Background Document for the Workshop - ‘Interpreting and Advancing Women's Rights to Social Security and Social Protection’

Abstract

This Background Paper was written for the 2013 Onati Workshop ‘Interpreting and Advancing Women’s Rights to Social Security and Social Protection’ by Beth Goldblatt and Lucie Lamarche. Both the ILO and UN human rights treaty bodies revisited the human right to social security in the last decade. Namely, the UN Experts Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted in 2007 General Comment no 19 on the right to social security. ILO adopted in 2012 Recommendation no 202 concerning national floors of social protection. But do such important initiatives engender the right to social security? Important national initiatives address the issue of women's poverty and extreme poverty. Do such initiatives respect all the components of the gender equality standard? And, reciprocally, all dimensions of the human right to social security? Do women have a human right to be more than not so poor? What does the interdependent interpretation of the right to social security mean for all women in all situations: working women, women of the informal sector, women embedded in productive (domestic or other) activities? The authors suggest that the right to social security can be transformative for women if properly interpreted.