A GENDER LENS ON ADAPTIVE SOCIAL PROTECTION TO MAXIMIZE IMPACT FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS IN THE SAHEL: Guidance for the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program September 2025 Author Juliette Seibold Additional inputs from: Valentina Barca, Aline Coudouel, Rebecca Holmes, Sarah Nirvana Patella, and SASPP team members. SUMMARY The Sahel — considered to include Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal for the purpose of this study — is a complex environment with high rates of poverty and gender inequality which are exacerbated by climate change, natural resource scarcity, insecurity, and conflict. The impacts include loss of income, food insecurity, erosion of human and productive capital, and displacement. Experiences of these crises are not gender neutral — women and girls are more adversely affected, particularly if they experience additional characteristics that marginalize and exclude. Women and girls across the Sahel experience important differences in education, health and nutrition, economic opportunities, and well-being. They are also subjected to high rates of gender-based violence and early marriage and pregnancy. This paper explains why and how gender-responsive adaptive social protection (ASP) matters in the Sahel. It describes key elements of the gendered context that have implications for all aspects of ASP — from the design of delivery systems and programs to implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning. For each phase of the social protection delivery chain, the paper demonstrates why a lens on gender matters to maximize the impacts of interventions; what progress the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP) has made in integrating a lens on gender; and key focus areas for SASPP to promote ASP that is gender-responsive across the Sahel to maximize results for poverty alleviation, jobs, resilience, and women’s empowerment. 1 ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ASP Adaptive Social Protection BISP Benazir Income Support Program FCDO UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office GBV Gender-Based Violence GRM Grievance Redress Mechanism GSMA Global System for Mobile Association IPV Intimate Partner Violence KII Key Informant Interviews M&E Monitoring and Evaluation MIS Management Information Systems NGO Nongovernmental Organization SASPP Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program SEA/SH Sexual Exploitation Abuse and Sexual Harassment SIM Subscriber Identity Module WFP World Food Programme 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 6 2. GENDERED CONTEXT IN THE SAHEL ........................................................................................ 10 3. GENDER-RESPONSIVE ASP DESIGN AND DELIVERY IN THE SAHEL ........................................... 14 3.1 Gender-Responsive Outreach (Phase 1) .................................................................................... 15 3.2 Gender-Responsive Intake, Registration, and Assessment of Needs and Conditions (Phases 2-3) 17 3.3 Gender-Responsive Eligibility and Enrolment (Phases 4-6) ......................................................... 23 3.4 Gender-Responsive Provision of Benefits (Phase 7) ................................................................... 25 3.4.1 Selecting Women as Recipients of Monetary Transfers ........................................................ 25 3.4.2 Gender-Responsive Payment Systems ............................................................................... 28 3.5 Gender-Responsive Provision of Accompanying Measures (Phase 7) .......................................... 30 3.6 Gender-Responsive Program Management (Phase 8,9) .............................................................. 36 3.6.1 Monitoring and Evaluation .................................................................................................. 36 3.6.2 Action to Prevent and Mitigate GBV and SEA/SH .................................................................. 40 3.7 Change Levers for ASP that is Gender-Responsive in the Sahel................................................... 43 4. SUMMARY AND NEXT STEPS .................................................................................................... 49 4.1 Summary ................................................................................................................................. 49 4.2 Next Steps: Key Priorities .......................................................................................................... 52 ANNEXES.................................................................................................................................... 53 Annex 1: Guidance For Gender-Responsive Monitoring and Evaluation ............................................ 53 Annex 2: Key Areas and Topics for Capacity Development for Delivery Staff ...................................... 59 Annex 3: Accompanying Measures - Suggested Topics For Human Capital Development................... 61 Annex 4: Securing Political Commitment Through Evidence-Based Advocacy ................................... 63 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................... 64 3 LIST OF TABLES, BOXES, AND FIGURES Table 1: Sahel: Primary and Lower Secondary Completion, Adult Literacy, and Child Marriage Rates .... 11 Table 2: Labor Force Participation Rates Across the Sahel .................................................................. 12 Table 3: The Gendered Dimensions of Conflict: Risks and Vulnerabilities ............................................ 13 Table 4: Selected Results for Women’s Empowerment: Economic Inclusion Measures in Niger ............ 33 Table 5: Summary of SASPP Good Practices on Gender and Further Opportunities ............................. 49 Box 1: Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP) ..................................................................... 7 Box 2: The Importance of Women’s Ownership and Access to ID Across the Delivery Chain ................. 15 Box 3: What Are Dynamic Social Registries? ....................................................................................... 20 Box 4: Mauritania – Inclusive Social Registry ....................................................................................... 21 Box 5: Senegal - Use of Gender-Sensitive Processes and Indicators for Updating the National Social Registry ............................................................................................................................................ 21 Box 6: Pakistan – A Dynamic Social Registry Can Widen Access for Women and Contribute to Changing Gender Norms .................................................................................................................................. 23 Box 7: Diagnostic Research in Mauritania Uncovers Unfounded Beliefs on Women and Money ............. 26 Box 8: A Pilot Intervention in Mali Demonstrates the Viability and Benefits of Payments to Women in Areas with Entrenched Social Norms ................................................................................................. 27 Box 9: Examples of Insights from SASPP Evaluations and Mission Reports on Gendered Barriers to Accessing Payments ......................................................................................................................... 29 Box 10: Mauritania – Training Facilitators for the Family Dialogue Intervention ..................................... 35 Box 11: World Bank Commitment to Addressing SEA/SH and Leveraging Safety Nets to Prevent GBV .... 42 Box 12: Approach to Establishing Survivor-Focused GRMs in Burkina Faso .......................................... 43 Box 13: World Bank Enabling Policies for ASP That Are Gender-Responsive ......................................... 45 Figure 1: Social Protection Delivery Chain .......................................................................................... 15 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to acknowledge the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for their funding and support. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ The SASPP Technical Paper Series collection comprises documents released expediently to ensure prompt availability within our community of practice, aiming to foster engagement and disseminate knowledge swiftly. Please be mindful that, for this purpose, the material has not undergone extensive proofreading, and minor typos may be present. Your understanding of this expedited release is appreciated. 5 1. INTRODUCTION The Sahel has some of the highest levels of poverty in the world, which are exacerbated by climate change, natural resource scarcity, insecurity, and conflict. In 2021, the percent of the population living in poverty at US$3.00 per day (2021 purchasing power parity) was 42.06 percent in Burkina Faso, 39.48 percent in Chad, 36.10 percent in Mali, 10.22 percent in Mauritania, 60.49 percent in Niger, and 18.89 percent in Senegal (World Bank Group 2025). Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger are among the lowest ranking countries on the Human Development Index, which considers life expectancy, education, and income (UNDP 2025). There are significant gaps between women and men in the Sahel across economic, social, and empowerment dimensions. The average Africa Gender Index 2023 score for gender equality in the region is 40.4 percent, which is below the continental average of 50.3 percent (African Development Bank and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa 2024). This gives an overall gender gap of 59.6 percent. Poverty, gender inequality, and social exclusion are deeply interlinked, affecting income, food security, employment opportunities, access to resources and assets, opportunities for human development (education, health, knowledge, skills), security, and well-being. Gender equality is central to inclusive growth, increased productivity, poverty reduction, and resilience (World Bank Group 2024). Women’s access to employment and education reduces the likelihood of poverty. Growing evidence indicates that advancing gender equality — particularly in education and employment — drives economic growth to a much greater extent than economic growth drives gender equality; especially for health, wellbeing, and rights (Kabeer and Natali 2013). Placing resources in the hands of women has been shown to have a range of positive outcomes for households’ human capital and capabilities that support wellbeing and resilience (Quisumbing 2003; World Bank 2012; Kabeer 2003; and Dwyer and Bruce 1988 in Kabeer and Natali 2013). Women play a critical role in household resilience and climate adaptation. They contribute to creating and adopting climate resilient practices on farms, in businesses, and at home, and to preserving natural assets. Consequently, empowering women to participate in decision-making strengthens community resilience to climate risks, including through their engagement in preparedness planning (World Bank Group 2024). Adaptive social protection (ASP) programs including social safety nets, economic inclusion programs, and shock-responsive interventions can make positive contributions to gender outcomes by widening women’s access to economic resources and building their capabilities (Holmes, Marsden, and Quarterman 2022). However, evidence for outcomes is variable, and multiple factors affect program effectiveness and impact, including an understanding of the gendered context, the inclusion of objectives for gender outcomes, the design of programs, the quality of implementation, and whether potential results are measured in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) processes. This paper explains why and how ASP that is gender-responsive matters in the Sahel. It describes key elements of the gendered context that have implications for all aspects of ASP in the region, from the design of delivery systems and programs to implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning. For each phase of the social protection delivery chain, the paper demonstrates why a lens on gender matters and what programs should aim for. 6 It highlights the status of current efforts, including good practices and gaps, and where the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP) (box 1) could focus in the future to support ASP that is gender- responsive across the Sahel, to maximize results for poverty alleviation, jobs, resilience, and women’s empowerment. Box 1: Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP) SASPP is a program that supports six Sahelian countries — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal — to operationalize and scale up sustainable ASP systems to help poor households and individuals build sustainable sources of income and enhance their resilience to climate change and other shocks, including conflict. Social safety nets, together with economic inclusion measures, widen employment opportunities for men, and especially for women, and strengthen individuals’ and their households’ capacity to adapt by building skills and capabilities and more diverse livelihoods. Drawing on climate early warning systems, SASPP also supports countries in anticipating climate-related events such as droughts, and in rapidly scaling up support via social safety net programs to respond to increasing needs. ASP interventions also have the potential to improve social cohesion and women’s empowerment. They do this by easing household capital constraints, addressing discriminatory social norms that reduce the status of women and girls, and widening their opportunities for financial inclusion. Source: Coudouel et al. 2024 The paper is structured as follows: the rest of Section 1 presents an overview of the methodology, SASPP, and a conceptual framework for understanding social protection that is gender-responsive. Section 2 defines the gendered context in the Sahel and its broad implications for program design, delivery, and management. Section 3 identifies how SASPP integrates a lens on gender for each phase of the social protection delivery chain, including how it uses key levers of change to amplify the impact of ASP. Section 4 concludes with an overview of progress in implementing good practices and highlights opportunities moving forward. Methodology The evidence that informs this paper is drawn from a comprehensive literature review, best practices, SASPP gray literature, and key informant interviews (KIIs) with World Bank staff, technical advisors, and experts on various delivery aspects. A Conceptual Framework for ASP that is Gender-Responsive This analysis draws on UNICEF Innocenti’s Conceptual Framework for a Gender-Responsive Age- Sensitive Social Protection (UNICEF Innocenti 2020). The framework demonstrates that poverty, risks, and vulnerabilities are gendered, and that they can change with life transitions and accumulate over time. The framework notes the need to understand the structural and individual drivers of gender inequality and how they result in unequal life trajectories for women and girls compared to men and boys, with long-term negative impacts. These factors present challenges for ensuring women and girls benefit from social protection. 7 The framework includes a life course lens on gender to assess the specific risks and vulnerabilities faced by women and girls at different stages of life. It outlines moderating factors that contribute to gender inequality, and which are likely to differ by context (intrahousehold dynamics; market access; social, cultural, and gender norms; policies; laws; conflict and instability; political conditions; and availability and quality of services). The framework identifies a wide range of opportunities and mechanisms through which social protection systems may address gendered risks and vulnerabilities, including the legal and policy framework, program design, implementation, governance, and financing. The framework provides a gender integration continuum that distinguishes different degrees to which gender is integrated across the delivery chain: • Gender-discriminatory programs actively exclude women and girls. • Gender-blind programs overlook gendered needs and vulnerabilities. For example, when monetary transfers are made via digital payments in contexts where women’s phone ownership is low, or when M&E processes do not collect or analyze sex-disaggregated data. Such programs are likely to leave women and girls excluded or hold back achievements for gender equality and produce negative unintended consequences (Perera et al. 2022). • Gender-sensitive programs recognize gender differences, but gender equality is not a primary objective. For example, when programs include quotas to enhance women’s participation or when M&E processes collect gender-disaggregated data on program participation and outcomes. • Gender-responsive programs are informed by gender analysis and respond to the challenges or barriers faced by women and girls in accessing and benefiting from social protection, because they recognize them as contextually relevant to addressing poverty, climate change, and conflict. They are fair and equitable in their processes, systems, and outcomes. • Gender-transformative programs aim to transform discriminatory or unequal gender relations and address the structural and root causes of poverty and inequality. They deliberately promote change in processes, access, and outcomes. They seek to ensure women and girls benefit from interventions, but they also involve men and boys. They aim for resilience, empowerment, and transformative outcomes. For example, programs can include behavior change communication interventions that shift norms around women’s access to, control over, and ownership of resources. The framework identifies outcomes for gender equality and women’s empowerment. This includes economic opportunities and empowerment, human capital development (health and education, increased access to skills and capabilities), improved psychosocial well-being, increased protection from gender-based violence (GBV), and enhanced voice and agency. 8 The framework identifies areas within policies, systems, and processes that require gender- responsive design. These include, among others, as follows: (i) the legal and policy environment; (ii) social protection strategies; (iii) public expenditure; (iv) coherence within social protection systems; (v) cross-sectoral linkages between systems, programs, and services; and (iv) the fidelity of program design, delivery capacity, M&E systems (including sex-disaggregated data), Management Information Systems (MIS), social registries, and Grievance Redress Mechanisms (GRMs) — which report and respond to beneficiary concerns, and allow feedback to improve the delivery of social protection programs (World Bank, 2019). (For further information on GRMs see Section 3.6.2 and sections for each phase of delivery). Outcomes for gender-responsive program design include equal access to benefits, adequate response to gender-specific needs, and enhanced empowerment of women and girls. The framework identifies change levers for ASP systems that are gender-responsive. They include actions to secure political commitment and incentives, together with financing; capacity building and strengthening of government and partners; institutional norms, rules and practices; evidence generation (data, research, and evaluation); and facilitating engagement with social movements who play a role in generating civil society demand for services and in ensuring accountability. The framework acknowledges that gender intersects with other social categories such as age, race, disability, and displacement. Gender in combination with other intersectional characteristics creates unique and overlapping experiences of inequality. Understanding and addressing intersecting inequalities in program design, implementation, and evidence gathering processes is more likely to achieve more effective and inclusive development outcomes. Why Does It Matter? Gender inequality and exclusion hinder socioeconomic development at the individual, household, and societal level. It creates an unequal role for women who do most of the unpaid care work, while men’s work is more likely to be remunerated. This gender division of labor lowers the status of women and girls and limits their access to economic opportunities. This affects the bargaining power women hold and their ability to make decisions in the household, in their communities, and in society at large. An unequal burden of responsibilities between men and women can lead to increased stress and conflict. It can exacerbate poverty, as women often take on a larger share of domestic work even when they are employed full-time. For society at large, gender inequality limits the potential of half the population. It hinders economic growth and perpetuates poverty. It undermines social cohesion and restricts access to opportunities in education, healthcare, and leadership positions. Ultimately, gaps in welfare, education, health, and employment opportunities impact on the well-being of entire communities and nations. Such gaps also expose women and girls to increased risks of GBV. Gender inequality also impacts politics, key institutions (judiciary, civil service, local government, police, social services), and the workplace. 