 Excellencies, distinguished delegates and participants, dear colleagues, very good morning, afternoon, or evening, depending on where you are joining from. My name is Dominique Burgeon, and I am the director of the FAO liaison office in Geneva. It is my pleasure to welcome you today to the fifth session of the FAO in Geneva, Social Protection Dialogue Series, Organizing Close Cooperation with the FAO, Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division in Rome. The thematic dialogue series on social protection aims to raise awareness on the role of social protection as a key instrument for poverty reduction and inclusive growth in rural areas and, in turn, as a key instrument for achieving the objectives and targets of the 2030 sustainable development agenda. Through the engagement of distinguished speakers, the Social Protection Dialogue Series showcases concrete examples of achievements made by countries in strengthening and extending social protection systems as a core ingredient of strategies seeking to promote more resilient, inclusive, efficient, and sustainable agri-food systems. The dialogue series is primarily intended to foster discussion between participants and feed and inform Geneva-based policy-making processes. Today, our session will seek to advance understanding of the concept and the pragmatic implications of gender transformative social protection for rural women. This dialogue is particularly timely as the voluntary guidelines on gender equality and women's and girls empowerment in the context of the food, security, and nutrition was recently endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security at its 51st session in October in Rome. It is also opportune as FAO, together with EFAD and WFP, has been implementing the joint program on gender transformative approaches, or GTAs, for food security and nutrition to help embed GTAs within the work of these three agencies. Furthermore, the Interagency Standing Committee, Policy on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls in Humanitarian Action, endorsed in 2017, is currently under revision. So before we start, a few housekeeping measures. Let me remind you of some housekeeping rules in date for today's session. The session will last for about 90 minutes, and it will be recorded. Please keep your microphones muted. And we encourage you to post your comments and questions in the Q&A module throughout the session. At the end of the presentation, we will try to accommodate as many questions as the time permits and give you the opportunity. Now, I would like to give the floor to our moderator today, Lauren Phillips, the deputy director of the division in Rome. Lauren Overture. Thanks so much, Dominique, for the introduction, and thank you always for your collaboration and hosting this excellent session of seminars. And good morning and good afternoon all of you who are joining us, and thank you for being here. As Dominique mentioned, my name is Lauren Phillips, and I'm the deputy director of the Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division at FAO headquarters, and I'm happy to be moderating today. So before we begin and before I introduce you to the excellent speakers we have here today, I'd like to tell you a little bit more adding on to what Dominique has said about the topic for today's session. So this year, FAO published a major new report called the Status of Women in Agri-Food Systems, which highlights the fact that more than 36% of women in the world depend on agri-food systems for their jobs. And in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa or Southern Asia, those statistics increase much more, so more than 66% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa work in agri-food systems, and more than 70% of women in South Asia, for example, work in agri-food systems. Despite the fact that so many women rely on agri-food systems for their livelihoods, women experience structural discrimination and disadvantages, as well as continuing to have gaps in their access to important assets and resources, services, and decent rural employment opportunities in agri-food systems. This is also in the context of a period of increasing number of shocks, where global hunger has been on the rise, despite previous decades of progress on reducing poverty and hunger. And COVID-19 had a very dramatic and negative impact on women's employment opportunities in agri-food systems, but also on hunger and malnutrition. In fact, the gap between women and men's food and security rose during COVID-19 to more than 4 percentage points. So we know that there is a serious problem of confronting hunger in the world with more than 600 million people estimated to still be in hunger by 2030. But we also know that there's a serious gender gap, which we have to address in both access to livelihoods and in making sure people have sustainable livelihoods and in reducing hunger and malnutrition. And in fact, this report that I just mentioned also highlights the fact that social protection can be a very important tool for enhancing women's resilience to all sorts of shocks, whether they come from climatic shocks or shocks like COVID-19. And so therefore, I think it's very important to think about how social protection programs can reduce gender inequality. Having said all of that, there is often a tendency for social protection programs to not adequately take into consideration the types of barriers and constraints that women face on using social protection, whether those are about the qualifications people need or if it's about social norms and discriminatory practices. For example, an assessment recently by UN Women and UNICEF found that gender considerations were inadequately integrated into social protection policies in 74 low and lower middle income countries. And an additional study by UN Women and UNDP found that only a minority of COVID-19 social protection responses were gender sensitive. So we know that in order to realize the potential of social protection, helping women and their families cope with shocks and also to just enhance their well-being generally, we really need to go beyond addressing the symptoms of gender equality and try to tackle these structural discriminatory practices against women, which include unequal power relations and social norms. And I think it's really important not to put the burden on women per se, but also to work with men and boys to help promote positive changes to norms, which will allow us to have a more inclusive agri-food system and agri-food system transformation and therefore help us achieve our goals jointly towards the SDGs. I think as Dominique was hinting at FAO in collaboration with the GTA program has come up with a recent conceptual framework on gender transformative social protection, which provides both evidence on impacts and practical examples of good programs. And to build on this work, we're hoping to use this conversation to advance to see how we can learn more from excellent country examples. So that's the start. Now let me just talk about how we're going to organize the session and introduce our excellent panel of speakers. So first, we're going to have three keynote speakers. And I'm going to introduce them and their titles in turn. We have Ms. Patricia