Promoting gender equalities from a capability perspective: The role of social policy in the context of developing countries

Gender equality has recently emerged as an important institutional factor for development, and its focus is moving from the improvement of women’s economic status to capability expansion. In this regard, it has been claimed that social policy is a main instrument for enhancing gender equality in developing countries as much as in developed ones; in particular, spending on education and health is more effective than the traditional social protection, mainly cash transfer for income protection. In this context, this paper attempts to test which policy option can improve gender equality in the context of developing countries. For this, we conducted a regression analysis to investigate the role of social policy in narrowing the gender divide in 75 developing countries. The results show, contrary to common assumption, that social protection policies focusing on income protection are significantly effective to reduce the gender gap from a capability perspective, as opposed to policies of spending on public services such as health and education. However, integrated policies in both areas have greater impact on decreasing gender inequality than a single-policy fix.