9 2. GENDERED CONTEXT IN THE SAHEL What Is a Gendered Context? The gendered context refers to the social and cultural norms, expectations, and power dynamics that exist between men and women in any given setting and which exclude women from benefiting from programs, including ASP programs. In low-income countries, women and girls are disadvantaged compared to men and boys. Household, community, and institutional structures, including the law and the market, lock them into a reality of reduced opportunities, choice, and agency (Camilletti et al. 2021; UNICEF Innocenti 2020). Structural drivers of gender inequality include social or gender norms, harmful traditional practices such as early marriage, and gender discriminatory laws and practices. The vulnerabilities and risks faced by women and girls change depending on the stage of their life (for example, adolescence, childbirth, and old age). Women and girls do not enjoy the same rights, entitlements, access to assets, resources, and opportunities as men and boys. Household dynamics and power imbalances can influence how women and girls benefit from shared resources, and who makes decisions, including around how income is spent, and food is shared. The weaker position of women and girls in households means they are likely to have less access to assets and resources. Women are likely to make decisions around their children and small purchases but not necessarily around larger sums of money or important household decisions. Also, women and girls have more limited mobility and lower access to public spaces (Hallman et al 2014). Women and girls are less protected by legal and regulatory frameworks particularly in the areas of child marriage and other harmful traditional practices; GBV, sexual harassment, and femicide; and laws around entrepreneurship (constraints to women’s ability to start and run a business, including opening bank accounts), access to assets (women lack property rights and inheritance rights, which means they lack collateral for loans), and access to markets (World Bank 2024b). Gendered Context in the Sahel The Sahel has marked differences in outcomes for women and girls in education compared to men and boys (table 1). Completion rates vary across the region, with primary completion rates lower for girls in Chad, Mali, and Niger, but lower for boys in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal. Similarly, at lower secondary level, completion rates for girls are lower than boys in Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, but in Senegal and Burkina Faso, rates are lower for boys. Overall, girls often face higher risks of leaving education than boys to meet the demands for extra labor at home, or due to early marriage and pregnancy (Plan International 2022). Literacy rates are low for men in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger (average 40.6 percent), but they are even lower for women, who lag on average 15.6 percentage points behind men for literacy (table 1). In Senegal, the rate of literacy is also significantly lower for women than men (47.1 percent and 69.1 percent respectively). In Mauritania, rates of literacy are higher overall (71.8 percent men and 62.2 percent women), but women still lag 9 percentage points behind men. These figures mask significant regional differences. Barriers to girls’ education include early marriage, early motherhood, and the role girls play in household labor. On average, 52.5 percent of young women in the Sahel are married in childhood (UNICEF 2020). 10 Over 60 percent of girls in Chad and Niger are married before the age of 18; in Burkina Faso and Mali, it is over 50 percent; and in Mauritania and Senegal it is over 30 percent. Child marriage and harmful traditional practices, such as female genital mutilation and cutting are persisting and increasing in the Sahel (Erskine 2023). Table 1: Sahel - Primary and Lower Secondary Completion, Adult Literacy, and Child Marriage Rates Lower Secondary Girls Married Primary Completion Adult Literacy Rates Completion Before the Age (% of Relevant Group) (%, 15+) Country (% of Relevant Group) of 18 (%) Girls Boys Girls Boys Female Male Girls Burkina 57.3 46.4 31.9 23.5 29.1 40.1 52.0 Faso Chad 37.7 49.2 14.1 24.2 18.9 35.8 67.0 Mali 48.4 51.0 27.9 29.6 22.0 40.0 52.0 Mauritania 72.4 60.2 41.7 45.7 62.2 71.8 37.0 Niger 46.8 49.0 14.6 15.4 29.7 46.3 76.0 Senegal 69.4 53.4 44.7 34.1 47.1 69.1 31.0 Sources: Girls Not Brides 2019; Save the Children 2017; World Bank n.d. Notes: Primary and Secondary Completion rates: Burkina Faso 2023; Chad 2021; Niger 2023; Mali 2023; Senegal 2023; Mauritania 2019; Adult Literacy rates: Burkina Faso 2022; Chad 2022; Mali 2020; Senegal 2022; Mauritania 2021. High percentages of girls in the Sahel give birth before the age of 18. Ninety-five percent of married adolescent girls do not attend school. Poverty, conflict, and insecurity can lead households to marry off daughters early, but other factors including social norms, religious interpretations, and a lack of access to schooling also play a critical role (Ba and Versluys 2022). Adolescent girls and young women also face heightened risks during periods of shock and instability. Women and girls have low health outcomes across the Sahel. Large numbers of women and girls die giving birth. Maternal mortality rates in the region vary between 242.0 and 748.0 deaths per 100,000 live births (World Health Organization et al. 2025), due to early marriage and low access to maternal and reproductive health care. Hunger and lack of nutrition stemming from successive crises caused by climate shocks and conflict also affect women and girls differently (Plan International 2022b). Women and girls are more likely to sacrifice their food rations, eating less and last, and pregnant and lactating women and their infants are more likely to suffer severe and long-term health consequences from insufficient nutrition. Women and girls also suffer disproportionately from the repercussions from GBV and harmful traditional practices. Labor force participation rates among women vary across the Sahel (table 2). However, there are differences in the way women and men engage with work in the Sahel. Women predominantly work in the informal sector; largely as self-employed workers in subsistence agriculture, food processing, and retail, where they play a crucial role in managing the food and nutrition needs of their households (Bossuroy, Koussoubé, and Premand 2020). Men are more likely to work on crops destined for markets. In urban areas, women are more likely to work in handicrafts and retail. Women’s labor force participation rates are lowest in their prime working years and at a time when they start marrying and having children (Kabeer, 2018). 11 As women age, their limited access to education, assets, and opportunities across different life stages combine to increase risks of poverty and diminishing family support. Table 2: Labor Force Participation Rates Across the Sahel Burkina Faso Chad Mali Mauritania Niger Senegal Female 57.0% 48.6% 51.6% 26.4% 62.0% 37.6% Male 72.0% 72.2% 82.1% 57.2% 84.3% 63.9% Source: World Bank 2024 Social norms place considerable constraints on women’s productivity. Women play the significant role in childcare and domestic responsibilities, and women are limited to certain types of productive activities such as petty trade. Poor and vulnerable women and men face multiple challenges to improving their productivity, including climate-related risks, but also limited access to inputs, capital, and infrastructure. Challenges vary for working women and men: Women are more likely to face poor sales and experience social pressure to show generosity, offer credit, and forgive debt, while risks faced by men are associated with livestock diseases, and harassment in local markets (Bossuroy, Koussoubé, and Premand 2020). The Sahel is one of the world’s most climate-affected regions, with women and girls disproportionately impacted. Temperatures in the region are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average, and climate shocks — particularly erratic rainfall, floods and droughts — are increasing in frequency and severity (Roest, Coudouel, and Gordin 2025. The region has a semi-arid agrosystem and is economically dependent on agriculture and pastoralism (McOmber, 2020). The food economy, which employs more than 80 percent of people in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger, is increasingly vulnerable to climate shocks and weather variability. Climate events devastate livelihoods and among the most vulnerable are women, socially marginalized groups, youth, elderly, and those with disabilities. Although agriculture remains the predominant source of livelihood in the Sahel, it generates very low earnings, compelling most households to diversify their income-generating activities (Brunelin, Zombre, and Benzidia 2025). Women’s ability to invest in the types of resources necessary to recover from and plan for climate events are restricted by social norms, which constrain their mobility as well as their access to information, education, communications, and livelihood choices (McOmber 2020). Persistent food insecurity in the region also puts women and girls and marginalized groups at greater risk of malnutrition due to inequalities in intrahousehold food distribution (OCHA 2023) and contributes to spikes in child marriage and harmful traditional practices (Erskine 2023). Although women play a central role in food production, restrictive gender norms also leave them among the most vulnerable groups in the food insecurity crisis along with the elderly, young, and those living with disability. Women’s lack of access to, and control over land and other economic assets and resources are key drivers of their inequality, food insecurity, and vulnerability. Poverty, vulnerability, competition over natural resources, and lack of economic opportunities are exacerbating conflict and forced displacement in the Sahel, where almost 4 million people are displaced from their homes (Roest, Coudouel, and Gordin 2025; Sharma and Menke 2024). In fragile and conflict affected areas, women and men face risks and vulnerabilities, with gender as a factor in their 12 different experiences. Women’s dependency on natural resources adds to their vulnerability. Searching for increasingly scarce resources, such as firewood and water, erodes their time, security, and income (McOmber 2020). Social and economic insecurity are also push factors for migration and displacement (Afifi 2011; Schürmann et al. 2022), which pose heightened gendered risks and vulnerabilities (table 3) (Bushra 2000; OCHA 2023; UN Women 2024). As security deteriorates across the Sahel, the situation for GBV is worsening. Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger experienced a 20 percent increase in protection incidents between 2022 and 2023, of which 1 in 9 incidents were related to GBV, reaching a ratio of 1 in 5 in some areas and overall, more than 40 percent of GBV survivors lacked access to adequate services (Project 21 2023). Table 3: The Gendered Dimensions of Conflict: Risks and Vulnerabilities Women and Girls Men and Boys Sexual violence used as a war tactic; increases in GBV, Vulnerable to direct physical harm, targeted killing, and including early marriage; sexual exploitation for food; forced recruitment to join armed groups. trafficking of girls and women. Three quarters of maternal deaths occur in fragile settings Mental health issues. every year. Economic inequality reduces women’s ability to absorb Unemployment and isolation. Stigma and shame from not shocks. being able to fulfil a role as breadwinner. Women are harder to reach and often less able to access Vulnerable to sexual abuse, but unable or unwilling to relief and assistance, with further threats to their report it. livelihoods, well-being. and recovery. Family abandonment. Loss of education. Mental health issues. Loss of access to key services, including education, health, and sexual and reproductive health services. Girls may be pulled out of school first. Sources: Bushra 2000; OCHA 2023; UN Women 2024 The Sahel is home to other vulnerable groups, including those living with disability, populations that move; those who are forcibly displaced through conflict and climate change events, including refugees and internally displaced persons; widows; and wives and children in polygamous households. The populations that move are particularly affected by a lack of access to basic services. In Mali, for example, school attendance rates for children from nomadic pastoralists are estimated at between two percent to three percent of children (Crola 2019). Widows face specific social and economic challenges, including discriminatory policies and laws, negative labelling and stereotyping, loss of social status, social isolation, and stigma (Odhiambo et al. 2025). Widow stigma causes poor mental, sexual, and reproductive health outcomes. Widows lose access to assets through inheritance practices. They are also vulnerable to sexual exploitation and GBV. Social protection systems and programs have the potential to address some of the structural barriers women face and improve development outcomes for women and girls in ways that are empowering. Evidence shows that programs are most likely to yield positive results for gender when their design is informed by an understanding of the gendered context, there are clear objectives for women’s empowerment, delivery approaches are gender-informed, and results that contribute to women’s empowerment are measured (Holmes, Marsden, and Quarterman 2022). 13 3. GENDER-RESPONSIVE ASP DESIGN AND DELIVERY IN THE SAHEL SASPP is supporting countries in the Sahel to develop ASP systems that are gender-responsive. At the impact level, SASPP has demonstrated the contribution of ASP programs to gender outcomes in key areas: economic opportunities and empowerment, human capital development, psychological well-being, and voice and agency. For its third program phase, SASPP has identified three cross-cutting objectives to reduce poverty and exclusion and promote resilience and women’s empowerment: • Equal access to benefits for women and girls. Benefits include the delivery of transfers to households through women (as recipients), as well as measures to improve women’s economic inclusion and human capital, and programs to protect consumption and assets during crises. Equal access entails an understanding of the barriers that women face — constraints on time and mobility, access to identification documents (ID), and women’s unequal role in intrahousehold and public decision-making. • Adequate response to gendered needs. Ensuring programs are designed in a way that recognizes the different constraints faced by women, and that tailors the intervention to their specific needs (in terms of knowledge, skills, sectors of employment, mobility, and time constraints, among others). • Enhanced empowerment of women and girls, with supportive attitudes and behaviors from communities, men, and boys. For each key phase in the social protection delivery chain, this section explains why and how these objectives matter from a gender perspective; what SASPP has achieved, and what more can be done. The section is organized according to the phases laid out in the social protection delivery chain (figure 1) as follows: Section 3.1, outreach (including engagement with communities and individuals); Section 3.2, intake, registration, and assessment of needs and conditions (including identification systems and social registries); Section 3.3, eligibility and enrollment decisions; Section 3.4, provision of benefits (including payment systems); Section 3.5, accompanying measures to build human capital and economic security; Section 3.6, program management, which for the purposes of this paper covers progress and challenges for ASP M&E and the prevention and mitigation of GBV, and sexual exploitation abuse and sexual harassment (SEA/SH) (relevant across all phases of the delivery chain); and Section 3.7, how SASPP uses key levers of change to transform the design and delivery of gender-responsive social protection (note that some discussions cut across multiple phases, as indicated where relevant (see for example, box 2). 14 Figure 1: Social Protection Delivery Chain Source: Lindert et al 2020 Box 2: The Importance of Women’s Ownership and Access to ID Across the Delivery Chain Women’s ownership and access to ID is a recurrent challenge across key phases of the delivery chain, which can undermine women’s access to ASP programs and other services. Gender gaps exist in ID ownership in all six Sahel countries, but there are significant gaps in countries with ID penetration of less than 70 percent (Chad, Mali, and Niger). In all SASPP countries, rural, poor residents, and those who are marginalized and displaced, particularly women, are less likely to have IDs. Barriers to women’s ownership or access to ID in the Sahel include social norms that place more value on men and boys, mobility constraints, the cost of travel, opportunity costs associated with care responsibilities, lack of documents, and complex bureaucratic processes. Lack of ID reduces women’s access to financial services, subscriber identity module (SIM) cards, mobile banking, and employment, and to taking part in local elections. In the sections that follow, the analysis highlights when ID matters, existing good practices, and what more can be done. Sources: Clark, Metz, and Casher 2022; Klapper 2024 3.1 Gender-Responsive Outreach (Phase 1) What Is It? Outreach activities elicit community support for program objectives, rules, and eligibility criteria. Their purpose is to reach intended populations and provide them with the information they need to participate in the program. Outreach provides target populations with information on points of contact; timing and place of registration; the rights and responsibilities of potential and eventual program beneficiaries; and channels for filing grievances, complaints, and appeals (Lindert et al. 2020). 15 Outreach involves interactions that inform people (men and women) about social protection programs and delivery processes and persuade them to engage (Lindert et al. 2020). This means involving community leaders (men and women, including religious leaders and elders) who influence social norms in dialogue to ensure that they understand and support the programs and their design, including eligibility criteria for inclusion, and the rationale for women as recipients and participants in measures to improve their human capital and develop their economic potential. Why Does It Matter? Vulnerable, at risk, and marginalized populations, particularly women, are likely to face barriers in gaining access to information about ASP programs. These barriers need to be understood by those designing and delivering outreach approaches. Women may not have access to the same channels of communication about the program as men. This includes women who are disabled, elderly, displaced, or who speak a different language. Women may be busy with domestic workloads, have time constraints, and be less able to engage with frontline staff when men are present. Frontline workers may make assumptions that people will inform each other, and that men will inform women. The barriers women face in accessing information at the outreach phase need to be understood. This can be done either through diagnostic research or through monitoring and assessment processes that continually gather insights into the barriers that women face — and take action to address them. When social safety net programs target women as beneficiaries, it is critical that communities, community leaders, and men and boys are informed and supportive. Therefore, frontline workers at the outreach phase must present and explain the reasoning behind program decisions (Barca et al. 2021). This phase requires frontline workers to possess the capacity and skills in raising awareness of women’s conditions and in engaging men and boys to explain the rationale for programs’ objectives and for targeting women with benefits. It requires culturally appropriate concepts, terms, and approaches to avoid backlash and negative reactions, which can include harassment, aggression, and resistance. Outreach is the first phase in the delivery chain to inform communities of ID requirements for registration, to understand the barriers that women face in obtaining ID, and to find solutions to facilitate access. Actions that support ID access include arranging mobile registration and/or facilitating transport or meeting its cost; and negotiating at the local level for fast-tracking access to ID and flexibility toward document requirements. Outreach is also the first phase where potential risks for SEA/SH by frontline workers need to be understood and addressed through mitigation strategies. Such strategies ensure that women and children are not compromised or made vulnerable and exposed to harassment, exploitation, or assault by those involved in implementation including consultants, frontline staff, and agents involved payment transfers. GRMs are also established at the outreach phase to allow all potential beneficiaries to voice issues and concerns regarding any aspect of program management, including reporting incidences of SEA/SH. GRMs provide individuals with a mechanism to appeal in the case of refusal of a benefit or to complain about the quality and quantity of delivery (UNRISD et al 2015). GRMs should be impartial, independent, and fair. They should be transparent and effective in answering complaints and appeals and in providing remedies without gender bias. 16 What Is SASPP Doing? SASPP-supported national social safety net programs are using gender-differentiated outreach approaches aimed at providing equal access to information. Typically, frontline workers engage men and women separately in their communities and then bring them together for further dialogue. Some SASPP-supported social safety nets have established targets for the number or percentage of women who must be informed during outreach processes. They use mixed media approaches to communicate, such as local radio stations and loudspeakers mounted on cars, and they engage with village associations (male and female), who further disseminate information to households that are potentially eligible for assistance. Village associations play an important role in informing and supporting potential beneficiaries throughout the delivery chain. Frontline workers also explain the purpose of GRMs (for further insights on how SASPP supports action to prevent and mitigate risks of GBV and SEA/SH, see Section 3.6.2). In Burkina Faso, frontline staff engage communities and men and boys to explain the rationale for targeting women with benefits. What More Can Be Done? • Provide capacity development support for frontline staff and volunteers to improve the gender-responsiveness of outreach activities with objectives for: (i) reaching all members of communities, including women and other hard-to reach groups with information about social protection, and explaining all phases of delivery; (ii) eliciting community support for women’s access to ID, and for women as recipients of payments and other benefits, including for all wives in polygamous households; (iii) establishing and explaining survivor-focused GRMs to community associations and potential beneficiaries using locally understood terms and concepts; (iv) identifying and closing risks of SEA/SH from project staff and mobile operators where relevant (See Annex 2 for further insights on areas, topics, and learning objectives for frontline workers). • Provide support for diagnostic research to understand and respond to the different communication needs of women in context, and factor insights and recommendations into the overall outreach approach. 