Webinar: Conditional Cash Transfers and Women’s Economic Empowerment

One of the most important innovations in anti-poverty policy in the last couple of decades has been the scale-up of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs. A typical CCT will transfer cash to a poor household conditional on children attending school and receiving health check-ups regularly. While CCTs have often been promoted as an effective means of empowering women by improving their livelihoods and strengthening their bargaining power within the household, a number of studies have also shown that CCTs may have unintended consequences, including intimate partner violence and the reinforcement of traditional gender roles.

This two-hour webinar hosted by IDRC, presents the evidence around CCTs and features a panel from the worlds of research, policy, and practice. Stephanie McBride, Education Advisor at WUSC, speaks about WUSC’s experience in developing and implementing a CCT program to enable girls’ education in a protracted refugee context in Kenya, sharing the challenges WUSC has overcome, how CCTs for education relate to women’s economic empowerment, and the need for further research.