Maternity protection for women in informal employment: a systematic review of policy design and coverage gaps

This OSF project documents the protocol for a systematic review (2021–2026) on maternity protection for women in informal employment. The review examines (i) how maternity protection policies and schemes are designed to include or exclude women in informal employment, (ii) barriers and facilitators influencing access and uptake and related coverage gaps, and (iii) gaps between policy provisions and implementation in practice, including governance and contextual factors. Searches cover Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and targeted ILO Labordoc grey literature. Screening will be conducted in Rayyan AI following deduplication in Zotero; study quality will be appraised using MMAT (for empirical studies) and AACODS (for grey literature), and confidence in synthesised qualitative findings will be assessed using GRADE-CERQual.