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As Chapter 2 has shown, paid employment doesnot always provide a route out of poverty. Nor doesit automatically lead to women’s empowermentor protect them from economic dependence. Toguarantee women’s right to an adequate standardof living, employment policies aimed at thegeneration and regulation of decent work have tobe accompanied by social protection and socialservices that provide income security and enablepeople to live their lives in dignity.Towards a universal social protection floorRecently, the United Nations Social Protection Floor(SPF) Initiative has given substance to the rightsoutlined here, as well as a concrete strategy fortheir progressive realization. The SPF proposesa nationally defined set of minimum guarantees,including basic income security for children,working-age adults, older people and people withdisabilities, as well as basic social services for all. 4This initiative holds significant promise for women,who are over-represented among those excludedfrom existing social protection schemes.Gender inequality in access to social services andsocial protection is particularly marked wherepublic provision is weak, since women’s loweraccess to income and assets means that theyare less able than men to join private insuranceschemes and more likely to be deterred by userfees for social services. 5 There are fears thatthe lingering economic crisis and ensuing fiscalausterity measures will have similar effects tothose of structural adjustment programmes inthe 1980s and 1990s, which had devastatingsocial consequences, particularly for women andchildren. 6In the absence of adequate public support, womenand men, especially in low-income households,are forced to rely on informal social networks. 7Dependence on kinship, family and communitycan be deeply problematic for women. On the onehand, informal networks rely heavily on women’sunpaid care and domestic work. On the otherhand, women’s own needs for support are rarelyadequately acknowledged and addressed dueto prevailing social norms and gender powerrelations. In addition, family and householdstructures are rapidly changing in ways that affectthe potential for informal support within andbetween households (see Box 3.2).Greater state involvement does not, in and ofitself, ensure equitable outcomes from socialpolicy. Examples abound of gender gaps inaccess to state-run social protection schemes andgender-biased delivery of social services. Socialprotection and social services are sometimesdelivered in ways that stereotype or stigmatizewomen—especially those who are poor, disabled,indigenous or from an ethnic minority—or burdenthem with additional unpaid labour. Yet, thestate ‘remains the only actor able to extract thevast resources from society that make possiblesignificant distributive and redistributive policiesand (…) the most readily available route for poorsocial groups to influence the conditions of theirown lives’. 8National SPFs can be a powerful tool forredressing women’s socio-economicdisadvantage. But in order to advance substantiveequality, their design needs to account for thegender, as well as other, sources of discrimination,that prevent women from enjoying their socioeconomicrights on the same basis as men. Forexample, women’s disproportionate responsibilityfor unpaid care and domestic work impedes theirenjoyment of rights to work, rest and leisure, socialsecurity, education and health. 9 This needs to beacknowledged in the design and implementationof SPFs by addressing stereotyping, stigma andviolence through measures that reduce genderspecificrisks and responsibilities. Equally, women’srights to income security and to access basic socialservices cannot hinge on a presumed relationshipto a male breadwinner, which risks eitherexposing them to abuse, humiliation or violenceor excluding them from these rights. In order toprevent unwanted economic dependence, socialpolicies must treat women as individual rightbearers.Greater efforts are also needed to makethe delivery of social services—such as education,health, housing and water and sanitation—responsive to the specific needs of women andgirls. As this chapter shows, strengtheningwomen’s agency, voice and participation in131