Public work schemes for women

Public works typically involve manual labour such as building and maintaining roads and dams; they have also typically reached men rather than women. Recent projects however, have shown that public works can involve women - such as a road maintenance project in South Africa which specifically targeted women.

Some public works programmes give food-for-work, and others provide cash-for-work.  Some of the disadvantages of public works programmes are that they generally exclude people with physical disabilities; they seldom have a skills training component which can lead to a better employment possibility; and they are mostly, by their nature, a temporary means of poverty alleviation.