3.2 Gender-Responsive Intake, Registration, and Assessment of Needs and Conditions (Phases 2-3) What Is It? Intake and registration (phase two) are the processes of initiating contact, engaging with, and gathering information from individuals and households; and recording and verifying this information. Intake and registration aim to provide complete, verified, and validated information to inform the assessment of needs and conditions (phase three), which is the process of profiling registered individuals and households using various assessment methodologies. These profiles can then be used by social programs — often in combination with program-specific eligibility criteria — to determine potential eligibility and enrollment (phase five and six) in social programs (Lindert et al. 2020). 17 In the Sahel, social registries are used to support the processes of intake, registration, and assessment of needs and conditions, relying on the data and information they gather. Governments use social registries to systematically collect and consolidate socioeconomic data and other characteristics on intended populations, sufficient to enable the assessment of a range of welfare indicators. As part of this process, in the Sahel, geographic and/or community-based targeting can: (i) contribute to the prioritization of households that will be registered; and (ii) support the validation of welfare assessment scores or beneficiary lists, using local knowledge and often relying on established community structures (male and female village associations). Social registries routinely prepare estimates of household welfare using proxy means tests (PMTs), which are based on ‘proxies’ to actual income or consumption, relying on observable characteristics such as asset ownership, housing quality, demographics, and other factors that are correlated with monetary poverty. When they support these common processes for multiple programs, social registries enhance effectiveness and efficiency for program administrators, which make eligibility and enrollment decisions (Alberro and Geschwind 2025). Why Does It Matter? When intake, registration, and assessment of needs and conditions processes have objectives to remove barriers for those at risk of being excluded, they can offer significant opportunities to promote equal access to benefits (Barca et al. 2021). These three processes require consideration of gender to ensure women’s inclusion. Particular attention is also required for intersecting characteristics that can exclude when combined with gender (age, disability, displacement). In the Sahel, these processes require implementation capacity to be responsive and adaptive to support ASP programs in rapidly expanding their coverage, both during normal times and when a shock occurs (Alberro, Geschwind, and Patella 2025). Intake and registration processes include two core elements. First, defining the criteria and processes used to decide which households should be surveyed. Second, determining which data should be collected. Intake and registration processes have implications for gender, both in what criteria are set for identifying the most vulnerable households and in how these are applied, and in what decisions are made on which households to survey. This includes preselection processes involving community perspectives and/or the perspectives of local authorities. Data collection questionnaires and processes can inadvertently introduce barriers for women if they do not take into consideration ownership or access to ID, mobility issues, language barriers, legal complexities on refugee status, and potential discrimination of marginalized and vulnerable groups of women (age, disability, displacement). Diagnostic research on the gendered barriers to intake and registration can help widen access to registration for households and individuals with gendered risks and vulnerabilities (OECD 2022). Intake and registration are critical phases where risks associated with GBV and SEA/SH need to be assessed and closed. This includes risks faced by women and other vulnerable groups in registration centers or other data collection processes (for instance, household visits from assessment enumerators). (See Section 3.6.2 for further information.) The assessment of needs and conditions calls for multiple methodologies to evaluate the welfare of registrants. The results are used later (during the Eligibility and Enrollment phase) by program administrators to consider registrants for potential eligibility and enrollment. 18 When intake, registration, and assessment processes are gender-responsive, including in environments characterized by sudden-onset shocks caused by climate events and conflict: • The registration has objectives for gender equality and women’s empowerment. For example: enabling women to be responsible for reporting household information; recruiting women staff to support registration processes; and supporting those who require help. • Intake criteria give weight to households with gendered risks and vulnerabilities, such as female headed households and households with disabled members, non-native language speakers, migrants, and displaced populations, where female members are doubly disadvantaged. Including those with local knowledge of households with gendered vulnerabilities in decision-making processes on intake criteria can help make intake criteria more inclusive. • Community validation processes include women, either by establishing quotas for their participation in decision-making or by involving men and women separately in these processes. Communities are provided with guidance on the types of households with gendered risks and vulnerabilities to poverty. Program evaluations verify progress in this area by assessing biases in decision-making processes and whether women’s voices and perspectives are heard and acted on (see Section 3.6.1 and Annex 1 for further details on monitoring and evaluating women’s role in validation committees) • An objective is set to remove barriers to intake and registration for those most at risk of being excluded (Barca et al. 2021). This includes (i) reducing the direct, indirect, and opportunity costs of being registered. For example, finding local solutions to overcome women’s time-poverty, caring duties, facilitating women’s ID requirements, the complexity of registration processes, and the distance and costs in reaching registration points; (ii) identifying and addressing restrictive gender norms that can limit women’s participation in intake and registration processes, for example the gender of the enumerator; and (iii) supporting vulnerable groups of women registering, for example those with low levels of education and/or disabilities or language constraints (Barca et al. 2021). • Data collected at the intake stage is designed to reveal gendered risks and vulnerabilities. Assets and resources can play a role in determining potential eligibility, in which case data collection tools used can include gender-sensitive questions on: ownership of and rights to physical and financial assets (mobile phones, land, livestock); labor market outcomes; access to services (healthcare, education, and other essential services); experiences of violence in shock prone contexts; and mobility — women’s ability to move freely (Hasanbasri et al. 2021; Pereznieto and Holmes 2020). However, additional questions require a rationale or justification to avoid incurring unwarranted costs and overloading data collection processes. • Processes identify and reduce potential bias in data collection. Bias is visible in enumerator recruitment, in enumerator attitudes and behaviors, and in how questions are framed. Bias, based on gender, disability, and displacement refers to conscious or unconscious stereotypes and prejudices that can influence interpretation of information about an applicant. Bias can be removed through training and supervision for implementation teams (World Bank Group 2019). 19 • Approaches offer guidance on the gender of respondents. Men and women may have similar perspectives on physical aspects of their living conditions but different perspectives on other survey questions. Interviewing only older household heads or those present at the time of the first assessment visit may result in a narrow perspective (Demombynes 2013). A best practice approach is to interview multiple members with the most knowledgeable people providing different pieces of information. Analyze data from a gender perspective to identify households with gendered risks and vulnerabilities. Women may not own or have access to mobile phones, which is important if monetary transfers transition to digital systems. Both women and children may lack access to essential services, including schools, health clinics, and care services for GBV. Also, female headed households may not own livestock but may rely on it or be affected by shortages in the market (Pereznieto and Holmes 2020). What Is SASPP Doing? SASPP supports governments in developing social registries for national ASP programs to identify poor and vulnerable populations. A recent SASPP Technical Paper on dynamic social registries for ASP (box 3) explores their role in shock-prone contexts, including the Sahel, incorporating considerations that matter for gender and equal access. For example, it provides insight into variables and attributes for core and complementary data modules, which include identification and biographic information that cover individual characteristics. It flags where criteria for evaluating the quality of data may exclude groups, including women. It also flags the need for registration processes to assist registrants, particularly women and those with low levels of education and disabilities. Box 3: What Are Dynamic Social Registries? Dynamic social registries capture the changing living conditions of households. They offer an “...open and continuous intake and registration process, enabling households to register and/or update their socioeconomic information at any time” (Alberro and Geschwind 2025). Dynamic social registries play a vital role in ASP delivery in environments where household welfare can change dramatically and abruptly due to shocks. Sources: Alberro and Geschwind 2025; Williams and Moreira 2020 SASPP advises governments on the design of inclusive social registries. Social registries capture household composition (including for polygamous households and the registration of all wives) as well as individual characteristics within households by gender, age, and disability, so that households with specific gender, age, and other vulnerabilities can be considered for eligibility by programs. Some of the registries also include refugee populations (box 4). Questionnaires used by social registries are increasingly capturing individual characteristics within households for a better analysis of gender and exclusion. In Senegal, SASPP technical assistance has supported government partners in ensuring registration questions now record key household assets by gender, for example mobile phones for individual household members, aged 15 and above, and the distance between users to financial services. 20 SASPP diagnostic research informs social registry design. A recent SASPP study on barriers faced by internal migrants and internally displaced persons in accessing social protection benefits recommends capturing migration and/or displacement as a category in social registry assessments as these groups, and especially women have specific vulnerabilities, including outmigration of men, leaving women and children dependent and unprotected (Holmes and Branders 2024). This is also relevant for crisis environments. Box 4: Mauritania – Inclusive Social Registry In refugee hosting areas, the government of Mauritania, in partnership with UNHCR, the World Bank, and the World Food Programme (WFP), includes data on refugee households and host communities in its social registry used by the national social safety net program, Tekavoul, and other social programs. The Mauritanian social registry is one of the largest in the Sahel. Established in 2016, it reached all regions and areas in the country by 2020 and includes detailed socioeconomic information on the poorest 40 percent of the population in its database. It is used by more than 40 national institutional partners for food distribution, monetary transfers, and emergency response initiatives. Its latest update will record households with members who live with disabilities, using the Washington Group Short Set on Functioning. Source: UNHCR and WFP 2021; SASPP KIIs SASPP has supported the enhancement of community processes that contribute to the intake and registration phases, either for the identification or for the validation of households to be included in registries. This has consisted of setting quotas for women as members and/or providing committees with criteria for identifying households with gendered vulnerabilities and risks (box 5). Box 5: Senegal - Use of Gender-Sensitive Processes and Indicators for Updating the National Social Registry Senegal’s community preselection phase for updating the data in its national social registry ( Registre National Unique, RNU), involves a commune-level committee (Comité Communal de Ciblage et de Suivi, CCCS) which distributes the allocated quota among localities or neighborhoods within the commune and community committees in each locality or neighborhood in charge of preselecting households to be registered. For both committees, quotas are set for women. There is an assumption that women’s involvement in committees strengthens the targeting process by leveraging their networks and knowledge of at-risk households. Social workers provide community associations with gender-sensitive indicators of poverty and vulnerability that they use to identify low-income households with gendered characteristics, such as female-headed households, households with widows; disabled members; those suffering from a chronic illness; and households without access to basic services (drinking water, electricity, and sewage system, among others) — all of which can indicate both extreme poverty, gendered vulnerabilities and needs, but also displacement. Source: SASPP KIIs 21 What More Can Be Done? Establish objectives for gender-responsive intake, registration assessment of needs (equal access, understanding gendered needs along with age, disability and displacement, and enhanced empowerment of women). Support diagnostic analysis on gender-responsive intake and registration processes and strengthen the advice provided to stakeholders on issues of equity and inclusion. Assess the following issues: • What are the gendered barriers to intake and registration and what measures could improve criteria and processes accessible to all (OECD 2022)? (See, for example, box 6). To what extent are registries’ data collection processes accessible to women and bias free? Do direct data collection processes purposefully include women as respondents; are there noticeable biases in the questionnaires and enumerators approach? Do enumerator teams include both men and women? • What factors ensure that community validation processes are inclusive of women and their perspectives, including their knowledge of local circumstances that may not be captured by standard data collection methods (McCord 2013)? What inputs would empower and support women’s and men’s village associations in changing gender norms that restrict women’s access to intake and registration? What typical biases influence women’s participation and how can these be addressed? • To what extent is the data stored in social registries inclusive of gender, age, disability and displacement, as well as access to services? Do questions record gender, age, and other intersecting characteristics (disability, displacement); access to services (health and reproductive health, education, and agricultural outreach); access to markets; and mobility (Barca et al. 2021)? • To what extent is social registry data analyzed from a gender perspective and what insights might it yield for synergies with other partners, to for example widen access to services for women and girls? Support capacity strengthening for implementing agencies to ensure they address barriers to intake and registration (including ID documents) and to remove potential bias. In guidance documents introduce objectives for registration processes that strengthen the empowerment of women. 22 Box 6: Pakistan – A Dynamic Social Registry Can Widen Access for Women and Contribute to Changing Gender Norms In Pakistan, the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) manages a dynamic social registry that enables shock-responsive social protection using approaches that aim to contribute to women’s empowerment and change gender norms. For example, since its inception, registration of household data is the responsibility of women. Ushers at registration centers, primarily women, were from households who benefited from the BISP safety net program, contributing to the rapid expansion of the registry and to the empowerment of women from poor and vulnerable communities. Their prior experiences with BISP enabled them to better understand and empathize with the needs of women coming to register. Female employees at registration centers also acted as role models, demonstrating to communities and women and girls their potential and capabilities. Women were treated not as passive recipients of support but as agents of change, promoting women’s employment outside the house. Source: Bilal 2018 3.3 Gender-Responsive Eligibility and Enrollment (Phases 4-6) What Is It The eligibility and enrollment phases involve programs determining which households or individuals will qualify for programs according to program-specific criteria, making enrollment decisions, and notifying and onboarding beneficiaries of social programs. Eligibility and enrollment are determined by the assessment of needs and conditions (phase 3) and other program-specific criteria, including on the basis of data from social registries (Lindert et al. 2020). Why Does It Matter? Gender-responsive eligibility and enrollment can increase women’s inclusion in ASP programs, by ensuring the objectives, criteria, and processes take gendered risks and vulnerabilities into account (Lindert et al. 2020). When information from household surveys is analyzed to define programs’ eligibility criteria, applying a lens on gender can offer more nuanced insights into patterns of poverty and vulnerability. This can help ensure eligibility criteria are gender-informed and inclusive (Lindert et al. 2020). For example, PMTs can be made gender-responsive if they include attributes such as female- headed households, adolescent girls, widows, or marital status as potential determinants of consumption-based poverty in the PMT model specification process (Barca et al. 2021; and SASPP KIIs). 23 Scoring criteria can reflect that some households have more gendered risks and vulnerabilities than others. These criteria can include, for example: female-headed households, households with widows, pregnant women, multiple wives (polygamy), those living with disability or illness, girls at risk of early marriage and other harmful traditional practices, and children at risk of leaving school early. During the enrollment phase, ID may again be needed (Lindert et al. 2020). The process that began in earlier phases to facilitate women’s ID access is likely to continue. What Is SASPP Doing? SASPP has supported efforts to identify and address gendered barriers to enrollment. For example, studies and evaluations routinely shed light on barriers faced by participants, including difficulties for women in obtaining IDs. To address these constraints in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal, SASPP-supported social safety net programs have facilitated access to IDs. In Niger, SASPP technical advisers and government implementation staff have found local solutions by involving and seeking support from the relevant municipal department. In Mauritania, the national safety net program, Tekavoul issued its own program ID at the time of enrollment. This highlights the importance of sufficient capacity among frontline staff to find context-specific solutions to implementation challenges (Barca et al. 2021). As with the process for selecting households that will be surveyed in social registries, programs supported by SASPP often involve community validation of the list of households considered eligible, prior to their enrollment. This typically involves a process where community members (men and women) actively review and confirm which households within their area qualify for the program. In this process, SASPP has supported governments to involve village associations run separately by men and women. What More Can Be Done? Support diagnostic research to assess the extent to which community and other validation processes support inclusion and gender-responsive objectives and reduce bias. Ensure recommendations are costed and scalable. Provide capacity strengthening support to implementing agencies to ensure they: • Guide communities in validating household selection, widening their understanding of gender and poverty, women’s role in community validation processes, and potential bias in eligibility processes. Provide criteria that highlight risks of poverty and vulnerability in the face of climate events and other shocks. For example, female-headed households; households with economic inactivity; households with widows; adolescent girls (potentially at risk of early marriage and pregnancy) and other forms of GBV; households with children at risk of non-school attendance or dropping of school; households with members living with disability or illness; and migrant and displaced households with unaccompanied women and children. • Maintain a lens on gender throughout the eligibility and enrollment phase, from design (establishing clear objectives) to inclusive eligibility criteria, community validation, and enrollment processes. 