Many social protection programmes, including cash transfers, safety-net oriented public works programmes and asset transfers, target women as main beneficiaries. As such, extending social protection to rural populations has great potential for fostering rural women’s economic empowerment. However, to tap into this potential, more needs to be done. There is much scope for making social protection policies and programmes more gender sensitive and for better aligning them with agricultural and rural development policies to address gender inequalities and foster sustainable poverty reduction.