Moyawama, who's the director of community development of the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services in Zambia. And she's going to kick off the session by presenting the social protection program in Zambia and how it's contributing to gender equality. Welcome, Patricia. Thank you for being here. Then we'll hear from Ms. Elgin Madzo, who's the gender and development unit head for the four P's program in the Department of Social Welfare and Development in the Philippines. And she will introduce the gender transformative aspects of the Philippines four P's program. Welcome, Elgin. And finally, we'll have Professor Valentina Bodra, who will take the floor to present the Moldovan Country Gender Assessment and its social protection chapter. She is the social and gender expert and an associate professor at Moldova State University. And so what we hope is that these presentations will give us an overview of how social protection can be gender transformative and make a meaningful contribution to empowering rural women in these three very different contexts. And then we'll have some reactions from our panelists. So let me introduce them as well. So Professor Lucy Kluver from Professor of Child and Family Social Work at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention University of Oxford. Welcome, Lucy. And Pontus Corgensen, special social protection officer at FAO. Welcome, Pontus as well. And they will share their initial reactions. The presentations will hear and then set the scene for the discussion. So thank you to all five of you for being here. And finally, we'll have some Q&A. So I'll look forward to your interesting questions. I'm going to pass the floor to Patricia so she can share Zambia's experience. So Patricia, the floor is yours. Thank you. Unfortunately, Patricia, we can't hear you. I'm not sure if you're muted, but you don't look like you are. I was muted. Sorry. There you go. Now we can hear you. Thank you. Right. So thank you very much for having me on the panel. And thank you very much for inviting Zambia as a whole to just come and explain our experience and what we are doing for social protection, especially in my department, community development. The community development department is part of the ministry of community development and social services. So we have three or two other social protection departments. Mine has a number of units that we do under the social protection. The mandate of the ministry, first of all, is that we handle the key social protection programs which feature to empower rural women and also enhance women's participation on the Food Security Park. The Food Security Park is a flagship. It's one that really makes sure that we empower the women. And 63% of the people or family households that are on the Food Security Park are women. And so we also have deliberately gotten the criteria to take care of the women-headed households. We also have the children-headed households in the criteria, which at the end of the day gives us a lot of women empowered. We can go to the next slide. I will go to explain exactly what the mandate is and does it notices. The mandate of the ministry is very important. Actually, I have coined this mandate as the nerve center of the country because we interface with all the communities, be they rural or urban. But mostly we find that the rural women, the ones that we target mostly so that we get them out of the vulnerability. And this government gazette notice was done in 2016. It implements basic social protection programs aimed at protecting, promoting, and assisting the poor and vulnerable households in society. The households in Zambia are usually five to six people. So the Food Security Park, which will be elaborated upon, takes care of the women throughout the year. We have in the FSB three components that we run where government has provided funding for us to issue fertilizer and ruminants, little animals, and poultry for nutrition. The services provided are aimed at enhancing this development and accelerating national development. The next slide, please. So like I alluded to earlier, the ministry has three main departments which deal with the social protection programs. And mine is community development. There's also social welfare. As you can see, community development, which I handle, throughout the country, I have mechanisms and structures from the province. And we have 10 provinces in Zambia. So you can just imagine, we have 10 provinces in Zambia and 116 districts. And in each and every one of those districts, I have an officer with officers below them. And not only that, we also go to the ward level, which is supposed to have 1,858 wards. And in each one of those, we have an officer manning that. And then from there, these are government of officers. From there, we have volunteers as well at the bottom. So we have vast structures to take care of our people. So we also have community development training. There are people who would have fallen out of education systems because they couldn't make it or they didn't have funds to take them through. So we have skill centers dotted around the country. We have 16 of them. And then we have two colleges, which collaborate with universities in the country to offer degree lessons. I think the slide has gone next. Yes. So I was talking about community development. And then we have the food program management, the food security part that I was talking about. And with this one, I must say that we are collaborating very well with the FAO. The Food Security Park program has been taken on by FAO. And currently, as I speak, my officers are all out in the four regions of the country training trainers of trainers because we are digitizing the 241,000 beneficiary households that are going to be having this program digitized. Mainly, the reason why we want to have that is for efficiency, accountability on when we issue the inputs, and then also transparency. It has been very difficult in the past for us from head office to track how the fertilizer is being issued out. So when FAO came on board to help us digitize, it has been a very welcome move. And we have moved very well so far. I'm very excited. Just yesterday, I was traveling from Southern province where I met my officers who are training others to come and use the pilot for this digitization. And then, of course, we have group housing, which we call the self-help, where the communities come together, put resources together, 25% of it. And then after government has assessed their BOQs, they take on 75%, and they will help them with funding to build whatever recreation halls or housing or business entities that they want to build. And then we also have supporting self-help. And then we also have SWL. SWL is the Supporting Women's Livelihood, which is funded by the World Bank. All that is done by my officers with all those structures that I was mentioning that are throughout the country. But what's really intriguing and very helpful is that FAO do not stop just in my department. Social welfare are a different program and unit in the ministry, and FAO does play a role in there as well. FAO is also obviously working with the child development. These departments have their own directors, and I think that they would be speaking better