Empowerment Paradox: Women as Primary Beneficiaries, Cooperative Builders, and Marginalised Recipients in a Nigerian Conditional Cash Transfer Programme

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes across the Global South are predominantly designed around women as both primary recipients and agents of household welfare improvement. The assumption underpinning this design (that women’s preferential receipt of transfers will produce better household outcomes and simultaneously advance women’s economic empowerment), has been extensively debated in the gender and social protection literature. This article examines the gendered dimensions of the Household Uplifting Programme–Conditional Cash Transfer (HUP-CCT) in Plateau State, Nigeria (2016–2023), through an explanatory sequential mixed-methods analysis of survey data from 321 beneficiary households and nine Focus Group Discussions. Three interconnected findings are reported. First, a gender paradox is identified. Although women constitute 64.2% of HUP-CCT beneficiaries, female beneficiaries report marginally but significantly worse financial outcomes than male beneficiaries in the multivariate model (OR=1.21, p=0.041), even after controlling for programme duration, disability status, household size, LGA, and programme status. The bivariate comparison is non-significant (p=0.569), but the regression finding signals a marginal intra-household resource control constraint operating through gender-differentiated conversion factors. Second, and in productive tension with this finding, the study documents an original empowerment counter-narrative. The women’s cooperative productive economy in Angwan Rogo (Jos North) (twenty-member cooperative societies acquiring grinding machines, establishing food stalls, and operating a beneficiary-populated street market), represents a spontaneous, programme-catalysed collective economic empowerment phenomenon without documented parallel in the Nigerian CCT literature. Third, the programme’s identity politics produce a specifically gendered social recognition. The label ‘Hajiyoyin gwamnati’ (Women of the government), documented in Angwan Rogo, confers a prestige-inflected citizenship identity on beneficiaries that transforms their social position in ways the financial data alone cannot capture. Together, these findings document a gendered empowerment paradox in which the same programme simultaneously constrains individual financial autonomy through intra-household resource dynamics and generates collective economic agency through cooperative formation. The article argues that this paradox is not resolved by choosing between the deficit and the asset framing; it is resolved by programme design that actively protects the first while deliberately scaling the second.

women’s empowerment; cooperative economy; Nigeria

1. Bandiera, O., Burgess, R., Das, N., Gulesci, S., Rasul, I., & Sulaiman, M. (2017). Labor markets and poverty in village economies.  Quarterly Journal of Economics, 132(2), 811–870. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

2. BRAC. (2019).  Targeting the ultra-poor programme: Annual report.  BRAC Institute of Governance and Development. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

3. Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2018).  Designing and conducting mixed methods research (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

4. Daidone, S., Davis, B., Handa, S., & Winters, P. (2019). The household and individual-level productive impacts of cash transfer programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa.  American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 101(5), 1401–1431. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

5. Devereux, S., & Sabates-Wheeler, R. (2004).  Transformative social protection.  IDS Working Paper No. 232. Institute of Development Studies. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

6. Duflo, E. (2012). Women empowerment and economic development.  Journal of Economic Literature, 50(4), 1051–1079. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

7. Evans, P. (2002). Collective capabilities, culture, and Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom.  Studies in Comparative International Development, 37(2), 54–60. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

8. Fraser, N. (2000). Rethinking recognition.  New Left Review, 3, 107–120. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

9. Gertler, P. J., Martinez, S. W., & Rubio-Codina, M. (2012). Investing cash transfers to raise long-term living standards.  American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 4(1), 164–192. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

10. Hagen-Zanker, J., Pellerano, L., Bastagli, F., Harman, L., Barca, V., Sturge, G., Schmidt, T., & Laing, C. (2016).  The impact of cash transfers on women and girls.  Overseas Development Institute. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

11. Holmes, R., & Jones, N. (2013).  Gender and social protection in the developing world: Beyond mothers and safety nets.  Zed Books. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

12. Kabeer, N., Piza, C., & Taylor, L. (2012).  What are the economic impacts of conditional cash transfer programmes?  EPPI-Centre, Institute of Education, University of London. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

13. Layton, M. L. (2020). Stigma and social assistance: Experimental evidence from Bolsa Família beneficiaries in Brazil.  Journal of Social Policy, 49(4), 783–802. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

14. Molyneux, M., Jones, N., & Samuels, F. (2016). Can cash transfer programmes have ‘transformative’ effects?  Journal of Development Studies, 52(8), 1087–1098. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

15. Natali, L., Handa, S., Peterman, A., Seidenfeld, D., & Tembo, G. (2016). Does money buy happiness? Evidence from an unconditional cash transfer in Zambia.  SSM - Population Health, 2, 419–428. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

16. NSIP Handover Report. (2023).  National Social Insurance Programme (NSIP) HUP-CCT Plateau State: Programme handover and performance summary report.  NASSCO/SPIU Plateau State. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

17. Nussbaum, M. C. (2000).  Women and human development: The capabilities approach.  Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

18. Robeyns, I. (2017).  Wellbeing, freedom and social justice: The capability approach re-examined.  Open Book Publishers. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

19. Sen, A. (1999).  Development as freedom.  Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

20. Stewart, F. (2005). Groups and capabilities.  Journal of Human Development, 6(2), 185–204. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

21. Walker, R. (with Chase, E., Lødemel, I., Gubrium, E., & Bantebya-Kyomuhendo, G.). (2014).  The shame of poverty.  Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

22. World Bank. (2023).  Nigeria: National Social Safety Nets Project (P151488) - Implementation Completion and Results Report.  World Bank Group. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

• Global Political Economy and Educational Reforms in the Global South: An Evolutionary Study of Ghana
• Electoral Militarization and the Challenges of Free and Fair Elections in Nigeria: A Focus on the 2023 Presidential Election
• Political Awareness and Engagement in Relation to Voting Behavior among College Students
• Role of Community Leaders in Ensuring Secure Electoral Process in Nairobi City County, Kenya
• Assessing the Delivery of Local Disaster Management Services and Client Satisfaction through SERVQUAL Dimensions