24 3.4 Gender-Responsive Provision of Benefits (Phase 7) 3.4.1 Selecting Women as Recipients of Monetary Transfers What Is It? Gender-responsive provision of benefits, specifically payments of monetary transfers, is a core phase in the delivery chain (Lindert et al. 2020). Monetary transfers to women are seen as good practice, often because of their instrumental role in improving human development outcomes as primary caregivers for children and other dependents. Payments to women can also contribute to empowerment objectives; namely women playing a role in decision-making on how household income is spent (Pereznieto and Holmes 2023). Payments are often one of the points of regular contact between social safety net programs and program recipients, which provides additional engagement and service opportunities, but also risks. Why Does It Matter? The decision to designate women as recipients of transfers is based on a growing body of evidence that demonstrates positive effects for women and children. For example, a 2012 systematic review of the evidence on well-being outcomes of monetary or in-kind transfers to women, relative to men, found that targeting transfers to women improved child nutrition and health (Bastagli et al. 2016 in Camilletti 2020). Women also invested in livestock and agricultural tools as much, or more than men, and they invested in different types of assets than men (Bastagli et al. 2016 in Camilletti 2020). Evidence also shows that transfers to women can lead to a reduction in violence, particularly intimate partner violence (IPV) and violence against children, by reducing poverty-related stress, empowering women, and strengthening their social networks (Botea et al. 2021). IPV refers to behavior by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse, and controlling behaviors (WHO 2012). Violence within households is often associated with food insecurity, poverty, and unemployment. Increasing women’s access to resources can reduce intrahousehold conflict by reducing their dependence on male financial support. It can also reduce other poverty-related stressors and improve emotional well-being (Buller et al. 2008 in Botea et al. 2021). At the same time, where women are recipients of payments it is important to consider what factors enable them to retain a voice over its use and to identify and address any potential conflict of such use. As stated in Section 3.1 on outreach, the rationale for designating women as the primary recipients of monetary transfers needs to be understood and supported by a wide range of stakeholders to ensure acceptability. These include government agencies, implementing partners, technical advisors, evaluators, local representatives, as well as communities, particularly men and boys. What Is SASPP Doing? SASPP actively promotes the selection of women as recipients of transfers. Overall, women represent over 90 percent of recipients of SASPP-supported climate shock-response programs, 75 percent of recipients of SASPP-supported COVID-19 response programs, and 75 percent of those benefiting from economic inclusion support. In addition, most regular safety net programs supported by the World Bank in the region designate women as the recipient of transfers (for further information see the SASPP Annual Report Fiscal Year 2024). 25 SASPP is collecting evidence on why payments to women matter for intra-household relations, women’s empowerment, and for household well-being. This evidence points to important benefits for women. SASPP evaluations offer lessons on the need to actively promote women as recipients of monetary transfers, introduce flexibility, and assess why some households opt for alternatives (other women in the household and men). At the same time, SASPP is promoting flexibility in approaches to select recipients. In Mali and Senegal, women recipients can designate a representative (a ‘mandataire’) to collect payment on their behalf. Potentially, this eases women’s mobility constraints and time burdens. Evidence from an evaluation in Mali found these alternative recipients had higher levels of education (World Bank 2022a). This suggests that households make rational decisions on who is best placed to collect payments. However, if the stand-in for payment is a man, this may be a lost opportunity for strengthening women’s skills and capabilities, unless accompanying measures are sufficiently flexible and inclusive in their targeting. SASPP recognizes that designating women as recipients of payments requires community engagement to counter potential resistance and secure a greater role for women in decision-making. SASPP also recognizes that women recipients may not necessarily use and benefit equally from the transfer if they have weak bargaining power and lack a role in decision-making, limited confidence, or lack financial and functional literacy (Yoong, Rabinovich, and Diepeveen 2012; Myamba 2020 in Camilletti 2020; and Ulrichs 2016). SASPPs own impact studies have demonstrated that when the transfer is presented as a contribution to the welfare of the household, and when women recipients are supported by their households and communities, they are more likely to reap benefits and less likely to be undermined by backlash (Bossuroy et al. 2022). Evidence gathering processes within SASPP have shed some light on gendered barriers and social norms that affect the payment phase of delivery. Diagnostic research has uncovered discriminatory attitudes on the part of communities and men around women’s ability to manage money and make decisions (box 7). Process evaluations have also identified the need for clarity among frontline workers on whether benefits are intended for women or households. This indicates the need for programs to include an objective that for delivery staff to secure community and household support for women as recipients of transfers and to integrate this issue into capacity strengthening efforts (See Annex 2, table A2.1). Box 7: Diagnostic Research in Mauritania Uncovers Unfounded Beliefs on Women and Money Research in Mauritania into gender norms that discriminate against women uncovered some degree of distrust on the part of leaders and men toward women’s ability to manage money and make decisions. The research found that women were seen by some as less able than men to manage money. They were at times considered frivolous and self-interested rather than household oriented. These attitudes were not grounded in facts. Indeed, the research found significant numbers of women engaged in small livelihood activities, selling produce in markets and managing money, in the same communities. Source: SASPP gray literature1 1 Rouichi, Stépha, Salma Bleila, Hawa Ball, Julia Vaillant, and Tara Bedi. “Rapport de Mission : Recherche Qualitative Sur Les Normes Sociales et l’Équite Du Genre, Mbout, Mauritanie.” Mimeo. December 2019. World Bank. 26 To make the case for women recipients of transfers where it was not previously the case, SASPP piloted an intervention in Mali to demonstrate to government policymakers that switching payments from men to women would be viable and bring about empowerment gains, even in areas with entrenched attitudes (box 8). Box 8: A Pilot Intervention in Mali Demonstrates the Viability and Benefits of Payments to Women in Areas with Entrenched Social Norms In Mali, most policymakers expected communities would reject the notion of women recipients. SASPP supported a pilot intervention to assess whether switching payments from men to women would be accepted by communities, and that women could be trusted not to misuse funds. The shift was largely accepted by communities, although there were limited gains in women’s decision- making in the short run (nine months). However, even if women recipients often handed most of the transfer to their husbands, they were more likely to have a say in how the funds were used. In contrast, when men received transfers, they did not involve wives in decision-making. The intervention also increased women’s knowledge of the program and resulted in significantly higher household food security (reported by men). There was some evidence of higher spending on education (reported by women). There were no major changes in women’s decision -making power, or changes in power dynamics in relationships. Source: SASPP gray literature2 What More Can Be Done? • Support the capacity development of implementing agencies to enhance their understanding of the benefits of selecting women for payments. Provide the evidence of the positive impacts of providing payments to women (see Section 3.1 for further detail and Annex 2 training topics). Build knowledge and skills in accurately recording sex-disaggregated data on payment recipients • Support additional pilots in contexts of entrenched social norms to demonstrate to governments and communities the benefits of payments to women. 2 Hilger, Anne, and Kelsey Wright. “Access to Resources and Women’s Empowerment: Evidence from Mali. Lessons from a (Partial) Impact Evaluation.” Mimeo. June 14, 2023. World Bank. 27 3.4.2 Gender-Responsive Payment Systems What Is It? Payment systems, including digital payment systems, are critical to delivering timely support to ASP program beneficiaries. Payments can also be a key point of contact between beneficiaries and frontline staff or digital service providers. In the Sahel, some countries are transitioning toward digital payments, and the choice and design of payment systems is informed by many supply and demand-side considerations. These include cost; capacity constraints; coverage and accessibility of payment operators; mobile phone ownership rates (gender); network; and GBV considerations (Lindert et al. 2020 in Botea et al 2021). Why Does It Matter? Payment systems, including digital payment systems, are more likely to be inclusive when gendered barriers that constrain women’s access are considered at the design phase. For women, barriers are likely to stem from their gendered roles and from social norms affecting women’s time, mobility, and safety. The cost of travel and the availability of safe transport as well as support for men and women throughout the payment process are also important. Also, ID is often required for phone and sim card ownership and for collecting payments. Digital money offers a cheaper, safer, and more secure alternative to cash-in-hand payments but might not be suitable for all contexts, for example where, illiteracy is high, mobile coverage is limited, and women lack ID. In times of crisis, the risks posed by different payment systems (cash-in-hand or digital) need to be assessed to understand the challenges posed to women’s access, safety, and mobility (Pereznieto and Holmes 2020). Ownership of mobile phones continues to be gendered constraint, with a gender gap of 32 percent for Sub-Saharan Africa affecting access for populations who are poor and rural (Jeffrie 2024). Even though Senegal’s social registry shows that in 2025 over 80 percent of men and women have mobile money accounts, the 20 percent that do not need to be carefully considered in the design of payment systems. Providing choice and convenience to beneficiaries through different payment mechanisms (mobile money wallet, cash-in-hand, QR code, card) can help advance ASP that is gender-responsive. There is emerging evidence for solutions that are relevant for designing gender-responsive payment systems in ASP programs. For example, research in India and China provides insights into understanding the constraints non-literate users face, as well as solutions such as providing simple mobile phones with minimal features, providing sessions on how to use the phone, and creating an environment for risk-free exploration to raise competency levels and improving infrastructure with voice messages (Chipchase 2005). During the payment phase, access to GRMs that provide unbiased support to men and women are also particularly relevant to ensure both men and women can report any issues with access to payments. 28 What Is SASPP Doing? SASPP provides support to ensure payment systems are adapted to women. In the Sahel, payment systems are evolving along a continuum from manual to automated payment administration, and from cash-in-hand to digital payment provision. SASPP is supporting capacity strengthening on barriers and engagement with systems designers to find solutions. SASPP has conducted monitoring, evaluations and diagnostics that have collected sex- disaggregated data and shed light on gendered barriers in accessing payments (box 9), including digital ones (World Bank 2022a). Sex-disaggregated data has demonstrated key differences between men and women in accessing payments and in receiving support. SASPP evaluations in Mali, Niger, and Senegal have also produced important program learning around transitions to digital payments in urban areas. For example, the provision of cheap mobile phones and SIM cards can widen women’s access to this asset, and to payments . However, there are associated risks — issuing phones to women may trigger household conflict; and in the face of extreme poverty, climate, and other shocks, households may resort to selling this asset. If women already have mobile phones and SIM cards, blanket provision of both is also likely to cause confusion (Gueye, Dia, and Brunelin 2024). In addition, a SASPP evaluation in Mali, revealed that beneficiaries accessed information on social safety net payments through multiple communication channels, but people relied more on village leaders, radio, neighbors, and direct phone calls than on short message service text messages and program related communications (World Bank 2022a). However, some women, may not enjoy the same access to these communication channels as men, and they may not trust male village leaders to resolve the issues they face. This underscores the need to continuously assess which communication channels on payments work well for men and women. SASPP monitoring reveals important security risks with reports of women giving their phones and secret PIN number to children or others to collect payments, which can result in theft of phones or of payment. The likely reasons for this high-risk strategy are constraints on women’s mobility and time, as well as lack of confidence in phone use, over-trusting, and lack of awareness. These risks can be addressed through communication with communities and women at outreach at payment stages. Box 9: Examples of Insights from SASPP Evaluations and Mission Reports on Gendered Barriers to Accessing Payments In Mali, an evaluation of the social protection payment systems, both digital and cash-in-hand, illustrated that women and men beneficiaries were more likely to have no formal education. Both women and men said they deleted text messages because they were unable to read them. Half of beneficiaries also needed assistance in using their phones, with women and the elderly finding it more difficult than men to use Unstructured Supplementary Service Data menus. Women said they had no qualms in asking for help, but in some cases, recipients noted that they lived in communities with no or few literate members who could be called on for help. Sources: World Bank 2022a; SASPP KIIs 29 What More Can Be Done? Ensure the process of design of payment systems is informed by and addresses gendered challenges. Include cross-cutting objectives for gender. Approaches can include fostering collaboration between a range of stakeholders in system design – governments, mobile phone operators, development organizations, and gender experts. Some contexts may require outreach engagement to ease social norms that restrict women’s mobility and digital inclusion (Aranda-Jan and Qasim 2023). Accompanying measures can also include sessions on security and digital literacy. At the delivery level, options may include providing women with affordable mobile devices and SIM cards or supporting women’s travel to payment centers. Support capacity development, including staff training, guidance, and tools to support the design, implementation, and monitoring of gender-responsive payment systems. Key topics would include: • Rationale for why gender-responsive payment systems matter, including for those with low or no literacy. • Evidence and actions on what widens access to payments for women and other vulnerable groups, including on ensuring systems, devices, and interfaces are user-friendly for those with no or lower literacy levels; providing choice and convenience to beneficiaries through multiple channels; outreach and community engagement objectives to support payments; and accompanying measures on basic digital literacy (see Section 3.5). • Understanding and preventing risks of SEA/SH at the payment stage. Also ensuring mobile service providers adhere to protocols and codes of conduct. In implementation, ensure routine monitoring and spot-checks capture gendered barriers and bottlenecks to accessing payments and make costed recommendations for improvements. (See Annex 1, table A1.2). 3.5 Gender-Responsive Provision of Accompanying Measures (Phase 7) What Is It? Poverty is multifaceted and stems from multiple, complex drivers and underlying inequalities (Rohwerder 2016; UNICEF Innocenti 2020; World Bank 2013). Men and women need sustainable sources of income as well as access to services and opportunities to build knowledge, capabilities, and skills to adapt and diversify to cope with poverty, climate change, and other shocks. Some of these needs can be addressed through measures that accompany transfers. Accompanying measures are a critical component for building effective ASP, as they enhance social safety net programs by providing sustainable pathways out of poverty. Why Does It Matter? A growing body of evidence, including from SASPP, shows that accompanying measures can be designed in ways that address gendered risks, needs, and barriers and with pathways to change for gender outcomes (Holmes, Marsden, and Quarterman 2022). When designed with a lens on gender and informed by a gender analysis of the drivers of poverty and inequality (Holmes, Levine, and Shakespeare 2021), accompanying measures can address some of the structural and individual barriers that lock 30 women and girls into poverty (discriminatory gender norms, harmful traditional practices such as early marriage, domestic workloads, disability, and aspirations among others). Gender-responsive accompanying measures can increase women’s access to productive work — including in non-traditional fields; increase their control over earnings; enhance their knowledge, skills, and capabilities; improve their mental health and well-being; increase their networks; improve the quality of their relationships; and reduce intrahousehold conflict, among other observed benefits (Bossuroy et al. 2022; Holmes, Marsden, and Quarterman 2022; Perera et al. 2022; UNICEF Innocenti 2020). Gender-responsive accompanying measures establish clear objectives for women’s empowerment outcomes, and interventions intentionally consider gender in design and implementation, including M&E (Holmes, Marsden, and Quarterman 2022). They also build organizational capacity and staff technical skills in delivering appropriate content, including for those with low levels of literacy. Successful pilots that are evaluated and costed can be adapted and scaled up when using the evidence generated to convince policy makers of their benefits (Holmes, Levine, and Shakespeare 2021). Scaling up requires a sustainable investment in capacity development for delivery at scale. It is also important that accompanying measures are adapted for a range of contexts, including shock-affected areas. What Is SASPP Doing? SASPP supports the design, implementation, and evaluation of three main strands of accompanying measures: (i) human capital development measures that accompany most programs; (ii) economic inclusion measures; and (iii) new areas that address gender norms and vulnerabilities within households. Human Capital Development Strengthening human capital through ASP systems is essential for improving household welfare and breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty. In addition to supporting regular human capital development measures that accompany most national social safety nets, SASPP has supported measures addressing mental health to bolster parental resilience and improve early childhood outcomes (in Senegal), and a cleaner cooking initiative in Chad. Human capital-focused accompanying measures have also been adapted to address the needs and vulnerabilities of refugees and host communities in Chad and Mauritania. Regular human capital accompanying measures aim to strengthen knowledge, skills, and capacities. SASPP supports a range of themes or topics with relevance for gender. In all six Sahel countries, these include nutrition and health, as well as two or more of the following: water, sanitation, and hygiene; education; child rights and protection; cognitive and socioemotional development; GBV; climate change; and economic inclusion (Colin et al. 2025). Identification of themes is an iterative process, involving key stakeholders, which can include government partners, beneficiaries, community members, and previous service providers; with efforts to ensure the sample beneficiary population is representative of context- specific vulnerable groups. The curriculum is typically delivered through a combination of activities that are adapted to context, need, and the capacity of service providers. These can include as follows: community sensitization through mass media campaigns, and community forums — to encourage community buy-in; discussion sessions among beneficiaries, sometimes separated by sex; and home visits to beneficiary households from service providers. Importantly, to encourage behavior change, approaches target both individuals and the wider community that informs gender norms and individual practices. 