to this. Can I have the next slide, please? Thank you. The key social protection program features to empower rural women, affirmative action to empower more women using the selection criteria, such as the female-headed households. I mentioned that. This is made deliberate so that we can have an encouragement of more women in the programs that we run. We have recently noticed that when women are in the fall of these programs, we are able to tackle a lot of other things, including nutrition, which has been seen in most of our rural areas where we have standard children, because sometimes programs would be given to the other gender who obviously don't look at nutrition as the women would. There's also households that are keeping orphans. We also make sure that those ones are in the fall. We also have a provision of social protection, which supports the defacto breadwinner. And then we also roll out serving support. So these households that we give them input through, once they have done their farming and they probably have some extra monies to sell, they are produce. We have gone out to go and teach them on how to do savings so that they multiply their money. And it's working very well because that extra money goes a long way in them either expanding their storehouses for more food or even educating their children and sending their children to school. Next slide, please. And Patricia, because we're running a little bit behind, I hate to interrupt you because it's so interesting. But just to ask you if you can find a way to keep the information condensed, please. Thank you so much. Right, thank you. The key social protection program features to empower rural women. This is implementation of the cash plus agenda, which encourages provision of multiple social protection support to households to ensure quick graduation. We do graduate them off the programs. But even as we graduate them, we have all, we've got a mechanism where we ask them to do some paybacks, 10% of what we give them so that they can buy or do projects that will help them so that they are self-sustainable. We also have capacity building for households to enhance their livelihood skills. We also involve, there's also involvement of the community structures called community welfare assistance to help us identify and continue to monitor and evaluate their progress in whatever social protection field we have put them in. And then to the next slide, the last one, the key challenges in mainstreaming is gender in social protection, inadequacy support under the various social protection programs to enhance beneficiary welfare and timely graduation. There's inadequate volumes of interventions to reach all eligible households that need their support. There's lack of insurance. We have insured half of our beneficiaries in the rain fed, but it would have been good to have insurance for everyone so that with the climate change, one can hope to give those that are going through problems such as those. And then there's also inadequacy of capacity building, livelihood skills transferred due to inadequate extension staff as I have the whole country under me. And there's certain places where we don't have stuff because of either lack of funding or no housing in the areas where people are supposed to reach out for the poor and vulnerable. Thank you. Thank you so much, Prisha. I liked your description of your work as the nerve center of the country. And I appreciate your honest assessment of some of the challenges that Zambia is facing and making sure that as many women and families are reached as possible. So thank you so much for your presentation. I'm going to turn it over now to our next speaker, so Ms. Elgin Madzo, who's going to present the four piece program from Philippines. The floor is yours. Thank you so much. We can't hear you. Maybe you're muted. Please go ahead. I think we can hear you now. Let's see. Hello, good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Good evening from the Philippines. Good morning or good afternoon, your countries. Thank you very much for inviting the Philippines to present this gender resumé in our program, particularly in the Pantawit Familia Filipino Program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. And we're glad that we are a part of this social protection dialogue series entitled Gender Transformative Social Protection. Four piece, basic program design, Filipino program in the Philippines is a conditional cash transfer program that targets the poor sectors of the populations that started in year 2008. The Pantawit Familia Filipino Program, or Four Piece, aims to provide financial support to vulnerable populations for a maximum of seven years. Within turn, facilitates access to social services, improves employment opportunities, raises leading standards, and enhances overall quality of life for all program beneficiaries and their communities. And the next slide, based on the targeting women's vulnerability and the needs of these programs, eligibility criteria, as per section six of the Republic Act 11310, or the Pantawit Familia Filipino Program, as we have shown in this slide that farmers, we share folks, homeless families, indigenous or peoples, those in the formal sectors, or others, in essence, that the Pantawit Familia Filipino Program recognizes the diverse needs and vulnerabilities of these eligible beneficiaries and provides target assistance to address their specific challenges. This is to improve the level of well-being of these individuals, families, and reduce poverty and promote human capital development in the Philippines. Now in the next slides, provided that these eligible beneficiaries, they have to be followed with the conditionalities of the program. Now we have the following criteria. A, classify a score or near poor based on the standard discharging system and the poverty threshold established by the Philippine Statistics Authority at the time of selections. So many poor families refer to those leading below the poverty threshold. These are households facing economic hardships and struggling to meet their basic needs. Conditions and compliance to the program are parents or guardians, caregivers, must attend a family development session. Two, children 0 to 5 years old must receive regular preventive health checkups and vaccines. Three, children 8, 6 to 14 must receive the warming pills twice a year. And four, pregnant women must visit their local health facility to avail prenatal checkups and other health services. And five, children 8, 3 to 4 must attend daycare classes while children 8, 5 to 18 must enroll in elementary and secondary school classes. So as you saw in the next slides, if you want to know the details, that are the conditions for entitlement. So meaning under the pregnant women stated avail prenatal services, give birth in a health facility, receive postpartum and postnatal care, at 0 to 5 years old, receive regular health and nutrition services, undergo checkups and vaccinations. One to 14 years old, avail of the warming pills twice a year, as I mentioned a while ago. So meaning in that conditions are specified in the purpose law. Next slide. Now, as to the mainstreaming gender and development in the conditionalities, by making women's needs visible in the programs, we have