Informal workers face high levels of risks yet the majority are not covered by social insurance. Meanwhile, women informal workers face specific and heightened risks, yet more women than men are excluded from insurance schemes. Increasingly a number of countries are extending social insurance to informal workers, but, with only some exceptions, most policies remain gender-blind or gender-neutral.
This paper concentrates on the extension of social insurance coverage to female informal workers. The focus was chosen because in many countries women are overrepresented in the informal workforce, and in almost all countries they are overrepresented in the worst, and most invisible, forms of informal work. Meanwhile, a higher proportion of women relative to men are excluded from social insurance programmes and face gender-related risks that exclude them from participating in and benefiting equally from social insurance programmes. Social
insurance is seen as a particularly important instrument to provide protection from risks, given fiscal restrictions on the widespread coverage of social assistance and the need to design and implement contributory schemes to cover an informal workforce that, in most low-and middle-income countries, makes up the majority of the working-age population.
Gender-responsive reforms can ensure increased coverage of women, including of female informal workers, to address the risks they face. These include
- legislation in the labour market
- recognition of the care economy
- innovative policy design in payment options and simplified administrative processes; and
- investment in gender-sensitive delivery capacity