31 In addition to these topics, the ‘Self Help Plus’ mental health program initiative in Senegal bolsters parental resilience by educating them about stress management. This group-based program draws on best practices from similar contexts where results showed reductions in psychological distress. Its development was informed by a qualitative study assessing mental health needs and acceptability of the program among parents (men and women), service providers, and community members. It is adapted to local contexts and provided in local languages to maximize its impacts. In addition, a cleaner cooking initiative in Chad builds on a 2022 SASPP diagnostic which identified household air pollution from cooking fuels as an important determinant of child under-nutrition and women’s health in the Sahel. In addition to air pollution exposure, with the pressures of climate change and environmental degradation, women and girls travel longer distances to collect firewood which increases the time they spend in drudgery, adds to their time poverty and exposes them to heightened risks of GBV. SASPP has also supported the development of guidance notes outlining steps and considerations for developing human capital accompanying measures, specifically tailored to the West African context and drawing on case studies from Sahel countries. This guidance seeks to inform the design and implementation of these measures to maximize their impact on human capital outcomes, particularly in childhood. The guidance is relevant for governmental, bilateral, multilateral, and non-governmental actors, both for-profit, and nonprofit; and provides step-by-step considerations for content development, recipient population identification, program activities design, and M&E systems design. Integrated across these considerations, the guidance emphasizes the need to identify and address context-specific vulnerabilities, including gendered dimensions (Colin et al. 2025). Economic Inclusion SASPP-supported economic inclusion measures are aimed at improving household productivity and resilience, as well as women’s access to capital, skills and capacities, and access to markets (World Bank 2020). They have been implemented in five countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal (Archibald, Bossuroy, and Premand 2021), mostly providing support to women. They address gender norms affecting women’s lack of social status, psychosocial and aspirational constraints, and their capacity to manage risks. They are based on the hypothesis that sustained positive impacts on women’s economic outcomes require knowledge and skills as well as instrumental and normative support from communities, households, and husbands (Bossuroy et al. 2022). Economic inclusion measures draw on qualitative research conducted in 2016 in Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, and Senegal, which uncovered barriers faced by poor households and women in particular (Bossuroy et al 2020). The design also draws on international best practices and an inclusive design process convening governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and development partners from all Sahel countries (Bossuroy et al. 2025). Four countries – Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal – implemented a comprehensive economic inclusion package, while Chad implemented a smaller package. The full package included the formation of savings groups, coaching, micro-entrepreneurship training, community sensitization on aspirations and gender norms, life-skills training, market access facilitation, as well as a productive grant (the pilot tested different combinations, see Bossuroy et al. 2022 for a full description of the Niger package). 32 The measures were provided to participants of national social safety net programs, most of whom were women. The measures were implemented in rural areas in all countries except Senegal, which opted for urban and peri-urban areas, adopting different delivery modalities (Archibald, Bossuroy, and Premand 2021). The approach included building community consensus for women’s participation, operating within the parameters of existing, positive social norms (Thomas et al. 2024). The pathway for change was incremental and culturally sensitive, based on building consensus among community leaders and members around constraints to household income. Making leaders aware of the aspirational or psychosocial constraints faced by women in undertaking productive income generating activities was critical to ensure their perception of interventions as complementing existing values and to garner community support for women benefiting from the package. Two components of the package were critical to addressing gendered constraints; (i) the community sensitization, which drew on behavior change approaches using edutainment dramas to model desired behavior, and (ii) life skills training for women beneficiaries, which covered self-esteem, personal initiative, aspirations, social norms, roles and relationships between men and women. SASPP has supported impact evaluations of the program, using randomized controlled trials, in Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, and Senegal. Positive outcomes were demonstrated for a wide range of indicators for resilience and gender outcomes (table 4). The evaluation showed that while the monetary grant increased control over women’s earnings and activities, the psychosocial activities (community sensitization and life-skills training) strengthened relationships and expanded sources of instrumental social support (husbands, sons helping with chores) and normative social support (community expectations and behaviors) (Bossuroy et al. 2022). Table 4: Selected Results for Women’s Empowerment: Economic Inclusion Measures in Niger Women’s Empowerment Results Outcome Area Increased household and participant income. Increased women’s economic empowerment through increases in business revenues. Economic security and Increased women’s participation in savings groups. empowerment Increased women’s control over their own earnings. Increased women’s share of total household revenue. Improvements in women’s mental health, life satisfaction, inner peace, and depression. Psychosocial well-being Increased women’s social relationships with community members and partners . and mental health Increased social capital, especially when psychological activities are included. Social cohesion and Increased social cohesion with reduced reports of enmity and increased interest in caring community closeness for the village, especially when psychological activities are included. Improved quality of intrahousehold relationships, through increases in women’s perceived Relationships and closeness with their partners and comfort in disagreeing with them, when psychosocial protection from GBV activities included. Source: Bossuroy et al. 2022 33 SASPP is also supporting the adaptation of economic inclusion packages for those affected by climate change and for specific groups, such as refugees. In Senegal, this includes interventions to support the management of community assets and livelihoods for natural resource management, sustainable production, harvesting and post-harvest activities, sustainable non-agricultural job diversification, employment, and uptake and use of climate information. For refugees, adaptations of the economic inclusion package will focus on assisting refugee women to diversify from livestock to semi- intensive agriculture. Gender Norms and Vulnerabilities Within Households In addition to human capital and economic inclusion topics, SASPP has supported couples training and community-level edutainment around intra-household dynamics. The objectives of the “Family Dialogue” intervention supported by SASPP in Mauritania were to improve communications and economic cooperation between spouses, including support for women’s participation in productive work; to reduce intrahousehold conflict; and to support healthy parenting practices. The intervention also sought to change norms at the community level, beliefs and attitudes that might hold couples back from changing their behavior. Originally intended as part of the economic inclusion package, the approach has since gained interest and traction from the national social safety net program, Tekavoul. The design was based on diagnostic research which uncovered the constraints and barriers faced by women associated with their lack of voice and agency and economic security (Batiobo et al. 2024). The curriculum was adapted from Malawi and covered intra-household cooperation and communication, developing a joint family vision, budgeting and allocation of resources, gender roles, power relations, how to control anger and emotions, and understanding violence against women and girls; legacies of attitudes and behaviors passed from fathers and mothers. Components included six modules on economic cooperation between spouses, five behavior change videos aimed at communities (a five-part mini drama series), and six modules on power relations and social norms. The content of the intervention was aimed at incremental, and culturally sensitive change. The approach encouraged men to see benefits associated with women’s productive work, sharing domestic duties, and joint decision- making, to support a fairer allocation of resources in households, and to reduce conflict. Scripts and curricula were reviewed widely to ensure buy-in and acceptance. In the short-term, rigorous evaluations have demonstrated that the family dialogue intervention enhanced intra-household collaboration and amplified women’s voice without causing conflict at a community or household level. Mid-term results also demonstrated improved school attendance, early child development, and increased mothers’ knowledge of child development. In addition, beneficiaries had greater aspirations for their children’s work trajectories. Of key importance, the pilot did not generate opposition either from communities or men but rather elicited their support. There were also some improvements to IPV (Batiobo et al. 2024 and Bedi et al, 2025). 34 The pilot provides insights into four important lessons for design and delivery that have implications for all accompanying measures. They include: (i) the importance of recruiting facilitators who already have positive skills and attitudes toward women’s empowerment and couples dialogue (box 10); (ii) the level of effort required to prepare a cadre of men and women facilitators, working together with couples on reframing gender norms and relationships; (iii) the success of pedagogical approaches that use behavior change interventions including video-based edutainment; and (iv) the necessity of involving gate keepers at policy level to endorse content on sensitive issues relating to gender norms. Box 10: Mauritania – Training Facilitators for the Family Dialogue Intervention The “Family Dialogue” intervention in Mauritania trained a group of facilitators (men and women) to work in pairs with groups of couples. The hiring process used a list of positive skills and attitudes that endorse women’s participation and decision-making. This was followed by a year-long intensive training, with some attrition due to the nonalignment of facilitators’ perspectives on gender or lack of facilitation skills. The intervention was supported by a range of pedagogical approaches, including culturally responsive teaching; cooperative learning where facilitators worked with trainers to listen and respect different perspectives; blended learning; piloting with real-life couples with immediate feedback and iterations on the curriculum content. Theory-based evaluation at mid-term and after 12 months was a key part of the intervention design. Source: Gender Innovation Lab 2024 What More Can Be Done? • Encourage SASPP-supported countries to optimize the choice of topics for regular human capital accompanying measures according to their context. Relevant to all countries are the topics of GBV and climate change adaptation and mitigation. In addition, findings from SASPP evaluations on digital payments suggest a need to include digital literacy and safety as a topic (See Annex 3). • To reduce the risk of backlash (opposition to women’s productive employment or efforts to build their human capital), continue to support incremental change, as transformational change for gender is more likely from a host of converging interventions (education, health, legal frameworks, economic policy, leadership, community engagement, media) over a longer time- period (Burrell, Ruxton, and Westmarland 2019; Boudet et al. 2023). • Ensure that women participate in identifying productive options as part of economic inclusion packages, in the light of evidence that these packages can increase the workload of women by increasing their participation in time-consuming farming activities and livestock production (Peterman et al. 2024, Quisumbing et al. 2024, and Staab et al. 2024 in Gavrilovic et al. 2025). Also consider reducing women’s unpaid responsibilities through grants that cover the cost of labor-saving technologies (e.g., food processing devices, solar powered tools). 35 3.6 Gender-Responsive Program Management (Phase 8,9) This section covers M&E and actions to prevent and mitigate SEA/SH. 3.6.1 Monitoring and Evaluation What Is It? M&E promotes an understanding of how delivery works, what impact has been achieved, and what good practices have been deployed (Lindert et al. 2020). It encompasses routine monitoring, process and performance assessments and impact evaluations, and it contributes to a broader learning agenda to refine and improve the program’s impact. It contributes to ensuring public funds are allocated effectively. Process and performance assessments, including spot checks, are conducted during the implementation of programs. They cover the key pillars of a well-performing delivery system: institutions, effective communications and client interface, and information systems (Lindert et al. 2020). Impact evaluations provide evidence on whether ASP programs are making a positive difference to the lives of beneficiaries and their communities. They allow decision-makers to allocate resources effectively, improve program design, and make informed choices about scaling up or discontinuing initiatives based on demonstrated results (Peersman 2022). GRMs are part of M&E, as they are an important avenue for beneficiaries, community members, or program actors to express their concerns and provide feedback. For more insight into what SASPP has done to introduce GRMs, including as a mechanism to respond to SEA/SH, see Section 3.6.2. Why Does It Matter? M&E is crucial for ensuring ASP is efficient, equitable and measures impact including its contribution to gender outcomes. M&E provides planners with data and insights into what adjustments need to be made to improve the quality and inclusiveness of ASP delivery to achieve outcomes for men, women, girls, and boys. It ensures accountability and transparency. It also provides valuable feedback for improving ASP program design and implementation, and it promotes evidence-based decision-making including course correction and adaptation to enhance effectiveness and efficiency. M&E frameworks and products support ASP that is gender-responsive when they acknowledge the gendered context; program’s intentions to contribute to gender outcomes; and when they use gender disaggregated data and gender analysis to demonstrate progress and results. To do this, they apply specific evaluation questions, and qualitative and quantitative approaches that include beneficiary perspectives (UNICEF Innocenti 2020; World Bank Group 2024) (See Annex 1 for examples). Even when ASP program beneficiaries are mostly women, sex-disaggregated data is required to understand the complexities of gender dynamics, power relations, and gendered barriers, and how these affect registration, enrollment, access to benefits, and program outcomes. GRM mechanisms that capture sex-disaggregated data can provide those involved in design and implementation with insights into bottlenecks and the effectiveness of all phases of delivery. Data can also offer insights into whether issues are resolved in a timely manner without bias. Section 3.6.2 provides further insights on the role of GRMs in addressing GBV and SEA/SH. 36 Impact evaluations measure change for beneficiary households and communities, using comparison with a “control” group to establish causality (group of households or localities who are similar to beneficiaries, but do not benefit from the program). Smaller scale studies can look at the gendered aspects of intrahousehold distribution of assets and resources to evaluate the impact of programs on different demographic groups within households, especially women and children. M&E data can also assess progress toward establishing gendered institutions. Process and performance evaluations should consider organizational issues within the institutions that deliver ASP. This includes providing an account of gender balance in the workforce, and the policies and practices that support progress toward diversity, equality, and inclusion (See Annex 1 for relevant evaluation questions). This is also important for contracted consultants, NGOs, or firms. The evidence from evaluations forms the basis of advocacy efforts to widen awareness of ASPs contribution toward gender outcomes; to secure political commitment; and to build alliances with strategic partners to amplify the impact and sustainability of ASP. For further insights, see Section 3.7. What Is SASPP Doing? SASPP Results Framework The SASPP overall program reports on one of the four intermediate indicators that contribute to six key outcomes for gender outlined in the World Bank Gender Equality Strategy 2024-2030 (World Bank 2024): the number of people (sex-disaggregated) benefiting from actions that expand and enable economic opportunities (part of the overall WB reporting; and a score card indicator). The SASPP results framework also includes indicators focused on the number of women included in national social registries, the number of women who benefit from shock-responsive programs (all women living in beneficiary households), as well as the number of women who are the actual recipients of these programs. In assessing the impact of social safety nets and accompanying measures (economic inclusion and changing social norms), SASPP has supported evaluations that capture strategic outcomes for gender identified in the World Bank Group’s Gender Strategy 2024-2030, including: (i) progress in ending all forms of GBV (for example: impact on IPV; household violence; and reductions in violence towards children); (ii) stronger and more resilient human capital (for example: mother’s knowledge of early child development and child well-being; improved mental health); (iii) more and better jobs for the future (increases in income from diversified incomes); (iv) greater ownership and use of economic assets (increases in women’s assets and business earnings); (v) wider access to enabling services (GRMs); and (vi) advances in women’s decision-making (women’s control over income) (see Section 3.5). ASP Program and Systems Monitoring Capacity In addition to SASPP-level reporting, SASPP has supported increased capacity in monitoring units for the various ASP systems and programs (monitoring officers and gender advisors). There is progress in some countries in collecting and consolidating sex-disaggregated data for outputs (numbers of recipients, beneficiaries, and numbers of complaints to GRMs and their timely resolution). 