set several conditions. And one, conditional cost transfers for maternity and child health. Conditional cost transfers for maternal and child health directly addresses the specific health care needs of women during pregnancy. Childbirth and child release, ensuring that women have access to essential health care services. Like for example, as I mentioned a while ago, pre and postnatal checkups of pregnant women, vaccination of 0 to 5 years old, preventive health and nutrition, one to 14 years, avail of the warming pills on others. The Pantowit Pilipino, or FORFIS, the Pantowit Pamerilian Pilipino Program, or FORFIS, had a positive impact on the education of women and girls in the Philippines, aligning with several sustainable development goals related to poverty reduction, education, gender equality and reducing inequalities. It plays a significant role in improving the lives of women and girls in impoverished communities, ultimately contributing to the country's social and economic development. The cash grants provided by FORFIS can be used for educational expenses, such as school supplies, uniforms and transportation costs. The financial support makes it easier for girls to access quality education and stay enrolled. And the next slide, another instrument in gender and development, we have women's empowerment through family development sessions. Family development sessions are strategies to capacitate mothers and fathers to become more responsive to the families need, particularly on health and education. And financial literacy includes knowing how to create an appropriate decision in budgeting and spending, plan for savings and track personnel spending, as well as the use of transaction accounts as the mode of payments. And the next slide is include also that the family development sessions includes Gulayans, Barangay or other known as community backyard gardening. This refers to the backyard versus most garden contribute to women empowerment because it is a shared responsibility. It challenges traditional roles of women and women where women are typically for the household while men are for any income. It also encourages participants to reflect on if required challenge these roles and empowers women to make informed decisions about their food security. By participating in backyard gardening, women cannot only grow their own vegetables but also potentially generate income by selling surplus produce and expand beyond the traditional household chores demonstrating that they are capable of contributing to the family's food security and income. Further, engaging community gardening can contribute to better health outcomes and overall well-being. Reinforcing the idea that women play a vital role in the family's sufficient and health. And another mainstream gender and development in the conditionalities by making women's needs visible in the program we have also issuance of policies and guidance rules. In sustaining the gender responsiveness of these strategies and activities for the beneficiaries particularly on women and children issuance of policies and guidance are crucial for gender mainstreaming efforts and activities because they provide a structured and comprehensive approach to achieving gender equality. Deserve as a foundation for legal compliance accountability, resource allocation, guidance and cultural change. The Philippine governments embed gender considerations into policies to ensure that it is in 3.4 of the program operations and having a minimum progress to our gender equality. As the Department of Social Welfare and Development leads in social protection social face management is important in 4PACE because it ensures that assistance is targeted and in addressing the specific needs of the beneficiaries. It empowers individuals and families prevent issues from the ground, facilities coordination and referrals and provides ongoing monitoring and evaluation. It plays a vital role in delivering appropriate support to those in need and promoting their long-term well-being and self-sufficiency. I can just give you a warning, we're a bit over time so if you can please finish when you can. Okay, thank you. I think we have to show to you that some of the accomplishment as the I think it's the last page of the slides as of June 30, 2023. So for the conditionalities as for the prenatal and postnatal care we have 55.75% out of 9,788, 5457 as 55%. It's also in the children's zero to five years old it's 97.76%. Attendance to family development sessions or at least it's 95.7% and the children's 18 years old in the household assigned as a deep ed or Department of Education larger response number it's 72.51%. The beneficiaries exceed from the program there are total of 226,998 households exhibited from the program and to the back care gardening or vegetable gardening with in coordination with the different stakeholders it's 89.94% those mostly who are women participated in this activities. And I think we have to provide the challenges on the way forward. So as for the challenges we have prepared only one key challenge and the challenge is level of wellbeing of the program beneficiaries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges why? The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted the wellbeing of focused beneficiaries in the Philippines forcing many to shift from their initial level three which is sufficiency to level two which is subsistence. And in some cases even down to level one or survival this downward transition resulted from a combination of economic hardships healthcare, concerns, education, disruptions rising living expenses and the psychological fall of the pandemic and other calamities. These challenges collectively created a more demanding environment for low income families handling their ability to attain and that will be improved efficiently aimed for by the program. Shall we proceed to the ways forward? So the ways forward for this program the first recommendation focused on the proactive step of enhancing gender sensitivity programs to empower rural women and promote gender equality. The second recommendations highlights the importance of maintaining and improving monitoring efforts to understand and address the specific needs of rural women through a greater event and policy changes. And that's all the program in Panthawid Familia Filipino Program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in the Philippines and National Anti-Poverty Adivision Program. Thank you. Thank you so much for giving us such a comprehensive overview of a very well-integrated and dynamic-sounding program and we appreciate your presentation. I'm going to pass us to the next speaker. So Professor Goldrug, you're going to talk a little bit about Moldova's experience and the floor is yours. I should have said to the other speakers, we're supposed to use seven minutes each. So that's why I keep interrupting everybody. So just so you're aware. Thank you so much. Thank you, Lauren. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Greetings from Moldova. And it's a honor and a pleasure for me to present our interesting experience and to participate to contribute to our discussions. Republic of Moldova is a small country, but beautiful and but it's a lot of problem and achievement as in many countries. First of all, I would like to mention that now in the Republic of Moldova you have 2,600,000 population. 