Transcript Social Protection of Women in Enterprise Development

OVERVIEW
Social Protection of Women in
Enterprise Development in ASEAN
4 December 2014
Manila, Philippines
Outline
• Situation of Women in Enterprise Development in ASEAN
• Social Protection in ASEAN
• Implications of Economic Integration
• The Way Forward
Situation of women in MSMEs
• Women-run enterprises are hailed as growth engines
of ASEAN
̶ Fastest growing from among regions of the world
Fast-growing number of women in SMEs in ASEAN
Female
Male
Indonesia (2007)
8.1%
0.27%
Malaysia (2008)
9.7%
7.43%
Philippines (2007)
2.5%
N.A
Singapore (2009)
4.2%
N.A
Thailand (2008)
2.3%
.31%
Vietnam (2004)
42.5%
40.93%
Source: Mastercard, 2010 as cited by the International Finance Corporation World Bank Group, 2011
ASEAN women’s enterprises
• Majority are micro enterprises, likely situated in vulnerable sectors
of the economy
̶ Subcontracted or in the last peg of global value chains
̶ Run by informal employers/workers, self-employed or own
account, unpaid family workers
• Dual and contradictory character of vulnerable employment
̶ Source of income vs. source of exploitation as firms attempt to
contain costs
‘race to the bottom’ phenomena
Situation of women in MSMEs
• Engaged in traditional, low-income generating activities
• Mostly home-based/ residential, unregistered, hardly paying
direct taxes, uninsured and located both in urban and rural
areas with mostly poor constituents
• Place of business have poor structures/facilities; condition of
safety in the workplace is very uncertain
Situation of women in MSMEs
• Started the enterprise because of “push” factors, e.g. poverty,
unemployment, daily subsistence needs or for precautionary motives
rather than market opportunities
• The enterprise was chosen because the economic activity is
characterized by ease of entry and exit and requires low capital, skill
and technology to operate
• Capital is usually drawn from savings or borrowed from relatives,
informal lenders/ loan sharks
• Little or no social protection in times of emergency/ bankruptcy
Situation of women in MSMEs
• Constrained by
̶ Demands of household/ family care
̶ Low levels of formal education
̶ Lack of access to financial resources
̶ Low ability to establish social networks to expand
̶ Laws and biases that discriminate against women
Social Protection
• All interventions from public, private and voluntary organisations and
informal networks which support communities, households and individuals
in their efforts to prevent, manage and overcome risks and vulnerabilities’
(Shepherd et al., 2004)
• Social protection refers to policies and actions which enhance the capacity
of poor and vulnerable people to escape from poverty and enable them to
better manage risks and shocks. Social protection measures include social
insurance, social transfers and minimum labour standards.
• Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler’s (2004) transformative social protection
conceptual framework highlights that in addition to being protective
(providing relief); preventive (averting deprivation); and/or promotive
(enhancing incomes and capabilities); social protection interventions may
also be transformative (i.e. addressing concerns of social equity and
exclusion which often underpin people’s experiences of chronic poverty
and vulnerability
Social Protection
• Social assistance
̶ universal rights based programs
̶ non-contributory; being financed from tax revenues or grants by donors
̶ may be means tested to target the most vulnerable and needy
̶ publicly managed or administered by the government or its agencies
• Social insurance
̶ contributory for future income security
̶ programs that provide for contingencies of unemployment, sickness,
maternity, employment injury, pensions for old age, invalidity and
survivorship
Social Protection
• Labour market interventions
̶ programs designed to protect workers, or help people secure
employment such as minimum wage legislation, employment
services, skills development and training, or special work programs
• Community based social protection
̶ traditional or ‘informal’ ways of providing social protection within
households, groups and networks
Expenditure for social protection
Expenditure for Social Protection
• About 1.15% of GDP for women, 1.6% of GDP For men
• Spending of OECD countries is 14% of GDP (ILO 2010)
• Results suggest that despite gains in GDP some countries, they have not
correspondingly strengthened their social protection systems
• Existing programs tend to be almost entirely donor-funded, with
limitations in coverage and quality.
Predominantly social insurance, with women receiving
fewer benefits and coverage
Predominantly social insurance
Country
National
Strategy
Social
Insurance
Health Insurance
Universal
Cambodia
Indonesia
Lao PDR
Myanmar
Philippines
Thailand
Vietnam
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Community
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Health Facility
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Predominantly social insurance
• Although some countries have relatively well- developed social insurance
systems (Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Indonesia, the Philippines and
Viet Nam), many social security schemes typically only cover formal sector
workers in towns and cities
• Vast majority of those in the informal economy are left without any form of
social protection
• % of expenditures and beneficiaries on health insurance, unemployment
insurance and severance payments are much lower for women than for
men; maternity benefits may not be widespread
• Validates relatively low wages of women and predisposition to vulnerable
employment
Social assistance and services
Country
Social Asssistance
CCT
Cambodia
Indonesia
Lao PDR
Myanmar
Philippines
Thailand
Vietnam
Subsidies
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Social
Services
Social
pension
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Feeding
programs
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Public
works
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Social assistance and services
• Except for Thailand, most countries in the region still have a considerable way to
go to achieve the standard laid out in the International Labour Organization
(ILO)’s Social Protection Floor (SPF) Initiative.
• Indonesia and the Philippines have sizeable conditional cash transfer and health
insurance programmes reaching an ever-growing proportion of the population.
