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• Provide access to benefits as an individualentitlement rather than a household-basedone, and use quotas or reserve spots forwomen to ensure equal participation• Offer non-manual work that can bereasonably performed by women and ensureequal wages for such work• Provide mandatory on-site childcare andother basic services while making sure thatthese are monitored and enforced.SOCIAL TRANSFERS FOR OLDER PEOPLEDemographic change poses a significantchallenge for both income security and theprovision of care for rapidly ageing populations(see section Care services). Some governmentsare responding more effectively to thischallenge than others, as this section will show.In developed countries, these issues are hotlydebated. However, about two thirds of theworld’s older people 94 live in the developingworld, and by 2050 this share will have risento nearly 80 per cent. 95 Globally, about half ofpeople above the statutory retirement age are inreceipt of an old-age pension while only 31 percent of the working-age population contribute toa pension scheme. 96Women’s socio-economic disadvantage inold ageAgeing has specific implications for womenand thus for gender equality outcomes. First,women tend to live longer than men. Second,they have less access than men to land andother assets that could help them maintain anadequate standard of living in old age. In India,for example, 60 per cent of women comparedto 30 per cent of men have no valuable assets intheir name, and few widows can count on familyor community support. 97 Even in countries withgood pension coverage, women are significantlymore likely to suffer poverty in old age than men.In the EU, for example, the poverty rate of elderlywomen is 37 per cent higher than that of elderlymen. 98 Third, prevailing gender norms and thefact that women tend to marry or co-habit witholder men mean that it is women who providethe bulk of unpaid care and domestic work forelderly spouses, as well as for parents, parentsin-law,friends and neighbours. 99In most countries for which data are available,women are less likely than men to receive apension in old age (see Figure 3.4), and wherethey do their benefit levels are usually lower.Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asiahave relatively high coverage rates with somecountries, such as Kyrgyzstan, having achieveduniversal coverage among both women andmen, often thanks to the effective combinationof contributory and non-contributory pensions. 100Yet, important gender gaps remain in othercountries in this region. In a number ofcountries in Latin America and the Caribbean,including the Dominican Republic and ElSalvador, women’s old-age coverage is lessthan half of the already low coverage of men.The Plurinational State of Bolivia is a notableexception, with universal coverage for bothwomen and men owing to the introduction of auniversal non-contributory pension scheme.This is also the case of Botswana, Lesotho andMauritius, the exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa,where coverage in most countries is low for menand almost insignificant for women. In Burundi,for example, 2 per cent or less of women abovestatutory pension age are in receipt of a pensioncompared to 7 per cent of men. The largestgender gaps in coverage, however, are foundin Egypt and Jordan, where 62 per cent and 82per cent of men, respectively, receive a pensioncompared to only 8 per cent and 12 per cent ofwomen. While some European countries haveachieved high coverage rates among women,their benefits levels are often only a fraction ofthose of men. In France, Germany, Greece andItaly, for example, women’s average pension ismore than 30 per cent lower than men’s. 101147