42% are women. 47% are from rural area. And we should understand that it's very important to ensure a balanced approach. And also our today subject about gender transformative approach. Of course, the Republic of Moldova has many countries in the region and many countries at the global level have good practices, put a lot of efforts to ensure all human rights for different vulnerable groups for all population. Between achievement, I would like to specify specifically that Republic of Moldova is part of CEDA Convention or the Istanbul Convention. We have a strong legal framework on gender equality and humans empowerment including on prevention and combative violence against women. Based on gender quotas, the number of women in decision-making position increased the last years. Social and economic policy have contributed to an overall decline of the poverty right but area of residence is a strong determinant of health poverty. Between challenge, we can mention COVID impact, now we have a multiple crisis also relating to war in Ukraine. Also we should specify migration factor, aging factor of population. And despite of the progress and the adoption of the good legal framework, several challenges remain regarding its implementation. At the moment, it's a lack of national mechanism for gender equality. Also we should mention gaps in the continuity of the social assistance policy. But specifically, I would like to mention our Moldova country gender assessment, which follow support. Our country gender assessment focuses on intersections of gender agriculture and rural development and present a critical gender-based inequality and the consequence for agriculture production rural life. In general, women depends on the greater degree on social benefits and men are more involved in income generating activity. Also as many country women's engagement in domestic and care work is one of the limiting factor, the ability to take a formal employer and to have a more choice for their life. But it's very important to mention that our report include valuable recommendation on enhanced agriculture and developing rural community, which genders sensitive perspective. And I would like to mention that some inputs of our report were included in the national strategy for agriculture and rural development for the next weeks. And as transversal aspects of the strategy are climate resilience, gender equality and women's economic empowerment. As cross-cutting is mentioned, stimulation of the development of family farms and business in rural area by young people, women and migrant population. Of course, we can discuss more issues. But specifically, one of the recommendations, one of the uses discussed in the frame of our validation process of our country report was discussion on paternity leave. And today I would like to mention these issues as one of the best practices on transformative approach, gender transformative approach. Paternity leave, paternity leave was introduced to encourage men's involvement in childcare. Starting with the second half of 2016, paternity leave is granted for 40 days. Paternity leave increase women's life satisfaction, allows father to lay the groundwork for a more equal distribution of family responsibility. And it's a good tool and very important step to deconstruct gender stereotypes. Paternity leave can positively influence the decision on how to allocate resources for childcare, housework, and future employment of women. But also could inspire other, specifically other men to make similar choice. Specifically, I would like to mention a set of recommendations in the frame of our country gender assessment, addressed to governance, to international partners, to civil society organization. And one of the best practices in the frame of our exercise was involvement and cooperation between government and civil society organization and international development partners. And I would like to mention our experience, involvement of platform for gender equality on several women's association who contributed a lot to have a very clear picture and to address the most important issues in this quadrigedre assessment. But one other moment in very interesting practices was, based on our recommendation, increase digital literacy and access to technology for vulnerable people in the rural area, including women, specifically older women. Now, thanks to our partner for development and the other stakeholders and civil society organization, several programs were extended on digital literacy programs were implemented in rural area, specifically in school, but also addressed to elderly people, most of whom are women. I think we can discuss more issues, but it's very important to collect these best practices to rethinking our attitude on gender profile of rural population. Today we should use intersectionality, intersectional approach and to connect very clear gender, age, disability, rural urban and other criteria. We have a huge responsibility, but it's very important to thinking on this, empowered girls and women. It's strong and resilient society. It's powerful society. And all of us, we have a huge responsibility for this, for our population, for our women and girls, for our men and boys. Thank you for your attention. Thank you so much, Valentina, for this very passionate message and for mentioning, I think in the end as well, the importance of having an intersectional approach when we talk about these issues. So I really appreciate your intervention. So I would like to now pass the floor to our panelists who are going to do some reflections and invite, I invite them to give some feedback on the presentations we've heard in taking around four or five minutes. So Lucy, first I'm going to pass to you. So building on your experience and leading the Accelerate Hub, what sorts of innovation have you seen in social protection that can generate gender transformative impacts and how does that relate to what you've heard here today? Over to you. Thank you so much. And thank you for three inspiring presentations. I'm just going to reflect on three things. The first is that what Patricia in Zambia, what Elgin in the Philippines and what Valentina in Moldova have just spoken to you about is substantially backed by the evidence base. And I'm just going to give you an example which you can see behind me. This is a study done with the government of South Africa looking at a group who are really perhaps some of the most vulnerable young women and adolescent girls in rural context. This is adolescent mothers in a rural province of South Africa. And they looked at a whole set of different interventions. This is a study of a thousand adolescent girls who are mothers and their children and found four things that predicted multiple positive impacts in their lives. What they found was that the combination of food security which was predicted by social protection, having safe parenting and non abusive parenting environment, having a clinic where you were not shouted at when you went to get support and having some kind of access to childcare resulted in an extraordinary range of positive outcomes. And many of these are exactly what you've