For International Women’s Day 2022, we asked members of our team and Development Pathways collaborators to take a gender-based assumption behind decisionmaking in social policy and to challenge it.
In this edition Maxine Molyneux, Professor of Sociology at University College London, debunks the notion that “cash transfers empower women”.
Cash transfers have been critically important in alleviating extreme poverty especially in households with young children. Here they are focused on improving children’s life chances, and for this reason it is mothers who are generally given the cash to manage.
There are benefits of this arrangement as mothers tend to prioritise their children’s needs, and can rely on the regular payments to be able to plan their spending. But are women ‘empowered’ by controlling the cash as is often claimed?
Research that I and others have carried out on cash transfers in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East shows that women clearly appreciate receiving and controlling the cash, gaining some relief from the anxieties of living in poverty. With regular income they can feed and clothe their children, and report that they experience greater self-esteem and dignity. Being spared from having to beg for loans and favours and being able to join in community social exchanges, are unquestionably important gains from cash transfers.
However, are these subjective experiences, with benefits that may be transitory, adequate evidence of empowerment? This depends on how we define this elusive term. In many evaluations, ‘empowerment’ is seen as something that takes place at the micro, subjective level, such as the enhanced sense of self-respect and status that come from not being destitute. But this is a rather ‘thin’ form of empowerment compared to that associated with acquiring the capabilities and material goods necessary to achieve sustainable security, greater control over their lives, and some autonomy.
While no one would deny that positive subjective changes are important to well-being, on their own they rarely lead to meaningful empowerment for women. The benefits of being in control of the cash while important, are quite limited as the money is destined to be spent meeting the needs of children, and the amount of the transfer is very small, typically set at around half the minimum wage – in order to discourage dependency.
If empowerment is to carry any conceptual weight for policy purposes, it needs to be seen as a multi-dimensional, transformative process: one that enlarges women’s life chances, choices, assets, and skills. Cash transfers make women responsible for securing their child welfare goals, but if they are to live up to the claim that they ‘empower women’, they could more directly address women’s needs by being linked to services offering skills training and literacy, financial management, and comprehensive health services.
Professor Maxine Molyneux is a long-term collaborator of Development Pathways in the fields of gender and social protection.
The responsibility for the opinions expressed in this article rests solely with its author, and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the organisations to which they are affiliated.