37 Delivery staff are using qualitative approaches (field observations) for course correction in ways that promote equal access for women. For example, in several countries, monitoring, including feedback from program staff, has highlighted barriers faced by women in securing ID and this information has been used to find local solutions. Also, in some cases, the units implementing programs consolidate and analyze sex-disaggregated data from GRMs on a regular basis at each phase of delivery. Process and Performance Assessments SASPP also supports government-led, program-level process and performance assessments, on part of or the whole delivery chain. Whole-of-delivery system assessments provide information on institutional and capacity challenges in delivery, from outreach and client interface approaches during intake, registration, assessment of needs and conditions, and eligibility and enrollment; to the barriers faced by delivery staff, community actors, and beneficiaries as they move through the delivery chain. Some have also gathered and presented the perspectives of beneficiaries and delivery staff. Some assessments of monetary transfers have collected and presented sex-disaggregated data for beneficiaries (World Bank 2022). Assessments usually state that most recipients and beneficiaries are women (Gueye, Dia, and Brunelin 2024; Le Teuff 2020; World Bank 2022; World Bank 2023b). Assessments have also presented beneficiary perspectives, gender differences in accessing information, and gender barriers in using mobile phones. In some cases, assessments have presented data on the gendered use of GRMs and gender disaggregated data for complaint resolution. Impact and Outcome Evaluations SASPP has conducted a series of impact evaluations focusing on the main three types of ASP programs – social safety nets, economic inclusion, and shock-response interventions. This includes the evaluations of economic inclusion measures in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal (presented in Section 3.5), which provided important insights into the impacts of different combinations of activities on women’s empowerment and household resilience. Evaluations have also focused on regular safety nets and shock-response programs, highlighting sustained gains for beneficiaries, their households, and their communities. Overall, the impact evaluations ask the right questions in relation to effectiveness and gender . They demonstrate results for households and individuals (direct beneficiaries, usually women) using a good range of gender indicators (See Section 3.5) for resilience and for measuring progress, and a contribution toward gender outcomes (Constas, d’Errico, and Pietrelli 2020). More generally, evidence has been gathered on the demonstrated impacts of ASP programs on beneficiaries in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal, and across the Sahel, however the findings are not always presented in ways that highlight the results in gendered ways. 38 What More Can Be Done? • Include two further intermediate indicators in SASPP results framework to reflect contributions in these areas: Number of people benefiting from actions to make progress in ending all forms of GBV; and from actions to advance women’s participation in decision -making. The justification is that SASPP supports the reinforcement of messages on GBV and facilitates access to GBV services through gender-responsive GRMs, and accompanying measures are designed to promote a role for women in decision-making. • Capacity strengthening for implementing partners: Support an improved gender-focus in strengthening M&E systems and processes for ASP programs. Improve capacities to collect sex-disaggregated data and apply gender analysis. At the level of the overall SASPP program, provide qualitative narrative to explain the results for women, and for changes that contribute to progress on gender outcomes when relevant. • Diagnostic research: Include assessments of targeting accuracy in evaluations, including in areas affected by shocks, for example the accuracy of selecting households with gendered and exclusion risks and vulnerabilities in the social registry, the quality of validation and verification processes, and the extent to which benefits reach the intended eligible population, including minimizing errors of exclusion and inclusion (World Bank 2025a). • Guidance for evaluation terms of reference: Support process/performance assessments that include a lens on gender. Ensure terms of references for process/performance evaluations stipulate (i) requirements for team capacity on gender; (ii) an understanding of the gendered context and the rationale for selecting women as recipients or beneficiaries; (iii) a methodology with key questions on gender and methods to capture beneficiary and frontline worker perspectives with gender analysis (see Annex 1); and (iv) recommendations with cost implications for strategies and actions to improve program delivery. Knowledge of GBV research ethics is required if assessments examine changes in GBV (Care International 2022). • Support periodic learning for implementing partners on what works and what does not in relation to gendered approaches in delivery. This could involve sessions for delivery staff to look back at a specific experience in delivery and critically analyze the event (See Annex 1). By looking at successful and unsuccessful aspects, reflection can help delivery staff learn from their past experiences, guide program design, and inform course correction. • Support impact evaluations that test a wider range of indicators for gender outcomes (see Annex 1). These evaluations could include a greater focus on intra-household distribution of resources. Ensure an analysis of costs for scaling up successful interventions. 39 3.6.2 Action to Prevent and Mitigate GBV and SEA/SH What Is It? The term gender-based violence (GBV) refers to any harmful act against a person’s will because of their gender (WHO 2021). Most GBV is perpetrated against women and girls, but the term includes violence against men, boys, and sexual minorities (World Bank n.d.). Violence against women is a type of GBV. It is a violation of women’s human rights and is a major public health problem. It is rooted in and perpetuated by sanctioning and reinforcement of unequal gender relations inequalities, poor and unenforceable laws, as well as lack of facilities and education for prevention and treatment of women exposed to violence. It occurs everywhere, during times of peace as well as in conflicts and crises. GBV includes physical, sexual, emotional, and economic harm, threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty. In the home, GBV includes IPV, battering, sexual abuse of children, female genital mutilation, and rape. In the community, it includes trafficking, forced prostitution, child marriage, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and intimidation. SEA/SH include sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment. Sexual exploitation is an actual or attempted abuse of vulnerability, differential power, or trust for sexual purposes including, but not limited to, profiting monetarily, socially, or politically from the sexual exploitation of another (United Nations 2017, 6). Sexual abuse is an actual or threatened physical intrusion of a sexual nature, whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions (United Nations 2017, 5). Sexual harassment is any unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. Why Does It Matter? ASP can have a positive impact on GBV through several pathways, as demonstrated by rigorous evidence (Cookson, Fuentes, and Bitterly 2024). First, it can ease household economic hardship and food insecurity and reduce tension and conflict within households. Second, it can leverage accompanying measures and its engagement with communities, including men and boys, to reinforce messages around GBV and combat the issue through behavior change approaches that model desired attitudes and behaviors. Third, it can strengthen women’s bargaining power within households. Fourth, it can contribute to strengthened social networks for women, which are critical to their empowerment. While ASP has overall positive impacts on GBV, programs can result in backlash in the short-term when prevailing norms and patterns are disrupted. Frontline workers and community-based volunteers can be trained to identify GBV and refer women to prevention and response services directly or report it to GRMs, which in turn can handle referrals. However, if programs are gender-blind they can inadvertently create situations where women become vulnerable to exploitative behavior within communities or programs. Ensuring equal access to knowledge and information about ASP was discussed earlier in this paper, highlighting the importance of accounting for gender differences in delivery processes. Similarly, the importance of avoiding backlash (violence and aggression) within households and communities was also discussed in the outreach phase of the program. 40 Potential perpetrators of SEA/SH can be any personnel associated with a program, including program staff, volunteers, consultants, or the staff of NGOs or firms contributing to program delivery. SEA/SH can occur at each phase of the delivery chain. As part of its Environmental and Social Framework, the World Bank’s Good Practice Note for IPF Operations Addressing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment in Human Development Operations requires teams to identify risks of SEA/SH that can emerge and provides advice on how to best mange such risks (World Bank 2022b). Putting in place mechanisms to protect women and girls from SEA/SH in ASP requires a three- pronged approach. First, is ensuring frontline workers and volunteers understand the issues and adopt attitudes and behaviors that are survivor-focused, rather than supportive of perpetrators. Second, is designing each delivery phase in ways that limit the opportunity for SEA/SH by adopting mechanisms that minimize the potential for abuse by program actors. Third, is designing and implementing GRMs that are survivor-focused and accessible to women to report incidences of GBV and SEA/SH should they arise. GRMs can help protect women from gender norms that create a culture of silence which prevents women and girls from reporting GBV and where survivors fear blame, stigma, disbelief, or retaliation if they come forward. What Is SASPP Doing? SASPP is guided by the World Bank’s commitment to addressing SEA/SH, and it promotes the use of tools and resources developed to leverage social safety nets to prevent GBV (Box 11). 41 Box 11: World Bank Commitment to Addressing SEA/SH and Leveraging Safety Nets to Prevent GBV The World Bank is committed to addressing GBV, including SEA/SH in its investment projects, as stated in its Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) and Good Practice Notes. Minimum recommended actions include codes of conduct or behavioral standards for all investment project actors; sensitization of communities and workers; identification of a quality GBV service provider; effective GRMs with SEA/SH pathways; accountability and response framework; safe spaces in facilities; and considerations for staff recruitment. Beyond addressing SEA/SH, the World Bank has produced guidance to maximize the positive impacts of ASP programs on GBV. The tools and resources to assist social protection practitioners to educate, close risks, and empower women include: - Safety First: How to Leverage Safety Nets to Prevent GBV – Operational Guidance: provides an overview of evidence on social safety nets and GBV along with operational guidance on how to prevent it and empower women. - A Safety-First E-Learning Course: introduces design and implementation tips at different phases of the delivery chain to empower women and amplify the preventive potential of social safety nets. - Safety First Videos: (2-3 minutes each) explain design decisions and the potential impact on GBV. - Safety First Handout: provides a summary of key questions and design tips to prevent and respond to GBV during the four main phases of the delivery chain. Sources: World Bank 2022b; World Bank 2023a In addition, SASPP is supporting government partners to take action through four measures: 1. Assessing and mitigating risks of frontline staff and service providers engaging in SEA/SH at each phase of the delivery chain. 2. Establishing codes of conduct and behavior standards for frontline staff and service providers engaged in delivery. 3. Establishing survivor-focused GRMs (box 12) where men and women can lodge complaints if they experience SEA/SH and receive a referral to specialized services that follow confidential procedures. SASPP has supported the provision of different mechanisms to report grievances to maximize women’s access, including toll free hotlines and community grievance committees. 4. Monitoring and analyzing data from GRMs using sex-disaggregated data for the number and type of complaint received, and their timely resolution. 42 Box 12: Approach to Establishing Survivor-Focused GRMs in Burkina Faso To inform the development of survivor-focused GRMs, Burkina Faso has undertaken diagnostic research, including a mapping of services. The mapping study provides an inventory of GBV service providers in 9 regions and 81 communes, specialized in health, and psychosocial and legal services near program sites. Burkina Faso has existing care services provided by government and NGOs for health response to GBV, but there are significant gaps in legal aid and livelihood support. The effort also included the development of a protocol for the referral of GBV, led by the Ministry of Humanitarian Action and National Solidarity. Its objective is to ensure all survivors report GBV incidents to program focal points and community-level complaint management committees, for referral, with consent, to services following safe and confidential procedures. The approach includes a social management framework, and a complaint mechanism with multiple avenues for lodging a complaint, including a Green Line telephone number. The protocol defines prevalent types of GBV and SEA/SH. It lays out rules, a plan of action, a set of behaviors for program staff, and a code of conduct. A complaints management mechanism defines roles and responsibilities in managing the response, lines of reporting and supervision, and requirements for information sharing and responding. Survivor-centered support is based on the principles of safety, confidentiality, respect, and non-discrimination. Staff and committees receive training on how to respond immediately. Source: Burkina Faso, ministère de l'Action humanitaire et de la solidarité nationale, forthcoming. What More Can Be Done? • Support continuous capacity development of delivery staff on GBV and SEA/SH, including for reinforcing key messages on GBV (child marriage, harmful traditional practices, intrahousehold conflict) in shock-affected areas. This would involve taking a behavior change approach to model new approaches. Ensure clarity around roles and responsibilities in job descriptions, including focal points in organizational structures. Ensuring guidance and tools are culturally relevant. • Explore the potential for the integration of a session on GBV and SEA/SH into accompanying measures, including by building on the outcome/impact evidence from Family Dialogues in Mauritania. • Document and disseminate efforts to assess and close risks associated with SEA/SH in all phases of delivery. This is a valuable learning insight which can be disseminated to a wider learning community on ASP. • Diagnostic research: Assess what gender-responsive GRM approaches (community committees, toll-free numbers) provide the greatest access for women to report GBV and the extent to which referrals to care services are used. 3.7 Change Levers for ASP that is Gender-Responsive in the Sahel What Is It? Change levers are factors that can transform the design, delivery, and impact of ASP to make it more gender-responsive including at a policy level (UNICEF Innocenti 2020). 43 They include: (i) political commitment and incentives; (ii) financing; (iii) capacity strengthening; (iv) gender- responsive institutions; (v) partnerships and sectoral synergies; (vi) women machineries and social movements (McBride and Mazur 2012); and (vii) evidence, data, and research. Why Does It Matter? Political commitment is needed to promote gender outcomes through ASP (UNICEF Innocenti 2020). All Sahel countries have made commitments to the global Sustainable Development Goals in their national strategies including for Goal 5 for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. Political commitment enhances coherence and convergence of ASP actors under national leadership for policies, programs, and finance for a gender-responsive ASP (Ocampo, Van Ufford, Coudouel 2025). It provides leadership for driving broader reforms, improving legal frameworks, securing budget allocations and gender-responsive institutions to address structural barriers to the empowerment of women and girls. It also demonstrates leadership in promoting fairness and it rallies ASP actors. Commitment is required at national and subnational levels of government and local leadership, including communities. ASP that is gender-responsive, requires consistent financing to achieve outcomes for resilience and women’s empowerment (UNICEF Innocenti 2020). Financing covers the development and evolution of gender-responsive systems and gendered institutions. Evidence on how gender-responsive ASP measures to promote economic inclusion contribute to economic growth and resilience provides a compelling case for sustained investment and scale-up. Understanding gender norms in decision-making can help develop convincing arguments for budgets that work for everyone (World Bank 2024). Government actors need capacity (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) to understand the gendered context, needs, vulnerabilities, and barriers, and to implement differentiated approaches . The capacity of those involved in all aspects ASP delivery mechanisms has been highlighted at all stages of the delivery chain — from the capacity to design programs that are gender-responsive, to staff development at all stages of delivery including inclusive M&E and learning processes. The institutions that deliver ASP have norms, policies, and practices, which also influence the gender balance of the workplace and staff attitudes and behaviors. Gender-responsive institutions have policies and practices that promote and progressively achieve gender balance and conducive work environments for men and women (UN Women n.d.). Global commitments to the 2030 Agency for Sustainable Development, including Goal 5, Gender Equality, as well as the World Bank’s own policies, provide SASPP a platform to work with governments on gender-responsive institutions involved in ASP delivery (box 13). Equally important are partnerships and sectoral synergies that can facilitate and amplify ASP that is gender-responsive. Of importance are government authorities responsible for IDs and the sectors of education, health, and agriculture. Widening access to services is critical for gender outcomes, and ASP instruments can be used to motivate the delivery of other interventions that enhance aspects of gender outcomes. For example, data analysis from social registries and assessments may help social sectors target services (education and health). Women machineries, or national machineries for the advancement of women include formal government structures or systems established to promote gender equality and women’s rights. They often have a mandate to coordinate, facilitate, and monitor policy formulation and implementation. They 44 may be well-placed to support evidence-based advocacy for scaling ASP that is gender-responsive. Separately, social movements can engage with bureaucrats and politicians in a constructive dialogue that widens understanding of the links between poverty, climate change, conflict, and gender outcomes and the role of ASP that is gender-responsive, along with improved legal frameworks and access to services, assets, and resources for sustainable impact (Malena, Forster, and Singh 2004; UNICEF Innocenti 2020). The use of delivery-related evidence that incorporates a gender lens is critical for understanding gaps and challenges, setting policy goals, adapting systems and processes, and improving design and delivery (UNICEF Innocenti 2020). Sources of evidence that could offer valuable insights on gender are highlighted in previous sections and they include: (i) data from social registries and poverty and vulnerability assessments (Section 3.2); (ii) M&E and data gathering processes that include quantitative and qualitative approaches to understand the gendered dimensions of staff capacity, as well as barriers faced by women and excluded groups (age, disability, migration status); (iii) disaggregation and gender analysis (Section 3.6.1); and (iv) research on policy design features to improve the effectiveness of programming and systems. Box 13: World Bank Enabling Policies for ASP That Are Gender-Responsive The World Bank’s Score Card, and the recently adopted target to support 250 million women with social protection programs, focusing especially on the poorest and most vulnerable. SASPP activities contribute to 7 of the 22 indicators on the World Bank’s score card, which includes people benefiting from actions to advance gender equality, and new and better jobs, including for women and youth. The World Bank Gender Equality Strategy 2024-30 includes a focus on social protection. The strategy notes that the policy arena shapes gender outcomes and that advancing gender equality through social protection programs requires an understanding of the beliefs of actors in the policy arena and gender- based power relations in institutions to shift mindsets. It also requires working across political, economic, and social institutions — formal, traditional, and informal. This implies the need for a gendered understanding of stakeholders, evidence-based advocacy, strategic partners, and policy level engagement to change attitudes, behaviors, and policies. The World Bank’s Environmental and Social Framework also underlines the importance of the enabling environment for social protection programs. The Directive on Addressing Risks and Impacts on Disadvantaged or Vulnerable Individuals or Groups notes workforce delivery issues that have implications for gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Directive covers labor and working conditions, and the health and safety of workers and communities, among other factors. It also incorporates the World Bank Good Practice Note on identifying and managing risks of SEA/SH in Human Development investment operations. The framework provides leverage for policy level dialogue with national governments on ensuring institutions involved in the delivery of social protection are gender- responsive, with policies and practices that promote gender balance, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Sources: United Nations 2023; World Bank 2025b; World Bank Group 2024; UNICEF Innocenti 2024; World Bank 2022b; World Bank 2024c. 45 What Is SASPP Doing? Political Commitment, Use of Evidence SASPP has contributed to key stakeholders acknowledging the relevance of ASP for addressing resilience and gender outcomes, and of the importance of investing in ASP systems and capacity. Most Sahel countries have broad objectives for equality in their ASP programs and support for women is a widely accepted delivery policy. The World Bank has supported the Sahel Alliance’s core advocacy messages on the importance of ASP. A core message promotes the transformative impacts of ASP on poverty and vulnerability for program beneficiaries and society at large. Behind this message is SASPP evidence that ASP has demonstrated results for household resilience and women’s empowerment in five Sahel countries (Sahel Alliance 2024). To foster commitment SASPP routinely communicates analytical work with a lens on gender to inform governments and funders. This includes, for example, evidence and advocacy on building climate resilience at scale in the Sahel in collaboration with CGAP, including addressing the risks faced by women and girls, those with disability and displaced populations (Roest, Coudouel, and Gordin 2025). It also includes policy briefs, for example the economic analysis of deploying economic inclusion programs at scale, to inform policy dialogue and position ASP as an efficient instrument to address key development challenges (Vinez 2025). Data that weigh alternative delivery approaches and packages and identify unit costs for scaling up provide a strong empirical basis to mobilize support for ASP with insights on individual and household gains. Analysis and evidence of ASPs’ impact on resilience and women’s empowerment is disseminated through multiple channels, including workshops at national and regional levels to government and other relevant partners, and policy makers and practitioners. The results from the various impact evaluations and other assessments also form the basis for the SASPP teams’ continuous policy dialogue and technical assistance, contributing to greater support for national ASP systems and programs. Financing SASPP has leveraged significant IDA resources to expand the reach of ASP programs that effectively contribute to gender outcomes in the Sahel (Coudouel et al 2024). SASPP financing for shock- responsive ASP and economic inclusion is targeted primarily at women in most Sahel countries and has reached over 1.2 million and 100,000 people respectively (of which over 645,000 and 77,000 women, respectively). Combined with IDA, SASPP has supported significant expansion in coverage of regular safety net programs to more than 2,2 million individuals (mostly women) in 2024. To do this, SASPP Phase 2 leveraged over US$1.1 billion in dedicated ASP investment projects or broader budget support operations. 