Silke Staab

UN Women · Research & Data Section

Investment in gender-responsive social protection systems and evidence is key to a more equal future post–COVID-19

The importance of mainstreaming gender into social protection policies and programmes is increasingly recognized. However, evidence on the extent to which this is actually happening remains limited. This report contributes to filling this evidence gap by drawing on the findings of two complementary research projects undertaken by UNICEF Office of R...

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how globalized, market-based economies critically depend on a foundation of nonmarket goods, services, and productive activities that interact with capitalist institutions and impact market economies. These findings, long argued by feminist economists, have profound implications for how we think about our economic fut...

Because gender equality actors rarely have sufficient power to create new institutions, this article asks how they can achieve positive gender change in constrained circumstances when the creation of new rules is not possible. Building on a feminist institutionalist approach to analyzing gendered institutional dynamics, power, and resistance, we op...

Early childhood interventions are frequently framed as investments with important benefits in terms of children’s health, nutrition, cognitive development and school readiness. Gender equality and the rights of adult women—as unpaid family caregivers whose lives, by default, must accommodate child-centered interventions and as childcare workers sta...

Staab provides an in-depth analysis of the political process that led to the extension of maternity leave under the administration of Sebastián Piñera (2011–2015), the first right-wing president after two decades of center-left rule in Chile. She argues that the somewhat counterintuitive introduction of more generous maternity leave regulations und...

In this chapter, Staab defines Chile as a particularly constrained setting for positive gender change in social policy. She shows that the country’s political institutions are marked by power asymmetries that privilege the status quo and tend to sideline gender equality concerns. As a result, political actors are likely to embrace, or obliged to ac...

Staab provides an in-depth analysis of the 2002–2004 Chilean health reform carried out under President Ricardo Lagos. She argues that the reform followed a pattern of gradual change in which new guarantees were layered onto the otherwise unmodified core of a highly commodified health system. This led to modest improvements in terms of access to tre...

In this chapter, Staab shows that under the first Bachelet administration (2006–2010), Chilean childcare services were not only massively expanded but also converted to better meet the needs of working mothers. Ideational shifts among key actors within the Bachelet government about the role and reach of the state, the dynamic and inter-generational...

In this chapter, Staab engages in an in-depth comparative discussion of the processes and outcomes of four reform episodes in Chile: the 2002 health reform, the 2008 pension reform, the expansion of childcare services (2006–2010), and the reform of maternity leave (2011). She argues that across sectors, some positive gender change has clearly taken...

In this chapter, Staab argues that Michelle Bachelet’s commitment to promoting women’s rights meant that gender equality was a key concern in the 2008 pension reform in Chile. Yet, strong policy feedbacks from the market reform era placed constraints on the extent to which this concern could be addressed through concrete policy changes. The shift t...

Staab proposes an analytical framework for assessing, explaining and comparing positive gender change in social policy. She defines social policies as gendered institutions, proposes three dimensions to assess the scope and quality of change from a gender perspective, and establishes a framework for explaining specific reform choices. While arguing...

In this introduction, Staab holds that the combination of historical institutional analysis and feminist political science provides a powerful analytical toolkit for understanding how and why institutional change happens and under what conditions it contributes to greater gender equality. Focusing on the gender implications of broader processes of...

This book explores recent social policy reforms and innovations in Chile. Focusing on four major reform episodes — health, pensions, childcare, and maternity leave — it unveils the complex interplay of factors that have shaped the successes and failures of actors pursuing positive gender change in social policy. It shows that even in highly constra...

In many ways the government of Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010) represented an ideal scenario, both for far-reaching social reforms and for integrating gender equality as a guiding principle within these reforms. Bachelet headed the fourth consecutive center-Left government after the return to democracy (the second under socialist leadership), and her...

Ageing has a female face. Women not only live longer than men but are also less likely to enjoy income security and economic independence in old age. Because of a lifetime of economic disadvantage, older women end up with lower incomes and less access to land, housing and other assets that would help them maintain an adequate standard of living. In...

The idea of a social protection floor (SPF) is now firmly established on the global development agenda. Defined as a set of minimum guarantees, including basic income security for children, working-age adults, older people and people with disabilities, as well as essential health care for all, SPFs hold promise for women, who are over-represented a...

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services have come to occupy an important place on the global policy agenda. While some developed countries have long invested in this area, a growing number of developing countries are following suit. As those who carry out the bulk of childcare—as unpaid caregivers as well as service providers in day-care...

Through an analysis of recent reforms in three policy areas in Chile—pensions, childcare services, and maternity/parental leave—the paper seeks to explore how equity-oriented reforms deal with the triple legacy of maternalism, male-breadwinner bias, and market reform. Recent studies of “new” social policies in Latin America have underlined the pers...

In recent years, several middle-income countries, including Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, have increased the availability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. These developments have received little scholarly attention so far, resulting in the (surely unintended) impression that Latin American social policy is tied to a familialist t...

Résumé. Les auteures définissent la notion d'activités de soin – ou services à autrui – rémunérées devenues un thème important de recherche et de débat politique. Analysant une série de professions aux niveaux national et international, elles dégagent trois constats: la situation professionnelle des travailleurs des activités de soin reflète souven...

This article defines paid care work and explains why it has become an important arena for research and policy. Drawing on cross-national and country-level analyses of selected occupations, it highlights three findings: first, the employment situation of care workers often mirrors broader, country-specific labour market conditions and problems; seco...

Resumen. Las autoras definen el trabajo de cuidado remunerado y explican por qué ha pasado a ser un campo importante para la investigación y la política. Basándose en análisis internacionales y nacionales de varias ocupaciones, ponen de relieve tres conclusiones. Primera, la situación laboral de estos trabajadores es, a menudo, un reflejo de las ci...

Social investment ideas are increasingly permeating social and care policy-making in Latin America. In this article, I analyse a variety of instruments which have been used to ‘invest in children’ across a range of Latin American countries to then zoom in on Chile, where early childhood education and care have attained a prominent place on the welf...

This article explores the influence of religious actors on the elaboration of two public policies that are key to the advancement of women's rights and have long formed part of the women's movement's agenda in Chile: the introduction of sexual education in secondary schools in the 1990s and the distribution of emergency contraception in the 2000s....

This article examines the functions of the “dual discourse” about Peruvian migrant domestic workers in contemporary Santiago. A 2002 field study found that middle-class employers of Peruvian workers simultaneously praised them as superior workers and denigrated them as uneducated and uncivilized. While this response is not unique to Santiago, this...

This article examines the new migration of Peruvian domestic workers into Santiago, Chile, where laws protecting the labor rights of household workers have recently been strengthened. Through field observations and interviews, we found that employers were disgruntled with Chilean workers who had begun to assert demands. Many of them preferred Peruv...