Theoretical background

Primarily in Europe, those who have long examined the welfare mix from a feminist perspective (Jenson, Reference Jenson1986; Lewis, Reference Lewis1992; Orloff, Reference Orloff1993, Reference Orloff1996; Sainsbury, Reference Sainsbury, Ballmer-Cao and Mottier2000) accurately insist that it is necessary to take the gendered consequences of welfare regimes into account. Not only do gender relations shape the welfare regime, but the institutions for social protection also shape gender relations, and not always in favour of greater equality between the sexes.

These feminist analyses and their categorisations have been applied to Latin American social policies and welfare regimes (e.g. Pribble, Reference Pribble2006; Molyneux, Reference Molyneux2007; Martínez, Reference Martinez Franzoni2008; Ewig, Reference Ewig2010; Staab, Reference Staab2012; Holmes and Jones, Reference Holmes and Jones2013; Gideon, Reference Gideon2014). One of their primary contributions has been to show that social policy in Latin America is not gender blind but rather it ‘reinforce[s] and create[s] ideas about appropriate gender roles’ (Ewig, Reference Ewig2010: 12) that accentuate motherhood (Molyneux, Reference Molyneux2006; Gideon, Reference Gideon2014). Another contribution is to make visible women's unpaid domestic and care work, as well as their contribution to overall societal welfare. For example, by analysing neoliberal reforms to social policies, scholars showed that these policies were ‘male-biased’ and constantly invisibilised poor women's needs (Moser, Reference Moser1993; Gideon, Reference Gideon1998; Craske, Reference Craske, Chant and Craske2003). While neoliberal social policies were gender blind, post-neoliberal policies were gender conscious (Macdonald and Ruckert, Reference Macdonald, Ruckert, Macdonald and Ruckert2009: 10). Nevertheless, scholars having analysed social reforms in the movement away from standard neoliberal approach still argued that ‘women's unpaid care work continues to form the bedrock on which social protection is subsidised, with erosions in state provisioning impacting most strongly on women’ (Hassim and Razavi, Reference Hassim, Razavi, Razavi and Hassim2006: 2).

Other scholars focused more precisely on welfare regimes. For example, Martínez (Reference Martinez Franzoni2008) aimed at capturing overall welfare regimes by analysing the data of commodification, decommodification and defamilialisation. Following Barrientos (Reference Barrientos, Gough and Wood2004), she classified all Latin American welfare regimes as informal. Martínez, however, also found substantial differences among countries due to the complex relations among labour markets, families and states. Building on the gender critique made by Orloff (Reference Orloff1996) of Esping-Andersen's analysis, Martinez’ work takes the role of gender relations into account in her classification. She identifies three main types of welfare regimes: the first two sponsored by the state, but with variations related to the allocation of public expenditures, and a third type outside of the state (Martinez, Reference Martinez Franzoni2008: 87). The first group is labelled as ‘state-targeted’, where social policies are targeted at the poor, and social risk is taken on individually while insured through the market (Argentina and Chile). The second group is ‘state-stratified’, where social risk is collectively funded through social insurance linked to formal salaried workers (Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay). The third group is outside of the state and labelled as ‘informal-familialist’, where the labour force is less commodified and has minimal decommodified social protection (Central American countries, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela).

Building on Sainsbury's (2000) analytical framework, Pribble (Reference Pribble2006) analysed three social policies in Chile and Uruguay by determining the strength of the breadwinner model in each of their welfare regimes. While both countries had similar levels of social spending, ‘female labor force participation, the mobilising capacity of women, and policy legacies differentiated the two countries, placing Chile on a less equitable trajectory than Uruguay’ (Pribble, Reference Pribble2006: 84). Analysing various social policy reforms in Chile, Staab argued that their gendered effects were complex and varied: ‘while some policies take unpaid care by women for granted, others point to an increasing awareness of inequalities that shape women's and men's differential access to market income and public social benefits’ (2012: 299).

