ABSTRACT

The association between women’s political empowerment and social spending in welfare regimes is well established, but research on the association with social protection responses to COVID-19 is just beginning. This paper looks at the association between women’s political empowerment index (WPEI) and the scopes of social protections found in individual countries. Poisson regression models were used with datasets from the Goble Database on Social Protection and Jobs Responses to COVID-19, World Development Indicators, and V-Dem to identify national and regional differences in social protection coverage. The findings indicate the countries with higher WPEI values have greater ranges of social protections. In particular, there is a significantly positive association between degree of women’s political empowerment in the form of civil society participation and social protection scope. Our results provide new evidence suggesting that increasing women’s civil society participation is a clear pathway to improving social protection scope.

摘要

妇女的政治赋权与福利制度中的社会支出之间的联系已经确立，但关于与社会保护对 COVID-19 的反应之间的联系的研究才刚刚开始。本文着眼于女性政治赋权指数 (WPEI) 与各国社会保护范围之间的关联。泊松回归模型与 Goble 对 COVID-19 的社会保护和就业响应数据库、世界发展指标和 V-Dem 的数据集一起使用，以确定社会保护覆盖面的国家和地区差异。调查结果表明，WPEI 值较高的国家拥有更大范围的社会保护。尤其是，民间社会参与形式的妇女政治赋权程度与社会保护范围之间存在显着的正相关关系。我们的结果提供了新的证据，表明增加妇女公民社会的参与是改善社会保护范围的明确途径。