just been hearing about the combinations of parenting support and food security that we saw in the Philippines the combinations of support for women to achieve employment. But what we see is that combination results in substantial outcomes for economic outcomes like school enrollment, work engagement. We see gender based outcomes like gender based violence, sexual violence prevention. We see mental health outcomes. We see HIV risk reduction outcomes and we see improvements in contraception uptake and use. And so what we're seeing from a massive study, longitudinal study is exactly mirroring the strength and the value of what is being achieved in these three countries. The second thing that the evidence suggests and again really seen by these three countries is that where it is most effective to become gender sensitive it is not just about cash, it is about cash plus care in smart and clever combinations. We've seen particularly from Zambia and from the Philippines that this is achievable at scale. It doesn't have to be boutique programs. It can be rolled out through national government systems. We also see new opportunities for scale and I was struck by when Valentina mentioned the opportunities for digital literacy and training amongst rural women and the opportunities to reach women to use that to reach women with cash plus care services. But I was also struck that these are wonderful exemplars. But as Lauren said from the report which has recently been released they are not yet the norm. And so the next great challenge for us is how do we make these gender sensitive social protection programs the absolute norm. In five years time we have discussions and they are everywhere in the world. The last thing that I want to add is this. That we are going to have to start looking at social protection and gender sensitive social protection in a new paradigm of global threats. This came out in all of the presentations. Patricia mentioned climate threats. Valentina mentioned climate resilience. Elgin mentioned developing family support in Covid. And as we see increased rates of climate hazards increased rates and potentially new epidemics and pandemics and the risk that that will be associated with increased levels of political instability and political instability. We need to be designing those social protection programs with that flexibility and adaptation in mind. There was an extraordinary example in the Philippines when the department which you discussed working together with Ateneo de Milenio University adapted the cash plus care program with parenting support and social protection to reach millions of families in a global pandemic and during lockdown. And I think if I had one thing for us to take away is that we are going to have to think about scale and we also are going to have to get smart about anticipatory planning for a new set of challenges. Thank you. And over to our next wonderful speaker who I know well and I'm looking forward to hearing Pontus. Thank you very much Lucy. Actually it would be great if you wouldn't mind or if my colleagues wouldn't mind putting the link to the study that you have the slide on there in the chat so people could see it. I think those results are very impressive. And I take to heart what you said about finding out how to do this at scale, how to make it the norm and how to make it anticipatory so that we can avoid the shocks and crises you mentioned. I also wanted to highlight childcare which is also one of the recommendations of the gender report that we wrote and it's something that's often overlooked in agri-food system policies. People don't tend to think about it but it's obviously critical and I think you've also heard that from Valentina's presentation thinking about paternity leave for example is an important component of making sure that care is part of the cash plus care combination. So thank you. Okay. And now I'm going to pass over to Pontus, my colleague to give us also four to five minutes reflection and I wanted to start by sort of asking you as a young person how do you think that we can combine gender transformative programming and social protection and make sure that it works for young people as well. I think Lucy started talking about this but that and any other reflections you have. Thank you. Thank you very much and also thank you very much for having such a strong youth perspective in this discussion. It's absolutely essential if we are to achieve the gender transformative approach and I will try to provide some reflections through commenting on what I heard today and I would like to start by just a few reflections on the presentation from Zambia and Philippines. Thank you so much. There's clearly a lot we can and should be learning from your respective programs and like Lucy also elaborated on Laura as well I think that the cash plus agenda really stands out as well as coordinating different type of supports. For example in Zambia coordinating the social cash transfer with other type of livelihood input support through the food security pack and in the Philippines linking the cash transfer with the family development sessions for example and it was very interesting that you brought up the impact that you have had in the Philippines on education specifically and on Zambia as well you have a very interesting program called the keeping girls in school as well and there yes we see a very strong impact on enrollment which is of course very positive in itself but then we also see all these very important indirect effects that are very so protective for young people and specifically young girls such as protecting against gender-based violence child marriage and these indirect effects we shouldn't underestimate and the gender transformative approach really helps us to understand these pathways better. I also want to comment on the presentation from Moldova and Laura and you were also mentioning there about the paternity leave it was so interesting to hear to hear this reflection I was introduced to try to increase the fathers involvement in childcare and paternity leave it's so important but also very neglected in social protection and to some extent maternity leave it does exist in Polish level in a lot of countries but paternity leave is nearly completely absent and especially in the Africa region where I work and that is concerning and especially against some of the new evidences coming out that is showing that when we have strong maternity leave but very weak paternity leave it can even increase the gender gap which is obviously the opposite of what we want to achieve with these policies so we really need to focus on and think about how we can better involve fathers and men and boys more generally in our programming so thank you so much for all the presentations and I'll end there and take forward some questions Thank you so much Pontus some very interesting reflections especially the points you were mentioning on the data about paternity and maternity leave so I really appreciate that but we have a couple of questions in the Q&A already so I want to encourage others to put their questions in and maybe I can sort of kick off with some questions for our panelists and I'll try to combine that with at least one of the questions in the Q&A I think I'm going to turn