Introduction

Few aspects of social policy have been more controversial than the effects of Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs)Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) on gender relations and policy outcomes on gender relations are linked to policy designs. Development and social policy communities have recognized gender equality as a cornerstone of development and social progress. Nonetheless, designing policy to integrate gender equality goals into social policies is rendered that much more complicated as and when these policies travel. In Mexico in 1997, the first CCT, Progresa, looked quite different than CCTs look today. Embedded in the design was Affirmative Action geared toward girls, as was a clearly enunciated concern about the program’s effects on female empowerment. For the 2005 Peruvian CCT, Juntos, the story was very different. Its design did not include any gender equality goals and it reproduced long-standing social policy legacies of gendered exclusions. Therefore, this book is about the alteration of Conditional Cash TransferConditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) designs in relation to gender equality goals as they have made their way through Latin America as well as through the World Bank. This book aims to account for “the fading goal of gender equality” (Jenson 2015) across time as part of this regional trajectory. In short, it tracks the how and the why of this trajectory in relation to gender equality goals. The introduction presents the study, establishes the importance of the puzzle, and sets up the organization of the book. First, I document the CCT designs as they vary in their gender equality goals across the four cases analyzed in the book. Second, I locate the study within the body of research on CCTs, gender, diffusion, and the World Bank. Third, I point to gaps in this research by proposing an innovative multiscale methodology to empirically understand CCT designs and their gender equality goals based on fieldwork in four countries—Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia—and in one international development organization—the World Bank. Finally, the chapter briefly explains the case selection process and the data analysis and sets up the structure of the book.