46 Capacity Strengthening for Gender-Responsive Institutions SASPP supports a range of capacity strengthening measures aimed at government departments and their downstream implementing partners in relation to gender. These include support for: • Monitoring and gender specialists in units implementing programs and responsible for gathering gender disaggregated data on outputs. • Improved delivery tools such as operational manuals to ensure gender-responsive modalities and practices. • Developing the capacity or government and implementing partners to implement the gendered aspects of ASP programs, including accompanying measures. This work has included the development and testing of cost-effective behavior change approaches in local languages for local contexts, and curricula development and training. • Codes of conduct and GBV-sensitive GRMs with referral mechanisms to care services. Partnerships and Synergies SASPP Phase Three is fostering partnerships to mobilize financing that brings national ASP systems to scale. SASPP has technical partnerships with UNICEF and WFP in the Sahel, with all three institutions aligning their approach to ASP that is gender-responsive. The partnership leverages expertise and networks to support alignment and coherence on social protection, food security, climate, and disaster risk management, as well as to advocate for ASP systems and programs that are gender-responsive. These partners have skills in gender analysis and differentiated approaches to ASP. This partnership has developed standards for ASP instruments to help establish a common understanding of what ASP systems can include in the context of the Sahel (UNICEF, The World Food Programme, and World Bank Group 2025). These standards aim to serve as a foundation for dialogue with governments and partners for setting objectives for these instruments. Minimum standards are outlined, as well as additional standards to enhance performance. The minimum standards include a lens on gender for key instruments, as follows: (i) national social safety net programs, economic inclusion programs or components, and shock response programs or components consider the gender dimension in their conceptualization and implementation mechanisms and include a robust M&E system, along with a GRM; (ii) payment systems have a mechanism in place for grievance management and resolution; and (iii) social registries include variables related to vulnerability. The partnership also supports a Joint UNICEF-WB-WFP Research Project on social cohesion. This research — with a strong focus on gender — combines the development of a framework, a literature review of existing evidence from qualitative and quantitative analysis (Sharma and Menke 2024), as well as new quantitative estimates of the impact of ASP on social cohesion in the Sahel, and in-depth qualitative assessments to shed light on the pathways for these impacts, and the key design and implementation parameters which can maximize positive impacts. SASPP has worked closely with key partners to advocate for the deployment of ASP in the region, including a close collaboration with the IMF. These collaborations contributed to that institution’s advocacy and financial support for social protection and financial inclusion. 47 SASPP has also collaborated with CGAP, a global partnership of over 40 leading development organizations that work to advance the lives of people living in poverty, especially women through financial inclusion. What More Can Be Done? Political Commitment and Use of Evidence • Continue to disseminate evidence in advocacy efforts for ASP across the region, with more deliberate messaging on ASPs contribution to women’s empowerment. • Advocate for further measures to address the structural barriers faced by women. Emphasize that ASP that is gender-responsive can make a meaningful contribution to women’s empowerment but other interventions are needed to consolidate its impact. This includes legal reforms that can increase women’s access to land and financial inclusion and provide greater protection from early marriage and harmful traditional practices, as well as extending access to services such as education and health in rural areas (Kabeer, 2018). Financing • Build the knowledge of finance ministers on the benefits of investments in ASP for resilience, increasing jobs and earnings, and closing gender gaps in productivity (see Annex 4, table A4.1). Demonstrate the efficiency of ASP programs and their high rate of return on investments, including by tracking benefits and costs associated with responding to gender disadvantage (e.g., costs of adaptation of the systems and processes including staff recruitment, training, pedagogical tools for gender norm change, and logistical support). Capacity Strengthening for Gender-Responsive Institutions • Continue to support regular training for implementing staff on: (i) the principles of women’s empowerment; (ii) understanding gendered risks and vulnerabilities; (iii) program design features that promote gender outcomes; (iv) conveying key information on gender-sensitive design features to local communities and political actors; and (v) codes of conduct. Monitor the roles currently played by local men and women volunteers, assessing whether incentives are fair and equal. • Support implementing partners in reviewing and improving workplace policies and practices that promote diversity, equality, and inclusion, and encourage the purposeful recruitment of women frontline workers (social registry facilitators, field operators, and coaches), as well as the recruitment of delivery staff with positive attitudes towards women’s empowerment. Partnerships and Sectoral Synergies • Work with government and key partners to strengthen collaboration that can amplify the impacts of ASP on gender outcomes — using evidence to demonstrate how ASP contributes to their own gender objectives, encouraging action from sectors that can amplify ASP results (e.g. provision of key services to women and girls), and leveraging data from social registries to assist sectors in identifying social sector service delivery gaps. 48 4. SUMMARY AND NEXT STEPS 4.1 Summary SASPP has acknowledged the importance of gender. It has set an ambition for supporting ASP that is gender-responsive and it has established three cross-cutting objectives: equal access to benefits; adequate response to gendered needs; and enhanced empowerment for women and girls with supporting attitudes from communities, men and boys. The program has made some progress in contributing to a better understanding of the gendered context in the Sahel and to account for systemic gender inequality and the specific barriers, vulnerabilities and risks women and girls face in the design of ASP delivery systems and processes. To understand the gendered context, SASPP has supported diagnostic research in all countries. This research has shed light on discriminatory social norms, particularly in relation to access to assets and resources, and the labor market. Work has also been undertaken to understand the risks and vulnerabilities women face in relation to SEAH/SH during program delivery and when and how to ensure protection measures are in place. At the policy level, SASPP has raised awareness around the potential of ASP programs to secure results for key indicators of gender outcomes. SASPP has also leveraged its partnerships in some design and delivery aspects, such as financial inclusion, inclusive social registries, assessments, and targeting approaches. This paper has also identified good practices by SASPP to support gender-responsive programming at all phases of the delivery chain. Table 5 summarizes findings on good practices along with opportunities for further action at each phase of the delivery chain. It is followed by Section 4.2 on next steps, with a focus on five priority actions. Table 5: Summary of SASPPs Good Practices on Gender and Further Opportunities Delivery Phase Good Practices from SASPP Opportunities • Supporting multiple approaches to meet • Capacity development for frontline the information needs of men and delivery staff/volunteers with objectives women, including mixed media for (i) reaching all community members communication channels. with key information, (ii) eliciting community support for targeting women • Explaining to communities why benefits and meeting ID requirements, (iii) equal Outreach will be provided to women and securing access to GRMs, (iv) closing risks of buy-in particularly from leaders and SEA/SH from project and related staff. men. • Diagnostic research to understand and • Explaining to communities the need for respond to different gendered ID for eligibility and accessing benefits. communication needs. • Supporting the enhancement of • Program objectives for gender- Intake, Registration, community processes that support responsive intake, and registration. and Assessment of participation of women in decision- making and their contribution to intake • Diagnostic analysis to understand: (i) Needs and gendered barriers, (ii) factors that and registration processes. Conditions ensure community validation processes are inclusive of women and their 49 • Supporting governments to develop perspectives, (iii) scope of data social registries to identify poor and collection (gender, age, disability, vulnerable populations, including displacement), and (iv) analysis and use women. of data to widen access to other services. • Promoting social registries and assessments that capture gendered • Capacity strengthening for characteristics. implementing partners to ensure barriers are addressed and to remove potential bias. • Supporting the identification of, and • Diagnostic research to assess addressing, gendered barriers to community and other validation enrollment. processes with a lens on gender. • Supporting community validation • Capacity strengthening to implementing Eligibility and processes that involve men and women. partners to ensure they: (i) guide Enrollment communities in validating household selection with voice and participation from women and in reducing bias and (ii) maintain a lens on gender throughout the eligibility and enrollment phase. • Promoting the choice of women as • Capacity development of implementing recipients across the Sahel. partners to enhance their understanding Provision of of the benefits of selected women as • Gathering evidence to support the recipients and to accurately record sex- benefits: selecting rationale behind this decision. disaggregated data on recipients. women as recipients of • Supporting the design and evaluation of • Support pilots in contexts of entrenched engagement approaches to ensure social norms to demonstrate benefits to monetary transfers community and household support for governments and communities. selecting women as recipients. • Providing support to ensure payment • Ensure the design of payment systems systems are adapted to women. is informed by and address gendered challenges. • Evidence gathering on gendered barriers Provision of • Capacity development, including staff in payment processes. benefits: Gender- training, guidance, and tools to support the design, implementation, and responsive payment monitoring of gender-responsive systems payment systems. • Routine monitoring and spot-checks to capture gendered barriers and bottlenecks to accessing payments. • Supporting human capital • Encourage SASPP-supported countries accompanying measures, including to optimize the choice of topics for measures for mental health measures human capital accompanying packages, and cleaner cooking initiatives. according to their context (including • Supporting measures aimed at women’s climate change adaptation; GBV; and economic inclusion, with a focus on payment safety and digital literacy). Provision of building support among communities • Continue to support incremental benefits: and men. changes as an approach to reduce risk Accompanying • Supporting behavior change approaches of backlash. Measures to promote cooperation between • Ensure women participate in identifying spouses, reduce intrahousehold productive options in economic conflict, and enhance supportive inclusion packages. community norms. • Supporting the adaptation of accompanying measures to refugees and host communities. 50 • Supporting increased capacity in • Include number of people benefiting monitoring units (officers and gender from actions to make progress in ending advisors) and some collection of sex- all forms of GBV and from actions to disaggregated data. advance women’s participation in decision-making in results framework. • Supporting program-level process and performance assessments and • Support an improved gender-focus for gathering insights into beneficiary M&E systems and processes. experiences with sex-disaggregated Program data. • Include assessments of targeting Management: accuracy in evaluations. • Conducting impact evaluations of the Monitoring and • Support applying a gender lens in main three types of ASP programs – Evaluation safety nets, economic inclusion, and process and performance assessments. shock-response interventions – • Support periodic learning for measuring impacts on a range of implementing partners on what works indicators for gender outcomes. and what does not in relation to gendered approaches in delivery. • Support impact evaluations that test a wider range of gender outcome indicators. • Supporting government to assess and • Continuous capacity development of mitigate risks during each phase of delivery staff, including reinforcing key Programme delivery, including support for: (1) messages on GBV in shock-affected Management: assessing and mitigating risks of areas. Action to Prevent frontline staff engaging in SEA/SH; (2) • Explore integration of GBV and SEA/SH and Mitigate GBV establishing codes of conduct for those in accompanying measures. engaged in delivery; (3) establishing • Document efforts to close risks and SEA/SH survivor-focused GRMs; and (4) associated with GBV and SEA/SH in all analyzing GRM data with a gender lens. phases of delivery. Political commitment and use of evidence Political commitment and use of evidence • Contributing to awareness of the • Continue to disseminate gender- relevance of ASP and the importance of relevant evidence in advocacy efforts for investing in systems and capacity. ASP across the region. • Advocate for further measures to • Communicating evidence with a lens on address the structural barriers women gender to inform governments and face. funders. Financing Financing • Build knowledge on the benefits of ASP • Leveraging significant IDA resources to Activating Levers of for resilience, increased productivity expand the reach of ASP. and earnings, and closing gender gaps in Change productivity. Capacity strengthening for Gender- Responsive Institutions Capacity Strengthening for Gender- Responsive Institutions • Providing capacity strengthening • Continue support for regular training on measures for implementing partners in gender for implementing staff and relation to gender. monitor role of local men and women with volunteer roles in delivery. Partnerships and synergies • Support implementing partners in improving workplace policies and • Fostering partnerships for mobilizing practices that promote diversity, financing to bring national ASP systems equality, and inclusion. to scale. 51 • Mobilizing partners to advocate, Partnerships and synergies including the IMF. • Nurturing technical partners with • Strengthen collaboration with UNICEF and WFP and fostering a united government and partners to amplify the front on ASP that is gender-responsive. impacts of ASP on gender outcomes. Source: Original table for this publication 4.2 Next Steps: Key Priorities Continue evidence-based advocacy on ASPs contribution to gender outcomes to secure political commitment for scaling up ASP that is gender-responsive: • Package the evidence with deliberate messaging on women’s empowerment. • Implement an advocacy strategy with key partners on the potential of ASP to address gender outcomes. Support further analysis for increased gender-responsiveness of social registries: • Assess the extent to which intake, registration, assessments, eligibility, and enrollments are accessible to women and bias free. • Promote the use of social registry and program data to identify social service delivery gaps and opportunities, and if relevant, engage with key social sectors to amplify the impact of ASP that is gender-responsive. Produce guidance for gender-responsive payment systems: • Develop guidance on how to integrate gender into diagnostic research to inform the design, implementation, and M&E of payment systems — both cash-based and digital. Increase support for capacity strengthening of government and other implementing actors for the design and delivery of ASP programs that are gender-responsive: • Build knowledge, skills, and capabilities of delivery staff on gender through training, operational manuals, and tools for strategic engagement with communities and households for all phases of delivery from outreach through to accompanying measures. • Build staff capacity on GBV and SEA/SH and augment accompanying measures with sessions to reinforce key messages. Improve the gender focus of M&E systems: • Ensure sex-disaggregated data, quantitative and qualitative data gathering approaches, and the application of gender analysis. • Develop standard terms of reference for process and performance evaluations that integrate a lens on gender. • As part of impact evaluations, consider including measures of intrahousehold dynamics to address power imbalances. 52 ANNEXES Annex 1: Guidance For Gender-Responsive Monitoring and Evaluation This Annex is structured as follows: Section A1.1 provides guidance on measuring ASPs contribution to women’s empowerment at an impact level, including outcomes and indicators from the World Bank Group and UNICEF. Section A1.2 provides guidance for integrating a lens on gender into process and performance evaluations, assessments, and reviews. This includes research questions and recommended data gathering approaches, including understanding frontline staff perspectives and beneficiary feedback. A1.1 Measuring ASPs Contribution to Women’s Empowerment: Outcome/Impact The World Bank Gender Strategy 2024-2030 (figure A1.1) identifies three objectives for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, with six outcomes that are relevant for ASP programs supported by SASPP. Figure A1.1: Strategic Objectives and Outcomes of the World Bank Group Gender Strategy 2024-2030 Source: World Bank Group 2024 Table A1.1 links the World Bank’s six outcome areas outlined in figure A1.1 to indicators identified by UNICEF’s Conceptual Framework for Gender-Responsive Age-Sensitive Social Protection. Highlighted outcomes are those most relevant to the ASP programs supported by SASPP in the Sahel. SASPP measures most of these in impact evaluations, except access to markets and greater mobility. 53 Table A1.1: UNICEF’s Gender-Responsive Age-Sensitive Social Protection Outcomes Stronger and More Resilient Human Capital and Greater Access to Enabling Services More and Better Advances in Jobs and Greater Progress in Enhanced Enhanced Psychological Women’s Ownership and Ending all Health Education Well-being Decision- Use of Economic Forms of GBV making Assets • Income security • Improved • Improved • Mental health • Freedom • Positive and resilience access to literacy • Life from violence gender • Reduced and health and • Increased satisfaction • Delayed attitudes distributed core social school • Self-esteem marriage • Decision- and domestic services attendance • Increased • Reduced risk making work burdens • Improved and expectations of female capacity • Financial physical achievement and genital • Autonomy autonomy health and • Improved aspirations mutilation • Self-efficacy • Savings nutrition capabilities • Reduced • Greater • Political and • Access to credit • Improved and skills stress and mobility community • Access to reproductive • Enhanced enhanced • Enhanced participation markets and sexual cognitive resilience sensitivity to (social • Access to health abilities gender cohesion) diversified • Reduced matters by sources of HIV/AIDS men income. risk • Delayed sexual debut and pregnancy Sources: UNICEF Innocenti 2020; with inputs from World Bank Group 2024; and SASPP KIIs The World Bank Group Measurement Guide: Four Indicators for Assessing Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment provides more detailed advice on four indicators for assessing women’s and girls’ empowerment: asset ownership (resources); input into decision-making (agency); self-efficacy (agency) and sharing of housework between men and women (context) (World Bank Group 2023). The Guide provides instructions on how to formulate and define questions and construct data analysis. These four indicators, along with others listed in the table above, have been used to evaluate the impact of SASPP- supported economic inclusion measures. A1.2 Integrating a Lens on Gender in Process and Performance Evaluations, Assessments, and Reviews Table A1.2 provides recommended questions and methods to shed light on gender in process and performance assessments and spot checks, where the emphasis is on verifying the quality of delivery, identifying obstacles, and finding solutions. This table has been developed as a direct result of the analysis in this report which highlights the need for strengthened staff capacity on routine M&E. The table is a useful reference for developing procurement guidelines and Evaluation Terms of Reference. 