to Patricia I think you have a question here in the chat as well but can you try to summarize for us what you think are the sort of policy features or the features of programming that are needed to empower rural women and social protection programs I think that this is akin to the question that's in the chat about what is the role of policies ensuring gender transformative impacts so Patricia let me give you two minutes to look over to you Patricia are you there maybe she can come in okay Valentina I see you have your hand up why don't you come in first and then we'll see if Patricia comes back in Yes but Lauren I would like to mention the question relating the police involvement because it's exactly connected to my subject today in Moldova we have multidisciplinary team who work on domestic violence issues one of the important key persons is police officer police officers work at local level work on prevention but also on combating and it's very important involvement of police officers in education program on prevention how to work with boys how to deconstruct toxic masculinity how to increase transformative masculinity how to deconstruct gender stereotype how to involve boys to be more gender sensitive to avoid bullying to avoid aggressive behavior and to take gender sensitive gender transformative decisions it's very important but also they are model to be strong police officer but doesn't mean to be aggressive I think we can explore these issues we have more examples but it's very important to select the most relevant and to promote to explore because it's very important discuss not only about Gorsom and Umar centers they are key persons but it's very important to involve in our work boys and men thank you thank you that's a very interesting point especially about getting sort of the norms to change and making sure people can engage in a positive fashion thank you so much I think Elgin wants to comment on this question too and I also will take the opportunity to sort of ask her the question that came up in the chat from one of our participants the permanent mission of Brazil to the UN which is about the challenge of reaching and enrolling rural women in social protection programs in remote areas so Elgin if you want to comment on the challenge of getting remote women involved as well as answering whatever whatever you're interested in so please go ahead over to you in the Philippines I think the women who are in remote areas they are encouraged to participate actively in whatever services or activities that they want to participate in in the Philippines we have a lot of national laws encouraging women regardless of their status to participate in the development processes as well as including men accountable practice in eliminating those violence against women or any activities that would advocate for ending of the violence against women in the treatment do you want to talk a little bit about getting high levels of participation in rural areas you showed us a little bit about the results and they looked very comprehensive but can you comment at all about the challenges of getting women in very remote areas of the country to participate or Valentina do you want to comment on that I know you also mentioned geography as an important criteria yeah I can add something now in Moldova taking into consideration their high level of aging factor we focus a lot of attention to older women it's very important now at local level specifically in rural area in many community older person they organize senior clubs senior groups and they are very active at community level and they contribute and they influence a lot political socio-economical decision but really as mentioned by colleagues in other country it's very important to invest in this form of activity to support these people and in Moldova Minister of Labour and Social Protection offer mini grants for different community projects in order to empower to develop local initiatives of older people thank you thank you I got word that our colleague Patricia had to step up because she was called by her minister but she'll be back as soon as she can and we'll take questions then let me use the time then to pose a question to Lucy and to Pontus that came from one of our colleagues from FAO it's in the chat it says what do you think are key entry points for applying a gender transformative lens to social protection intervention so Lucy let me give you first crack at that question if you don't mind it's an absolutely excellent question and I've been thinking about it what we seem to find from the evidence that we've seen from the evidence that we've seen what we seem to find from the evidence is that there are opportunities to deliver social protection in effective ways and I saw that you'd mentioned the development of fresh produce markets and I think that's a really superb kind of way of thinking about this but then to also think about is there something which can be that at a low cost and with a very minimal additional resource cost in both in terms of human resources and financial resources which turns that from a social protection program into a gender sensitive one and many of these things have already come up in these discussions but I think Lauren you mentioned childcare and how crucial that is now increasingly in some of the thinking also in a recent World Bank report showing that good evidence that inclusion of childcare substantially maximizes women's capacity to engage in the workforce and so we see these we see that social protection can be this incredible opportunity for women but sometimes that it needs to have something limited to it in order to allow women to take advantage of that opportunity and then those things that you add and I'm not suggesting that you completely change the program but by adding some key things for example a digital based parenting support program with gender norms incorporated that's been tested and shown very affected by Godfrey Sue and team in Uganda can just suddenly turn that protection program into something which can elevate rural women's lives so to me that social protection is the entry point and the question is what do you add into it in the smartest and most effective ways great thanks so much that's really really interesting Pontus do you want to add anything sure yeah no thank you Lucy I had a very very good points and maybe I can just jump straight on to that you mentioned childcare I think an area of social protection is so relevant for rural transformation and transforming agri-food systems it's also in general looking more at the care economy and this can be I think it's a very underused entry point that we should be looking at and specifically on childcare Lucy mentioned that it's an enabler for parents but particularly mothers but more than that there's a lot of impact on child development and there can also be a link to actual rural employment through child childcare just to mention one very interesting example in Rwanda there's a very interesting gender component in the public works there which is about providing childcare to rural women who are involved in work so there's a lot we can look at more specific on the entry point here I know there are several interesting regional initiatives that are starting to be