Dangerous Habits of Thought: why I fear ‘graduation’ and ‘resilience’

Shivers ran down my spine when I interviewed an official in Bangladesh about social protection last week. We had a friendly discussion about, among other things, why the Government of Bangladesh has shown such strong commitment to social protection – including taking out a US$0.5 billion soft loan with the World...

Good girls and good education: avoiding the “bad life” in Rwanda

“We have sex to stay in school, and we want to go to school so that we don’t have to have sex.” This year’s International Day of the Girl Theme is Innovating for Education. This theme appeals to me on a number of levels, but mainly because it is somewhat...

Equal pensions, equal rights: achieving universal pension coverage for older women and men in developing countries

In most countries, state pensions are financed from pay-roll taxes. However, such pensions have a strong male bias, with more men than women accessing them while also receiving higher benefits....

IMF urged to re-think loan conditions that hit social protection spending

4th July: Development Pathways joins over 50 groups in writing to the IMF to ask that it re-think the conditions that it applies to loans that reduce spending on social protection and other investments in people.

Grandmas, Pensions and Female Genital Cutting

Rebecca Calder reports on the surprising finding that pensions may be contributing to a reduction in female genital cutting in Karamoja, Uganda. In the 7th edition of our Pathways Perspectives...

Adolescent Girls and Education: Challenges, Evidence and Gaps

Rebecca Calder and Karishma Huda discuss how education is seen as one of the main pathways out of poverty for adolescent girls, but it is often the very thing denied to them.

Call to move from siloing gender issues towards integrating approach in cash programming

22nd October 2018: Integrating gender in cash programming from the outset of conceptualising and designing transfers is key to addressing marginalisation, a Cash Week event organised by the Cash Learning...

Commission on the Status of Women set to tackle social protection gender gap

The UN Commission on the Status of Women will this week meet to push for policy change to address the fact that social protection reaches fewer women across the globe. The 63rd session...

Towards a Strong and Prosperous Indonesian Society

We have provided technical support in order to help the Government of Indonesia to improve the quality and effectiveness of programmes to reduce poverty.

Social protection programme’s role in tackling female genital mutilation highlighted

Uganda’s Senior Citizens Grant (SCG) is contributing to the combating of female genital mutilation, the Government of Uganda has highlighted. A video from the Government’s Expanding Social Protection programme – responsible...