ABSTRACT
For the majority of working women and men, the promise of universal social protection remains unfulfilled. Labor market informality is a key driver of this exclusion. Gender biases and inequalities exacerbate exclusion among women, including women in informal employment. Drawing on policy examples from Latin America, this chapter discusses the potential and limitations of two dominant policy approaches to address this exclusion: those aimed at bringing informal workers under the cover of existing contributory schemes (“linking”) and those aimed at expanding access to non-contributory schemes that are more independent of labor market trajectories and contribution histories (“delinking”). It also calls for a more radical rethinking of social protection systems in ways that recognize and address the constraints that unpaid care responsibilities place on women’s earnings capacities. Based on this discussion, the chapter points to a number of challenges for research and advocacy on social protection for women in informal employment.