developed just last month there was FEO together with UN Women and UNFPA launched an interesting initiative in Latin America and the Caribbean and here one of the focus is to indeed promote rural coverage of care services and these are initiatives that I think we can and should to link into Thank you, thank you so much for those additional insights and I think the finding about care is really central to understanding why the quality of women's work in agri-food systems in other parts of the rural economy is often part-time or poorly paid or vulnerable and stable so I think that this has a lot to do with why women can't participate as fully in the labour markets in agri-food systems whether that means farming jobs or off-farm jobs in rural economies and so those are really really important points. Well we have some time still we have this question that I think Lucy was also hinting at about markets and I think that while it's not the focus of today's session we're thinking more about social protection I do think that integrated policies as we've been discussing which try to address both the small producers, vulnerable people women and young people have and accessing productive resources as well as the sort of anticipatory action and protection from social protection during times of crises those things need to be integrated and I think that some of our colleagues have already spoken to that so let me do the following let me see if anyone who hasn't written the question in the chat has a question that they would like to pose live by flagging us or by writing something in the Q&A otherwise I can turn it back over to the panelists to see if they have anything else they want to add about the previous questions let's give it a second see if people have any additional questions if not let me see if by chance Elgin first if you'd like to add anything while we wait for Patricia to come back online is there anything else you'd like to add about your experience or on the other questions I know it's late in the Philippines so we apologize for that okay Valentina how about you from your side is there anything else you would like to add no first of all thank you very much again for this opportunity to have this space to discuss I think every country have best practices and can present it for my point it's very important to ensure very strong dialogue between governance between civil society between different marginalized group between academia in order to ensure strong monitoring and evaluation of all international and national commitments all our governance promise it a lot they have a lot of commitments very important commitments for population and our responsibility is to contribute to implementation but also to monitor and evaluate concrete measures as I mentioned all countries have a good legal framework we have a lot of programs on social protection too but what is mechanism of implementation what are the not only quantitative but qualitative indicators now it's not sufficient to discuss about how many women were involved in the programs now it's important to discuss how the life changes after the participation in these programs we show how we can measure quality of life quality of the transformation and we should understand gender transformative approach it's focused on women but also on men we should develop and promote partnership gender partnership to offer more opportunity to our women and girls powerful women, powerful girls it's powerful society thank you now thank you so much and I think that's important to clarify what we mean by gender transformative and we're talking about changing the norms and the discrimination that exist right through discussions with both women and men about why certain roles are assigned to each gender and I think my colleagues can also share some of the work that we that I mentioned in my introductory statements about gender transformative approaches and social protection just so everybody can see that so that's very helpful Elgin I see you're there let me pass the floor to you for your final thoughts and comments and questions I think it is evident that social protection measures need to be comprehensive and gender sensitive start reading the family because it will be start with a shared responsibilities and it will create a small way of having behavioral changes and I think it's a form part of transformative social general thank you so much we appreciate that I think you've provided such strong examples of the kind of integrated approach that you're taking and some of the positive impacts of the program in the Philippines Lucy can I pass back to you if you have anything you'd like to add after all of these interventions and interesting questions I think this has been fantastic and I think what we'll take away from this is both the value of gender transformative social protection and how it is truly achievable and so I have three things to end with the first is that the evidence shows that cash plus care works and it can be transformative the second is that we now need to get that to every woman in the world who needs it and to her families and the last is that we are going to have to think about social protection that is gender transformative and anticipatory and I really look forward to that next step of thinking with you all Thank you so much for the very clear three points which I think are very strong and well noted Pontus I think you might have the last word unless we get any more questions at the last minute go ahead please Pressure, let me just say thank you so much for a very interesting discussion I've been taking so many notes that I'll bring with me to RAF the regional office for Africa where I work and maybe just to end that we need to work better with the gender transformative approaches if we're going to succeed with making agri-food systems more inclusive and have a more tangible impact on food security and nutrition so I'm looking forward to hopefully we'll keep working together on different projects Absolutely thank you so much Dominique unless you have anything to add I probably will let us all go a little bit early mostly in respect I think to our colleagues in the Philippines who are here late in the evening and we really appreciate that I want to thank you all for being here, for listening especially to our three fantastic speakers and our two panelists for really engaging set of examples from three very different contexts and also thank you for your strong focus on evidence on what's working what the challenges are also your sort of critical assessments about what's missing and what could be done better I think that's very helpful Lucy thank you so much for the evidence that you've shared and Pontus for the insights that you've shared from your work in the region and to all of you I want to just continue to invite you to participate in these social protection dialogue series which tackles a variety of different topics and which we are really happy to continue to pursue in collaboration with our colleagues in Geneva so thank you for listening in please feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions and have a great day or have a great evening depending on where you're based thank you thanks everyone thank you and all the best take care bye bye thank you