Publication: 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
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2025-09-22
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2025-11-21
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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.
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“Seibold, Juliette. 2025. 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. SASPP Technical Paper Series. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/44011 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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