Recent studies have moved away from this application of early feminist categories in order to analyse the gender characteristics of CCT programmes. By transferring income to women, these CCT programmes have had positive effects on gender relations (e.g. Adato et al., Reference Adato, De La Biere, Mindek and Quisumbing2000; Escobar Latapí and Gonzalez de la Rocha, Reference Escobar Latapí and Gonzalez De La Rocha2004; Bradshaw, Reference Bradshaw2008; Molyneux, Reference Molyneux2008; Adato and Roopnaraine, Reference Adato, Roopnaraine, Adato and Hoddinott2010; Martinez and Voorend, 2012; Holmes and Jones, Reference Holmes and Jones2013; De Brauw et al., Reference De Brauw, Gilligan, Hoddinott and Roy2014; Hunter and Sugiyama, 2014). Nevertheless, in most cases, these positive effects are felt largely at the individual and household levels. Evidence suggests on the whole that they continued to be shaped by maternalism (e.g. Molyneux, Reference Molyneux2007; Tabbush, Reference Tabbush2010; Gil-García, Reference Gil-García2015). In CCT programmes, women are not seen as citizens or workers, but primarily as ‘mothers at the service of the state’ (Molyneux, Reference Molyneux2007).

Building on Pribble's and Staab's method of social policy analysis in order to bring light to Latin American welfare regimes, this article focuses on one type of social assistance: the CCT programmes. This analysis will document how the development of these programmes alters the welfare mix, with consequences for men as well as for women. Focusing on the role of the state in the welfare mix, this paper will demonstrate that instead of being neoliberal, the actions of the state in the production of welfare are now grounded in the social investment perspective, and correspond to the shift to post-neoliberalism.Footnote ²

The social investment perspective currently shapes much of the cognitive structure of social policy, promoting a new approach to anti-poverty initiatives in both the South and the North (Jenson, Reference Jenson2009). The social investment perspective is based on three general principles (Jenson and Saint-Martin, Reference Jenson and Saint-Martin2006). First is the pre-eminent importance of investment in individual human capital, by the state as well as by families. Second, the emphasis is on investing in future generations so as to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Third is the idea that these changes not only benefit individuals but also contribute to society as a whole. The social investment perspective potentially involves a shift from neoliberalism and a change in the mix of state, market and family actions in the production of welfare. Firstly, the state takes back some of the responsibilities that neoliberalism assigned to the family and market. Second, the state recognises that neither the market nor the labour market can provide welfare adequately. Finally, the goal of the state is no longer to ‘protect’ (that is social protection in the Keynesian welfare era) but to ‘prevent’ social risk (Morel et al., Reference Morel, Palier, Palme, Morel, Palier and Palme2011). Social ‘interventions attempt to produce ‘active’ (labour market participation) rather than ‘passive’ welfare-dependent citizens’ (Macdonald and Ruckert, Reference Macdonald, Ruckert, Macdonald and Ruckert2009: 9).

Based on qualitative analysis of CCT programmes in Peru and Bolivia, this article argues that in these countries, the welfare mix has evolved towards a ‘social investment familialist welfare regime’. Two characteristics of the current welfare mix will suggest this characterisation. First, the development of CCT as a central instrument of social policy, in following the social investment perspective, allows for a renewed role of the state in the production of welfare in Peru and Bolivia. This new role is centred on the principles of conditionality which translate into ‘co-responsibility’ in Latin America with an emphasis on investing in human capital. As this article will demonstrate, however, this new state role sometimes acts coercively.

Second, the analysis of cognitive structures of gender central to CCT programmes in Peru and Bolivia demonstrates that the family – and especially women's unpaid domestic and care work – remains central to the welfare mix. CCT programmes have altered the gendered division of labour, because, instead of being perceived as breadwinners, men are written off. Within CCT, women, defined as mothers, are responsible for adhering to the conditions of the programme, while men have no role assigned to them when it comes to the production of welfare. As a result, welfare regimes in Peru and Bolivia remain largely ‘familialist’ as argued by Martinez (Reference Martinez Franzoni2008).

Peruvian CCT programme: Juntos

The Juntos programme was elaborated and implemented in 2005 in order to address two considerable issues. The first concerned the multiplication of social conflicts originating from the failure to distribute the fruits of economic growth (Grompone, Reference Grompone and Grompone2009). The second issue was the need to implement – as recommended by the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission – policies to compensate the victims of political violence.Footnote ³ Intersections between these two issues led to the implementation of a CCT programme that was primarily targeted at the victims of violence, who are also the poorest segments of the population (Francke and Mendoza, Reference Francke, Mendoza, Cohen and Franco2006).

Since 2012, Juntos operates under the umbrella of the Ministry for Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS). In practice, it is implemented by local managers (mostly female) assigned to each municipality. They observe that mothers follow the programme's conditions.