54 Table A1.2: Process and Performance Assessments: Questions and Recommended Data Gathering Approaches Area Main Evaluation Question Methods • To what extent do outreach communication approaches consider the barriers women and other marginalized groups face in receiving information about the program? • To what extent are communities, men and boys encouraged Qualitative insights from (Outreach) to support women as recipients of monetary transfers and frontline staff, volunteers, Effective beneficiaries of accompanying measures? and beneficiaries (men and Communication • To what extent do women feel supported by their a) women). communities and b) households, particularly men and boys and older women? • What were female participation rates in outreach activities? • What strategies and actions are recommended to improve systems and processes? What are the estimated costs? • To what extent do people (men/women) regard the eligibility criteria to be fair and inclusive of the most vulnerable? • What measures are taken to ensure community validation processes are unbiased both in terms of representation and in decision-making? Qualitive approach; sex- (Eligibility and • Is beneficiary data in social registries and assessments disaggregated data and Enrollment) disaggregated by sex, age, disability, and displacement? gender analysis. Eligibility Criteria • What percentage of eligible women (disaggregated by age, disability, and displacement) are included in social registries? • What strategies and actions are recommended to improve systems and processes? What are the estimated costs? • What percentage of those accessing payments are women? • What percentage of those accessing accompanying (Provision of Benefits) measures are women? Quantitative and qualitative Ability to Access • What facilitates access to a) payments; and b) other approaches. Benefits and benefits and what are the main barriers (e.g., lack of Household survey. Interventions, Barriers information, ID, transport, security concerns)? • What strategies and actions are recommended to improve systems and processes? What are the estimated costs? • Is disaggregated data available for payments? • What percentage of women collect a) payments and b) participate in accompanying measures? Gender audit of (Provision of Benefits) • Has the response met the different needs of men and accompanying measures; Adequacy of women, and other vulnerable groups (those living with beneficiary perspectives. Intervention to disability, displaced, host communities)? Quantitative and qualitative Gendered Needs and • What aspects of the program increase women’s approaches (beneficiary Structural Inequality knowledge, skills, and capabilities? Are there gaps? perspectives from men and • What aspects of the program address gender inequalities: women). protection from GBV; human capital development; more and better jobs; ownership and use of economic assets; access to services; advances in women’s decision-making 55 • What strategies and actions are recommended to improve systems and processes? What are the estimated costs? • Are there differentiated approaches at each phase of delivery to meet the specific needs of women, taking into consideration key barriers (time-poverty, mobility constraints, care, and domestic duties)? • What outcomes for women’s empowerment is the program supporting (See table A1.1) • Are M&E systems and process in place to measure the four key indicators (asset ownership; input into decision- making; self-efficacy and sharing housework between (Program Qualitative insights from women and men). Management) frontline staff, volunteers, • To what extent has the program changed community and Monitoring and and beneficiaries (men and intra-household relations? Evaluation women). • What percentage of GRM complaints are resolved in a timely manner (disaggregated) • What number of GRM complaints (disaggregated) are referred to care services? • Is the program on track to deliver results that contribute to women’s empowerment? • What strategies and actions are recommended to improve systems and processes? What are the estimated costs? • Do institutions involved in delivery have policies promoting gender equality (equality of opportunity, fair and equal recruitment, promotion, and remuneration? • Are there action plans in place to address and monitor progress on institutional gender equality objectives? • Are there adequate human and other resources, skills, budgets and incentives, coordination, information, and data sharing to ensure differentiated approaches for Gendered organizational (Levers of Change) reaching vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, including assessment. Gender-Responsive women? Qualitative insights from Institutions • To what extent are frontline delivery staff gender balanced? delivery staff. • What measures could incentivize fairer recruitment and conducive working conditions for women? • Are volunteers adequately rewarded for their work (for example, what incentives are provided and are men and women benefiting equally)? • What strategies and actions are recommended to improve systems and processes? What are the estimated costs? • Is there a mechanism (GRMs) for grievance, feedback, Quantitative and qualitative complaints, or appeal with multiple accessible avenues for approaches; gender (All Delivery Phases) men and women? analysis of sex- GRMs • Can it respond to and refer incidents of GBV/SEASH to disaggregated data. survivor focused care services? Beneficiary perspectives • Are GRMs trusted and used by men and women? and experiences. 56 • Is action taken within a given timeframe? • Is there consolidated, sex-disaggregated reporting on complaints and complaint resolution? • To what extent is there gender or other bias in resolving issues? • Are there experiences of sexual abuse and harassment recorded while trying to access benefits, or from program implementers? • What strategies and actions are recommended to improve systems and processes? What are the estimated costs? • Are information systems accurate, secure, and protected? This includes social registries, assessments, payment data, (All Delivery Phases) GRM data, including referral data. Qualitative review. Information Systems • What strategies and actions are recommended to improve systems and processes? What are the estimated costs? Sources: Holmes, Levine, and Shakespeare 2021; UN Women 2021 Capturing experiences from frontline staff and beneficiary feedback during performance and process evaluations can help program managers adjust for course correction if there are gaps, oversights, or opportunities to improve the quality of delivery. Guidance includes: • Frontline staff and beneficiary experiences can be captured either by trained monitoring staff who gather insights from frontline workers, or by evaluation and research teams during process and performance assessments, who gather insights from both frontline workers and beneficiaries (men and women). Frontline worker perspectives triangulate insights from beneficiaries, but they are also important for finding locally driven solutions. • Frontline worker and beneficiary perspectives are typically collected through qualitative research, including focus group discussions. It is important to include feedback from the analysis of data to beneficiaries to highlight what has been done to resolve common issues. It is also important to capture and synthesize these insights for those involved in program design. • Below is a recommended list of questions for capturing insights into the barriers faced by women and sub-groups of women (female household heads, displaced, disabled) at each phase of the delivery chain. These questions can be used by delivery staff to guide observations or in focus group discussions. Supervisors can debrief delivery staff and find local solutions to improve delivery to women and sub-groups of women or seek external advice and support. 57 Table A1.3: Recommended Questions to Capture the Barriers Faced by Women at Each Phase of the Delivery Chain Delivery Phase Recommended Questions Outreach Are women and sub-groups of women receiving timely information on the program and do they feel they have a right to apply (Some/most/all women and sub-groups of women) say they received information on the program)? Registration Do payment recipients (women/men) have the right documents (ID) to register? (Some/most/all women and sub-groups). Note actions taken to facilitate access to documents. Enrollment What barriers have women/sub-groups of women faced in enrollment? List all the barriers and note whether they apply to some/most/all women/sub-groups of women. GRM Do men and women know how to lodge a complaint? (Some/most/all women/men). Do men and women who have made complaints feel they have been resolved in a timely manner? (Some/most/all) To what extent do women feel confident in reporting GBV/SEA/SH (To a greater extent; to some extent; not confident). Monetary Transfers Have women recipients received payment(s) in a timely manner? (Some/most/all). List all the barriers women have faced, noting if they are faced by some/most/all women. Accompanying Were accompanying measures scheduled at times convenient for women? Some/most/all Measures women were able to attend sessions. List all the barriers preventing women from attending sessions, noting if they are faced by some/most/all women. Source: Original table for this publication. 58 Annex 2: Key Areas and Topics for Capacity Development for Delivery Staff Outreach is a critical phase for removing the gendered barriers faced by women to ASP programs. Annex 2 provides specific objectives to guide delivery staff during the outreach phase and guidance on knowledge, skills, and action (table A2.1). Further work can be done to identify relevant knowledge, attitudes, and practices required by delivery staff for all stages of delivery. The areas and topics are also relevant for job descriptions of frontline staff form and to inform part of operational manuals. Table A2.1: Outreach: Gender-Relevant Content for Training Frontline Workers Objective Knowledge, Skills, and Action Knowledge: Local social norms (attitudes and behaviors) that constrain women’s access to services Attitudes: Belief that women and girls have rights and entitlements and that they can play a significant role in household resilience Skills: Communication (explaining, negotiating, persuading) Elicit Community and Action points: (see below) Household Support for Explain to community leaders, men and boys and potential beneficiaries: Women as Recipients • Why women/mothers are the preferred recipients' benefits (mothers understand health of Payments and other and nutritional needs of children. Benefits • Why mothers need to be involved and contribute to household well-being; men are more likely to work away or be travelling). Elicit community and household support for women to receive payments and benefit from accompanying measures. Promote women’s equal role in decision-making on how money is spent for household well- being. Knowledge: The payment process; requirements for ID; the potential barriers women may face in terms of mobility, caring responsibilities, and transport; mobile phone security risks (sharing personal data); travel risks and mitigation strategies. Attitudes: Belief that women deserve support for realizing their rights and entitlements. Skills: Communication; finding practical solutions Action points: (see below) Explain to community leaders and potential beneficiaries: Explain the Payment • The step-by-step process of receiving monetary payments and other benefits (time of Process day, location of payment points, requirements for ID). • How to recognize fraudulent activity: How to identify fake calls, such as requests for personal information or money. • The need for password security: The need for strong and unique passwords that are not for sharing. Safety measures in reaching and returning from payment points (group travel, and at payment points). The importance of not sharing unique passwords for mobile phones and keeping money safe. Knowledge: Local social norms (attitudes and behaviors) around needs for women and girls Highlighting Need for Attitudes: Women’s rights and entitlements ID Skills: Communication; finding practical solutions 59 Action points: (See below) • Explain to recipients and beneficiaries at what stage they need to show ID. • Facilitate arrangements for ID. Knowledge: Definitions of SEASH and GBV Attitudes: Women and girls need to be protected from GBV and SEASH; personal and collective actions can make a difference. Actions: (See below) • Sign the workplace code of conduct. • Work with colleagues to identify and close risks associated with SEASH women SEA/SH could face from those involved in implementation and ensure mitigating measures. In particularly ensure that women as individuals are never alone with implementing staff, including mobile agents. • Ensure workplace policies protect female staff from SEASH and that there are mechanisms for reporting, investigating, and resolving misconduct that are survivor focused. Knowledge: GRMs process and find solutions to complaints raised by people (men and women), including those related to GBV and SEA/SH. Key features of GRMs: GRMs offer accessibility to all; transparency and fairness; timely resolution of grievances; confidentiality and protection; referral to care services in the event of GBV; continuous improvement; governance and accountability GRMs Actions: (See below) Explain to communities and beneficiaries: • What issues can be reported: Any issue associated with the project delivery, including incidences of SEASH. • Avenues for reporting: e.g., hotline; village association (male/female) Source: Original table for this publication 60 Annex 3: Accompanying Measures - Suggested Topics for Human Capital Development Annex 3 provides further insight into suggested topics and sub-topics for human capital development sessions that are relevant to supporting women’s gendered risks and vulnerabilities : digital literacy and safety; and coping with climate change and other extreme shocks (table A3.1). A wide range of sub-topics are provided for further exploration. Table A3.1: Digital Literacy and Safety, and Climate Change: Suggested Sub-Topics for Human Capital Accompanying Measures Climate and Other Shocks, and the Challenges for Digital Literacy and Safety: Key Areas and Topics Women: Key Areas and Topics Mobile Phone Basics: Understanding Climate Events and Other Extreme • Understanding basic phone functions. Shocks: • Making and receiving calls: demonstrating how to dial • Definition of a climate event and other extreme shocks (heat waves, floods, severe storms, drought, erosion, a number and answer a call. cyclone, inflation, other). • Volume control. • Why climate change events and other shocks are • Battery charging. likely to increase. • Locking and unlocking. • Understanding the frequency of past extreme shocks (build a timeline covering three years). Phone Use: • Identifying past and future impacts. • Being prepared to use the phone (knowing what you • Why the impact of climate and other shocks is potentially worse for women than men. want to say). • Answering the phone with a greeting. Understanding Risk and Opportunities for Reducing and • Ending the call with a salutation. Mitigating Risks: • Speaking clearly and being a good listener. • Understanding the concept of risk as it relates to • Avoiding eating and drinking while talking/ external shocks and climate events and their impact on family life and women’s and men’s productivity • Memorizing important information; telling a friend or (group discussion to share knowledge and experience family member in case you forget. of the impacts of past shocks). • Making a list of risks by category: climate related risks Safety and Security: (from drought, water scarcity, fooding, extreme • Recognizing fraudulent activity: How to identify fake weather events) economic risks (market fluctuations, currency devaluation, lack of access to finance); calls, such as requests for personal information or social and political risks (family and community, money. political instability, and gender-based violence). • Password security: The need for strong and unique passwords and for not sharing. Developing Adaptive Strategies and Mitigating Actions • Cyberbullying Awareness: Educating users about to Deal with Climate and Other Shocks: what cyberbullying is and how to report it. • Thinking through what could be done in advance to mitigate risks (individually and collectively). • Reporting issues: How to report suspicious activity or • What level of effort and what costs are required? inappropriate calls or messages. • Communication and collaboration: Focusing on safe Below are examples of typical responses that might and respectful communication practices. emerge from group discussions. These solutions address • How to deal with unwanted sexual comments or each of the risk categories identified: messages, or other offensive behavior through phone Climate-related risks (drought, water scarcity, flooding, calls or text messages. extreme weather events): • Implement water-efficient farming techniques. Teaching Approaches for Low Literacy Learners: • Diversify crops to include drought-resistant varieties. 61 • Visual aids: Use pictures and diagrams. • Invest in small-scale irrigation systems. • Hands-on practice: Provide opportunities for users to • Develop flood-resistant storage facilities. practice new skills. • Create drainage systems around business premises or sandbag barricades. • Simple language: Use clear, concise language and • Establish early warning systems with local avoid technical jargon. communities. • Group discussion. • Build stronger, more resilient structures to withstand • Real life examples: Use real life examples that are extreme weather. relevant to people’s lives. • Create emergency response plans. • Diversify income sources to reduce dependence on climate-sensitive activities. Economic risks (market fluctuations, currency devaluations, and lack of access to finance): • Diversify products. • Develop value-added products. • Build relationships with multiple suppliers and customers. • Consider pricing strategies that account for potential currency fluctuations. • Maintain a reserve fund in stable currencies if possible. • Participate in financial literacy training. • Join savings groups or cooperatives. • Explore microfinance options and government support programs. Social and Political Risks (political instability and gender-based discrimination): • Develop contingency plans for business operations. • Build relationships with diverse stakeholders. • Stay informed about local and national policies affecting small businesses. • Form or join women's business networks for support and advocacy. • Seek mentorship and advice from successful women entrepreneurs. • Participate in leadership and assertiveness training. Health Risks (disease, pandemics): • Implement hygiene and sanitation practices at home and in productive activities. • Create emergency savings for unexpected closures or reduced operations (join a savings group). • Insure against the negative consequences of climate events and other shocks. Source: Original table for this publication 62 Annex 4: Securing Political Commitment Through Evidence-Based Advocacy Table A4.1 considers important points for evidence-based advocacy. It matches key concerns for impact, leveraging existing ASP systems; creating capacity for rapid scale-up within existing policy frameworks; and addressing structural bottlenecks for women across the delivery chain with SASPP supported activities. Table A4.1: Points for Advocacy to Secure Political Commitment Securing Political Commitment: Points for Advocacy Examples from SASPP-Supported Activities Demonstrated impact for gender in the Sahelian context. • Accompanying Measures: economic inclusion • Senegal national social registry (RNU) process • Mali payment-to-women pilot Leverages existing national ASP systems and programs to • Accompanying Measures, Human Capital maximize cost-effectiveness. Development, digital literacy, and safety • Gender responsive M & E Creates capacity for rapid scale-up within existing policy • Gendered targeting / intake criteria frameworks. • Social registries with rapid expansion features • Gender-responsive GRMs with GBV care referral Addresses structural bottlenecks across multiple phases of • ID access the social protection delivery chain. • Phones and sim cards • Frontline staff training • Timing of accompanying measures Maximizes political commitment to support sustainability • Gender in institutions delivering ASP • Synergies & partnerships Source: Original table for this publication 63 BIBLIOGRAPHY Aboagye, Richard Gyan, Mainprice Akuoko Essuman, King David Dzirasah, Abdul-Aziz Seidu, Qorinah Estiningtyas Sakilah Adnani, and Bright Opoku Ahinkorah. 2025. “Association between Polygyny and Justification of Violence among Women in Sexual Unions in Sub-Saharan Africa.” BMC Public Health 25 (1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-025-22581-y. 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Because The World Bank encourages dissemination of its knowledge, this work may be reproduced, in whole or in part, for non-commercial purposes as long as full attribution to this work is given. Any queries on rights and licenses, including subsidiary rights, should be addressed to World Bank Publications, The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA; fax: 202-522-2625; e-mail: pubrights@worldbank.org. Acknowledgements The SASPP is a multi-donor trust fund managed by the World Bank that supports the strengthening of adaptive social protection systems in the Sahel (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal) to enhance the resilience of poor and vulnerable households and communities to the impacts of climate change. The program is supported by Denmark, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. 76