• Viet Nam has introduced free healthcare for poor families and all young children,
while its poverty programming provides a basic income for much of the
population living under the most impoverished conditions.
• Less wealthy countries, some of them emerging from decades of conflict, have
made less progress
• Existing programmes tend to be almost entirely donor-funded, with limitations in
coverage and quality.
Social assistance and services
• Social assistance approximates that of men but women are still
moderately disadvantaged
• % of expenditure and beneficiaries of social assistance programs
much lower than social insurance programs
• Social transfers have highest % of expenditure; includes mostly
child protection, assistance to the elderly, health assistance,
disaster relief, and disability programs .
Labour market programs do not figure
prominently
• Accounts only for about 5% of total social protection expenditure.
• SPIs are relatively small and indicative of gender inequality in
informal employment
Some good practices
• Philippines: the 4Ps conditional cash transfer explicitly includes gender
considerations in its design; convergence strategy in conjunction with two
other major government programmes
• Thailand: regional and even international leader in providing social health
insurance, which includes maternal healthcare as well as extensive
coverage for HIV-related treatment and services.
• Philippines and Thailand now allow informal workers to voluntarily
participate in contributory social security systems, although uptake has
been low
• For older women: initiatives on universal health coverage and the recent
extension of pension coverage in Thailand
Some good practices
• Welfare fund for home workers in Tamil Nadu, India, administered
departmentally through a tax levied on the production of exports. The
fund’s goal is to provide medical care, education for children, housing,
water supply and recreational facilities, basic social security
• Creation of the Homenet network, consisting of NGOs, government
agencies and home workers’ groups to ensure the protection of home
workers through the provision of safety nets, social welfare and
compulsory registration, skills training
• The Indonesian government has been very active on implementing policies
for MSME for the creation of credit schemes and promotion of capital
access for MSMEs in collaboration with local banks.
Constraints
• Resources
̶ Poorer countries have less fiscal space; weaker human resource bases
for effective implementation of social protection programs
̶ Level of benefits provided is often insufficient to meet even basic
needs
• Governance and coordination
̶ Schemes are fragmented and lack coordination
̶ Same benefits package, targeting same beneficiaries, duplication
̶ Inadequate data and weak targeting mechanisms
̶ High rates of leakage to the non-poor
̶ Under-coverage of the poor contributing to overall low impact
Constraints
• Monitoring and evaluation:
̶ Data are scarce across the region, not sex- and age-disaggregated, no central
and unified database
̶ Little is known about the needs of specific vulnerable groups.
̶ Few schemes have complaints and feedback mechanisms or use participatory
approaches to involve beneficiaries in evaluating impact.
• Gender-blind policies and programs
̶ Few social protection strategies are informed by a gender lens
̶ Limited gendered vulnerability assessments and implementation deficits
̶ Limited ender disaggregated impact indicators
Implications of economic integration
• Changes in the structure of production of a country, which will impact
women in MSMEs differently
• There will be benefits but also heightened income and gender
inequalities
Way Forward
Way Forward
Way Forward
Way forward
Way forward
• Accelerate women’s access to the formal economy by increasing
opportunities and upgrading skills for women engaged in economic
activities
• Universalize social insurance benefits, such as health insurance and
pensions. Providing women with greater access to employment
guarantee schemes or skills development and training could also help
• Collection, analysis, and dissemination of sex-disaggregated data are
essential to ensure gender considerations in designing, implementing,
and monitoring social protection programs
ASEAN level
• Advocate for the establishment of social protection floors (SPF) and
more comprehensive social security systems among AMS in the
framework of economic integration by 2015;
• Bring together key actors throughout the region to engage in an
agenda-setting dialogue on basic social guarantees
• Invite the participation of capable partners in the process of drafting a
gender-responsive Plan of Action and developing a monitoring
framework for measuring progress in extending social protection in
ASEAN;
• Address data and knowledge gaps; establish a community of
practitioners and invite partners dedicated to gender-responsive
social protection and MSME development
AMS Level
• Ensure social protection among women entrepreneurs and their dependents through specially
designed social insurance schemes, social assistance, as well as extension and reform of formal
sector social insurance
• Support and facilitate upgrading of micro enterprises to the formal sector; including skills
development, access to finance, technology and social networking
• Strengthen institutional capacity of national social development agencies in formulating and
implementing effective and efficient policies and facilitate greater cross sectoral cooperation on
social protection issues
• Support the development of gender- responsive budgeting to include developing good practice
guidance and exploring incentive-based funding for local governments undertaking genderresponsive budgeting.
• Monitor on-going social protection programs through regular household income and
expenditure surveys. Furthermore, independent impact evaluations of social protection
programs, including monitoring gender impact, are critical for developing informed policies.
• Support innovative programming with embedded monitoring and evaluation systems that
recognise particular vulnerabilities of women entrepreneurs and their dependents
Action areas
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Measuring the informal sector;
Enhancing the micro-entrepreneur’s potential;
The creation of and capacity-building among informal sector organizations;
Infrastructure, job creation and living conditions;
Reforming training policies and systems;
Enhancing workers’ social protection;
Reforming legal frameworks;
Assessing macroeconomic policies
Way forward
• Community based child care alternatives
• Health education and intervention
• Local promotion
• Welfare funds for minimum benefits: specific health benefits, related
to the nature of the sector, maternity benefits; scholarships for
children to go to school, old-age pension, life insurance; child care
facilities
• Voluntary schemes: savings, credit and micro insurance
• Sectoral organizing
• Diversification of skills