Juntos operates on the principle of co-responsibility through the conditionality of transfers. The mothers of children under nineteen may receive bimonthly cash transfers of 200 nuevos soles (US$70) upon fulfilling three conditions: (1) school attendance of the children; (2) mothers’ attendance to prenatal check-ups and nutrition workshops; and (3) regular health checks for children (Arroyo, Reference Arroyo2010). In 2015, the programme reached 1,754,475 people in 1,157 municipalities.Footnote ⁴

Bolivia: the Bonos

The Bonos – the Bono Dignidad, the Bono Juancito Pinto (BJP) and the Bono Juana Azurduy (BJA) – were presented by the Bolivian President Evo Morales (2005–) as the pillars of a new and universalistic social policy (Nagels, Reference Nagels2014). This article focuses solely on the BJP and BJA as they are conditional cash transfers, whereas the Bono Dignidad is a non-contributory pension for the elderly starting at the age of sixty-five.

The Bono Juancito Pinto (BJP) and the Bono Juana Azurduy (BJA) were hastily constructed in order to redistribute resources resulting from the nationalisation of hydrocarbons. The Bono Juancito Pinto (BJP) was established in October 2006 with three objectives: to increase school enrolment, to reduce dropout rates and to diminish the intergenerational transmission of poverty (Ministerío de Planificación del Desarrollo, 2006). Under the BJP, all children may receive Bolivianos 200 (around US$30) annually upon meeting two conditions: (1) their enrolment in a public school; and (2) maintenance of a minimum of 80 per cent rate of school attendance (Unidad Ejecutora, 2008). In 2010, this programme reached 17.5 per cent of Bolivia's total population, 32.4 per cent of its poor and 59.7 per cent of the country's extreme poor (Cechini and Madariaga, Reference Cecchini and Madariaga2011).

The Bono Juana Azurduy (BJA) was launched in May 2009. It targets all pregnant women, those who are still breastfeeding and those with children under two years of age, who do not access any other form of healthcare insurance. In order to receive the benefit (equivalent to US$260) over a period of thirty-three months, mothers are required to have a formal type of identification, they have to attend prenatal health check-ups, commit to giving birth in a medical institution and follow through with postnatal check-ups. Between 2009 and 2013 around 420 thousand pregnant women benefitted from the BJA, that is 34 per cent of the total population of pregnant women. Additionally, 50 per cent of children aged less than one year were enrolled in the BJA (Vidal Fuertes et al., Reference Vidal Fuertes, Martínez, Celhay and Claros Gómez2015: 14).

Despite their differences,Footnote ⁵ the Peruvian and Bolivian CCT programmes share one salient similarity: their conditionality. This article will analyse this similarity by focusing on two central aspects: (1) the return of the state as an actor in poverty regulation; and (2) the gendered impacts of CCT programmes.

The state returns in the welfare mix

This section will demonstrate that the welfare mix of these countries has evolved to align with the social investment perspective and, as a consequence, the state has a renewed role in the production of welfare. This role contrasts the role of the state in the neoliberal era. In this era, the state was not absent, because neoliberalism rests on systematic state interventions in order to dismantle state interventions in ‘economic planning, labour relations, and social policy’ (Taylor, Reference Taylor, Macdonald and Ruckert2009: 29–30). The return of the state in Latin America in recent decades concerns mostly the ‘expanding state's commitment on behalf of low-income citizens in key policy areas’ (Carnes and Mares, Reference Carnes and Mares2015: 525).

This new role of the state in the welfare mix varies from Peru to Bolivia. Despite these differences, the adoption of CCT programmes as a central instrument to welfare provision reveals a return of the state in the social sphere. The social investment perspective is clearly present through the promotion of co-responsibility. This is made especially visible by the centrality of programme conditions, seen as the replacement of the ‘assistencialism’ of ‘old assistance programmes’. The following quotation, from a Juntos’ regional agent, illustrates this point:

In Peru, if the market remains important to welfare production, it is generally accepted that it contributes to the exclusion of individuals that must then be helped by the state. The role of the state is to offer, in concordance with the social investment perspective, a minimal threshold for equality of opportunities, as described by a high executive of Juntos:

