Social protection for woman.

• Author: Antonopoulos, Rania

Periods of economic upheaval are always destabilizing and, as such, outcomes are uncertain. We are right now faced with a great danger and a great opportunity. The danger is that "recovery" efforts will favour those in positions of strength, reinforcing existing inequalities between and within countries. As this occurs, we will see existing disparities deepen, leading to social exclusion with grave social, economic and political repercussions. The opportunity is that leadership and bold policy action could reduce inequalities among countries and across gender lines.

Historically, financial crises have been distinctly harsh on the poor, especially on poor women. With little to cushion them, this upheaval comes on top of many other calamities: such as climate change, shortage of food and clean water, lack of basic public provisioning, joblessness, distress migration and over-representation in precarious informal jobs with meagre wages. According to estimates of the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), the current economic crisis is already reversing gains in poverty reduction and gender equality made over the last decade, with over 300 million more in the past two years falling below the poverty threshold of living on $1 a day.

One of the critical issues this crisis has highlighted is that globalization, liberalization of the finance market and a "hands off" approach do not necessarily improve market efficiency or deliver desirable socio-economic outcomes. With the economic crisis still unfolding, the idea that markets are not self-correcting, at least not in the relevant time frame, is gaining traction. If unattended, recent history has demonstrated quite powerfully that inherently destabilizing forces lead to economic disasters. Therefore, stabilizing the unstable economy has become a de facto mandate for governments around the world.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF POLICY

What is not clear yet is what type of social contracts will emerge. During the post-Second World War period, most developed countries witnessed the emergence of a Keynesian consensus. With the experience of the Great Depression, the Keynesian tenet was that an activist State had a mandate to (a) use fiscal and monetary policy so as to steer the economy clear of danger and (b) put in place rights and obligations between the State and its citizens, as well as between labour and the private sector. Concerned with the welfare of its citizens, and aware of the differences and conflicts of interest among them, States assumed the responsibility to negotiate and reduce inequalities through redistribution policies. The pact that would bring peace and social cohesion included a social security system, which allowed for old-age pension, free universal education, and access to basic services.

Then came the Washington Consensus era, with its laissez-faire ideology which proposed that a smaller role and size of government would be better for a country's economy and its citizens. Cuts in spending for public services, deregulation in production, trade and finance in the North went hand in hand with structural adjustment policies in the South that mandated the selling of public assets and a diminished role of government. As time progressed, with free market practices replacing the "managed capitalism" of previous decades...