdf?la=en&vs=3915
17 Investing in gender-equal sustainable development. Isha Ray for UN Women. Available at: http://www.unwomen.org/-
/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2016/dps-investing-in-gender-equal-sustainable-
development.pdf?la=en&vs=5507

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 3. Collect and analyze data on access to and use of public space, energy, water and sanitation, and
transportation that is disaggregated by sex, geographical location, ethnicity and other
contextually relevant factors, and that includes social audits, and use such data in all planning,
evaluation, and adaptation processes.
4. Protect and engage in social dialogue with workers’ representatives, women’s human rights
defenders and indigenous groups, even and especially during confrontation over large-scale
infrastructure projects.
5. Ensure that infrastructure systems (both human and physical) support social protection
measures and public services in a way that prioritizes women’s needs, interests and multiple
roles.

Recommendations for gender-responsive, sustainable transportation systems

We recommend that states:
1. Divert investments in infrastructure that benefits passenger cars (which do not cater to the
travel needs of women and people living in poverty) towards designing and implementing
gender-responsive public transit that is also responsive to people with disabilities, as well as
walking and cycling infrastructures.
2. Recognize women’s specific mobility needs and address these at all stages of the planning
processes. This would include adaptations to existing transit systems, such as increasing focus
on public transport supply during off-peak hours, and mainstreaming both motorized and non-
motorized para-transit modes (e.g. auto-rickshaws and rickshaws).
3. Facilitate women’s use of public transportation systems, through guarantee of minimum
availability, accessibility, and affordability standards for public transport services.
4. Ensure that accessibility analyses inform the transportation plans, in order to connect women
with public services such as schools, health centers, and places where benefits are disbursed; to
employment/training centers; and to food and fuel sources.
5. Implement effective mechanisms to ensure women’s personal security while using or working
within public transport systems and public spaces through mapping unsafe areas and routes,
developing systems to register grievances in cases of harassment or violence, and following up
on the registered grievances.
6. Ease taxation policies on public transport in order to increase the supply of public transport in
both urban and rural areas.
7. Develop an indicator-based system on different factors governing the daily travels of women
(for example, an affordability indicator to estimate the share of household expenditure on
transit that would lead to regulated transit fares according to gender-responsive assessments of
passengers’ price sensitivity).
8. Implement routinized collection and analyses of qualitative and quantitative travel behavior
data that is disaggregated by sex, location, and ability (and, where possible, also by activity and
time-use) as a mandatory step in transport planning decisions.

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Recommendations for gender-responsive, sustainable energy 18 systems
We recommend that states:
1. Make gender-responsive investments in adequate levels of clean energy, accounting for
women’s multiple roles and their specific livelihood needs (e.g. for pumped water and medium
size electrical appliances, such as food grinders) to both address women’s ‘time poverty’ due to
household chores and to improve their opportunities to engage in livelihood activities.
2. Prioritize gender-responsive investments in developing and sustaining community energy
systems (such as mini-grids to power households and communities where the grid is non-
existent or weak) and as well conduct targeted user education and demand-side management
programs for the safe use and efficient consumption of electricity.
3. Integrate gender and other social equity criteria in all smart grid planning tools.
4. Adapt tariffs mechanisms and regulations to be gender-responsive, including by better defining
the lifeline block of tariffs to more effectively meet the needs of low-income and vulnerable
groups.
5. Support women’s participation and leadership in the energy sector, including by tracking
emerging sustainable energy industries that have the potential to significantly or predominantly
employ women, and supporting these with tariff reductions and subsidy assistance. Additionally,
provide incentives to women-led small enterprises, including micro-small independent power
producers.
6. Improve access to clean cook-stoves that are designed in consultation with intended women
users, to ensure their appropriateness and sustainability.
7. Make gender-responsive investments in improving the sustainability and safety of household
energy consumption and production (e.g. through clean energy infrastructure and appliances).

Recommendations for gender-responsive, sustainable water and sanitation systems

We recommend that states:
1. Ensure continuous quality piped water at the household level or, until this is possible, ensure
that placement of water sources is determined in consultation with intended women users. In
rural settings, prioritize “multiple use” sources that provide water for drinking, small plots and
small herds.
2. Implement effective mechanisms to manage women’s safety in the use of public sanitation
services and facilities in efforts to eliminate open defecation, including in schools and health
clinics, at transportation hubs, in refugee camps, government offices, marketplaces, and work
sites.
3. Integrate menstrual hygiene management (MHM) as a mandatory feature of all public sanitation
interventions, and as a feature of public education curriculum, in order to break harmful social
taboos.

18 The term energy is used in a generic sense to also encompass both energy sources (such as solar and electricity, for example)

and power as the application of energy over time.

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4. Ensure gender-responsive safe and healthy working conditions for workers in the “back end” of
the sanitation sector, including protections against violence and health risks, and improve
working conditions of this stigmatized labor sector in accordance with international labor
standards.
5. Expand fiscal space and generate resources to invest in scaling up gender-responsive, de-
centralized water-augmenting technologies that have proven to be effective and efficient (e.g.
rainwater harvesting), and in the development of new gender-responsive, scalable water-
augmentation technologies.
6. Generate a fiscal base for gender-responsive public investments in sustainable sanitation where
current investments are not commensurate with need.

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