In Bolivia the state has had a strong return. In 2006 surged the National Development Plan: Bolivia Worthy, Sovereign and Productive, to Live Well (PND).Footnote ⁶ This underlined that one of the first goals of the Evo Morales administration is ‘to dismantle colonialism and neoliberalism in order to build a pluri-cultural and communitarian state’ (Ministerío de Planificación del Desarrollo, 2006: xv–2). Even if the current and practical role of the new plurinational state was not always clear,Footnote ⁷ the Bonos were part of post-neoliberal social policies, as explained by one former elaborator of the BJA:

Broadly, the Bonos were part of the ‘process of change’ engaged by Evo Morales’ administration, a process intended to create a more cohesive state that would also be inclusive of the lower strata of the population and the indigenous people. The next quote, from the Vice-Minister for Equal Opportunities, illustrates the ambivalence of this new state:

Despite the nuances between Peruvian and Bolivian representation of the role of the state, these quotes clearly highlight the return of the state when it comes to social policies. That being said, further analysis demonstrates that the state sometimes acts coercively. The conditionalities central to CCT programmes are clearly oriented towards modifying the behaviour and mentalities of the poor. A Juntos local manager in San Miguel described her role:

This statement shows that, for this official, poverty was partially the result of mentalities and feelings disregarding the material conditions in which the popular classes are embedded. While the notion of a plurinational state rests on the respect and support for indigenous and lower strata of the population, BJA policy makers believe that the central aim of the Bonos is to educate mothers, as expressed by a BJA doctor:

These discourses are based on the assumption that women are ignorant of the proper way to care for their children. CCT programme officers thereby stigmatise and deny women's knowledge. Recipients also understand the coercive nature of the state's investments. They denounce the mistreatment they are subjected to in the health centre where they have to fulfil these conditions, as related by one recipient of Juntos:

In Bolivia, the inability to access health monitoring exists, as explained by a BJA recipient:

Faced with conditions almost impossible to meet, the programme is seen as coercive, as expressed by a recipient of Juntos:

The coercive nature of the delivery of services linked to the Juntos’ conditionsFootnote ⁸ is supported by various studies (Huber et al., Reference Huber, Zárate, Durand, Madalengoitia and Morel2009; IEP, 2009; Vargas, Reference Vargas2010; Correa and Roopnaraine, Reference Correa Aste and Roopnaraine2014; Piccoli, Reference Piccoli2014). While daily relations between local promoters and recipients might raise awareness in communities (e.g. about gender violence), Jones and Villar Marquez (Reference Jones and Villar Marquez2014: 391) insisted that local promoters lack sufficient training. In the case of Peru and Bolivia, Molyneux and Thomson (Reference Molyneux and Thomson2011: 51) explained the mistreatment of indigenous women in health care centres due to the absence of any intercultural approach to the CCT implementation process.

More broadly, this coercive nature of the state and the discourse about women's ignorance revealed a strongly gendered social policy legacy in Latin America, particularly the eugenic features in health policies (e.g. Boesten, Reference Boesten2009; Ewig, Reference Ewig2010; Gideon, Reference Gideon2014). In the early twentieth-century, health policies aimed to improve the ‘race’ by ‘modernising’ hygiene, nutrition and motherhood practices. While the structural features of poverty and malnutrition were not addressed, ‘poor women were consistently blamed for their ignorance and bad mothering’ (Gideon, Reference Gideon2014: 54). In the implementation process, class, gender and race inequalities were revealed by the disrespect of poor, rural and indigenous women by personal care workers (Boesten, Reference Boesten2009: 96).

In our findings, this legacy from the ‘civilisation mission’ of early twentieth-century health policy remains highly visible. However, CCT programmes are not ‘classic’ liberal assistance policies (like the eugenic policies) because they do not simply provide protection after market failure. Investment in the human capital of children makes CCT programmes more productivist policies, especially when considered in the long-term (Barrientos and Santibáñez, Reference Barrientos and Santibáñez2009a). In the short-term, CCT programmes – as liberal social policies – aim at limiting much of the poverty, and avoiding the resulting social instability. In the long-term, however, their goal is to invest in the development of ‘free’ future citizens. The child citizen-in-the-making, with the support received early on from social investment from the state, will have the capabilities and opportunities to break away from the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Therefore, CCT programmes are more embedded in the social investment perspective than in the liberal (and neoliberal) welfare state paradigm. The coercive aspects of new social policies, on the other hand, are the particular ‘translation’ of instruments of the social investment perspective to Peru and Bolivia.

The gender division of labour

As we have seen, post-neoliberal social investment policies are often explicitly gender conscious. Built in the late 1990s, in a post-Beijing and gender-sensitive world that was becoming concerned with the specific problems of ‘women in poverty’, CCT programmes are ‘gender aware’ (Molyneux, Reference Molyneux2008: 22). They were based on the assumption that giving money to women empowered them by strengthening their bargaining power within intra-household decision-making (Adato et al., Reference Adato, De La Biere, Mindek and Quisumbing2000; Adato and Roopnaraine, Reference Adato, Roopnaraine, Adato and Hoddinott2010). Both the Bolivian and the Peruvian programme developers shared this premise. One BJA's officer in Bolivia argued that:

International evidence was used to support this argument, as explained by one of the Juntos’ experts in policy instruments of targeting:

However, ‘gender awareness’ differs from ‘gendered CCT programmes’. Neither Juntos nor the Bonos were explicitly designed to integrate a gender perspective or to empower women (Vargas, Reference Vargas2010; Molyneux and Thomson, Reference Molyneux and Thomson2011). But by transferring income to women, CCT programmes have some unintended positive effects on gender relations (e.g. Molyneux, Reference Molyneux2008; Bradshaw, Reference Bradshaw2008; Martínez and Voorend, 2012). The transfer results in material gains for women. The recipients greatly appreciate the help that the subsidy represents in their daily lives, as expressed by one of the BJP recipients:

The transfer allows women a certain financial autonomy from their male partners, as expressed by one recipient in Ayacucho:

Molyneux and Thomson (Reference Molyneux and Thomson2011: 207) spoke about a relative economic empowerment of women. To transfer directly the subsidies to women strengthens their bargaining position within households for at least the allocation of these funds. Nevertheless, this remains marginal because the subsidies are granted almost exclusively to meet primary needs such as food and clothes (Vargas, Reference Vargas2010: 31; Vidal Fuertes et al., Reference Vidal Fuertes, Martínez, Celhay and Claros Gómez2015: 15) and are not sufficient for investing in income generating activities (Molyneux and Thomson, Reference Molyneux and Thomson2011: 208).

Other positive effects for women are related to the improvement of accessing health services, greater autonomy to move outside the home and changes in intra-household relations, leading to gender violence reduction (Vargas, Reference Vargas2010; Molyneux and Thomson, Reference Molyneux and Thomson2011; Holmes and Jones, Reference Holmes and Jones2013; Jones and Villar, 2014). For example, in Bolivia, especially in rural areas, the BJA increased the monitoring of pregnancy, institutional birthing and the post-birth process (Vidal Fuertes et al., Reference Vidal Fuertes, Martínez, Celhay and Claros Gómez2015: 17). According to Vargas (Reference Vargas2010: 34) in the case of Juntos, a greater redistribution of reproductive tasks, especially those related to childcare, surged in recipient couples and especially among the youngest.

These positive changes are nevertheless very precarious, and do not transform gender structures or the sexual division of labour. For example, in the case of Juntos and regarding changes in intra-household relations, although household decisions are more concerted and men sometimes took care of children in order to respect the conditions, they refuse to perform gendered tasks such as cooking for fear of stigma within the community (Vargas, Reference Vargas2010: 34). The impacts on the reduction of gender violence are also mixed, and not directly attributed to the programmes but to feminist NGOs (Holmes and Jones, Reference Holmes and Jones2013: 85).

More importantly, all the positive effects of CCT for women are linked only to their reproductive role. For example, their male partners allow them to go out only to perform activities as mothers, as explained by one Juntos recipient:

According to Molyneux and Thomson (Reference Molyneux and Thomson2011), Peruvian and Bolivian CCT may potentially improve the maternal image of women in their home; to receive the subsidy, to obtain an identity card, to access the bank or health institutions and public space, changes the daily lives of women recipients and increases their self-esteem. However, these changes did not lead to further structural changes of gender relations. For example, in the case of Juntos, access to public space is not accompanied by an increase to women's political participation in decision-making spaces, such as community or municipal political meetings (Huber et al., Reference Huber, Zárate, Durand, Madalengoitia and Morel2009; Arroyo, Reference Arroyo2010; Piccoli, Reference Piccoli2014).

Women were in fact integrated into the programmes as mothers to fulfil programme conditions. Programmes promoted women's role as the caregiver in the family and increased women's time poverty (Holmes and Jones, Reference Holmes and Jones2013: 84). The design of Peruvian and Bolivian CCT relied largely on the unpaid care work of women in order to improve children's well-being. A single representation of gender relations strikingly dominated the discourse of every stakeholder: women are mothers. The centrality of women as mothers rests here on two underlying conceptions of gendered social relations. First, stakeholders assume the existence of a clear dichotomy of values between men and women, as well as fathers and mothers. Women are represented as better household managers, whereas men are described as likely to spend the subsidy for personal ends or on perceived failings, such as alcohol. For example, in Peru, one agent responsible for decentralised social programmes estimated that:

In Bolivia's case, a provincial coordinator of BJA shared this negative representation of men:

It should be emphasised that all actors, across every level of all of the CCT programmes, shared and never questioned this representation of men. What emerges is an overwhelming vision of men as irresponsible and selfish, focused on leisure and most often alcohol. Moreover, because men cannot be relied on to spend the CCT well, they are stripped of their traditional role as breadwinners. While these representations have negative effects for men, they most importantly reinforce social norms that assign women responsibility for maintaining the household.

In a second instance, because the programme treats mothers as the key to securing improvements in life opportunities for their children, born and unborn, a focus on women's reproductive roles is prioritised in the name of efficacy. Any other dimension of women's health or life is ignored. For example, a BJA operative chief explained:

International experience is at the root of the legitimisation of the argument about the ‘cost-effectiveness’Footnote ⁹ of investments in women. One of the most prominent Peruvian academic supporters of Juntos explained:

Importantly, CCT's reliance on female reproductive, care and domestic work is based on the hypothesis that women are naturally predisposed to serve their family and others. Therefore, CCT programmes essentialise gender roles with respect to unpaid care and domestic work (Molyneux, Reference Molyneux2007). Because CCT programmes discourage men from assuming care work, and because of their conditional nature, they overburden women (Staab, Reference Staab2010: 610). Moreover, this blindness to women and their needs, all in the name of children, can be counterproductive for the well-being of those children later in life (Holmes and Jones, Reference Holmes and Jones2013).

It is important to underline the consensual nature of these representations, which confirms that these policies are maternalistic revealing the social investment familialist welfare regimes. Women as mothers, and not men, are seen as individually responsible for social well-being.

Concluding remarks

This article has argued that the adoption of CCT programmes in Peru and Bolivia led to changes in the welfare mix, moving these countries’ social policies towards a social investment familialist welfare regime.

CCT programmes’ impact evaluations have demonstrated that they achieve their objective (Barrientos and Santibáñez, Reference Barrientos and Santibáñez2009b: 421). Despite these positive results, the translation of the social investment perspective in Peru and Bolivia is imbued with a heavy legacy of previous social assistance policies, including their coercive and maternalistic characteristics.

In order to avoid a legacy of passive assistance policies in Latin America, such as that of assistencialism, social investment, in Peru and Bolivia, relied on the use of strong conditionalities, and reproduced a social policy eugenics legacy. CCT aim at investing in the human capital of children by modifying their mothers’ behaviours. According to policy makers, conditions are tools to educate poor women and help them achieve their ‘modernisation’ mission.

In Peru and Bolivia, gender institutions are weak and hold limited power to promote gender agendas in social policies. As argued by Holmes and Jones (Reference Holmes and Jones2013: 87), in Peru, ‘overall, gender focal points in public offices tend to be largely tokenistic’. In Bolivia, the BJA and the BJP were designed with a top-down approach by a small team, directly driven by the President, without any contacts with gender agencies or NGOs (McGuire, Reference Mcguire2013: 17). Consequently, Peruvian and Bolivian CCT did not integrate a gender perspective and the mixed positive CCT gender impacts are unintended (Molyneux and Thomson, Reference Molyneux and Thomson2011).

The distinction developed by Molyneux (Reference Molyneux1985) between practical gender interests and strategic gender interests is useful in order to understand the gendered impacts of CCT programmes. If in the short term, cash transfers to women can improve their material situation and their bargaining power inside the household – rather than their practical interests – in the long term, CCT programmes do not in themselves fundamentally challenge gender roles and women's strategic interests, because they do not undermine gender subordination.

Social investment familialist welfare regimes, if they are in favour of women's practical interests, do not broaden women's labour-market participation or educational options and therefore do not improve women's strategic interest.