Regional/Global

Beyond Economic Empowerment The Influence of Savings Groups on Women’s Public Participation in Fragile and (post) Conflict-Affected Settings Every Voice Counts

Women’s meaningful participation and influence in public processes in fragile and (post) conflict-affected settings (FCAS) is not only necessary to achieve inclusive development but is a fundamental human right. Unfortunately, in most contexts, men are overrepresented in decision-making and women do not have equal voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Some evidence suggests that the economic empowerment of women opens up opportunities for them to participate in public decision-making processes. One such means for economic empowerment in FCAS is savings groups. Savings groups are small, community-based groups that can provide members a safe space to save money, take small loans, and make investment decisions. Globally, women have made advances in improving their income and access to savings, as well as increased their entrepreneurial endeavours as a result of their participation in savings groups. Research also shows that women’s participation in savings groups improves their confidence, skills, and ability to influence household decision-making. This prompts the question: do these benefits of women’s participation in savings groups extend into the public sphere? In other words, does women’s participation in savings groups influence their public participation1 and decision-making? Through a mixed methods investigation across five countries (18 villages) in Africa and South Asia (Burundi, Mali, Niger, Pakistan, and Sudan), using CARE’s Gender Empowerment Framework, this research investigated the differences in outcomes between women who participate in savings groups under three CARE programmes: Every Voice Counts (EVC), Women on the Move (WoM), and Latter Day Saints Charities (LDS) Recovery Support for Vulnerable Households programmes [74 pages]. Read More...

When Time Won’t Wait (Spanish, French, and Arabic)

Humanitarian crises can offer a ‘window of opportunity’ to transform unequal gender relations and shift harmful gender norms. Integration of gender into humanitarian programming ensures that the specific vulnerabilities, needs, capacities and priorities of women, girls, men and boys — related to pre-existing gender roles and inequalities, along with the impacts of the crisis — are recognised and addressed.
Sound gender analysis and programming from the outset is critical to effective crisis response in the short-term, and equitable and empowering societal change in the long-term. CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) approach and tool, developed during the humanitarian response in Syria in 2013, aims to drive a shift to locally driven and women-centered needs assessment which influences how needs are defined and responses are developed. The approach aims to provide essential information about gender roles and responsibilities, capacities, and vulnerabilities together with programming recommendations in situations where time is of the essence
and resources can be scarce. The ultimate goal of such an approach is to influence humanitarian response, program design and implementation to ensure that it supports not only the immediate needs of women and girls but also upholds their rights. CARE’s RGA has now been used in over 50 crises around the word and is featured as good practice in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action. With rapidly increasing interest in and adoption of CARE’s RGA approach, discussion and questions continue as to whether increased awareness of gender, power and disaggregated data sets are translating into safer, more responsive, and effective aid.
To answer these questions, CARE commissioned an external evaluation to ‘provide an analysis of the effectiveness and influence of the RGA approach on adapting programming to improve gendered outcomes for crises-affected communities.’ The scope of the evaluation was global and focused on rapid gender analyses and related humanitarian programming over the period 2015-2020. These are executive summaries in Spanish, Arabic, and French. You can find the full report in English here: http://careevaluations.org/evaluation/when-time-wont-wait-cares-rapid-gender-analysis-approach-external-evaluation/ Read More...

Learning from Failure 2020

Part of striving for the deepest and most sustainable impact at the biggest scale possible is understanding what doesn’t work. CARE’s commitment not only to the highest quality programming, but also to continual improvement, drives us to celebrate our successes and to examine our failures. In 2019, CARE published our first Learning From Failure report, where we looked at what project evaluations told us was going wrong, and areas where we can strengthen our programming to improve our impact. By analyzing broader trends across several projects CARE can get a broader sense of systemic weaknesses that lead to failures in specific cases. We pair this with our podcast with individual case studies where we look at specific examples of failures and how to address them so we can illustrate trends with illustrative examples. That gives us the space to make bigger strategic changes to address underlying causes of failure and support teams to improve work at all levels. One example of this is targeting CARE’s investments in Monitoring Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) systems and capacity building to address common failures we found. In 2020, we repeated the analysis to see where we are improving, and where we still need work. Read More...

When Time Won’t Wait: CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis Approach External Evaluation

Humanitarian crises can offer a ‘window of opportunity’ to transform unequal gender relations and shift harmful gender norms. Integration of gender into humanitarian programming ensures that the specific vulnerabilities, needs, capacities and priorities of women, girls, men and boys — related to pre-existing gender roles and inequalities, along with the impacts of the crisis — are recognised and addressed.
Sound gender analysis and programming from the outset is critical to effective crisis response in the short-term, and equitable and empowering societal change in the long-term. CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) approach and tool, developed during the humanitarian response in Syria in 2013, aims to drive a shift to locally driven and women-centered needs assessment which influences how needs are defined and responses are developed. The approach aims to provide essential information about gender roles and responsibilities, capacities, and vulnerabilities together with programming recommendations in situations where time is of the essence
and resources can be scarce. The ultimate goal of such an approach is to influence humanitarian response, program design and implementation to ensure that it supports not only the immediate needs of women and girls but also upholds their rights. CARE’s RGA has now been used in over 50 crises around the word and is featured as good practice in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action. With rapidly increasing interest in and adoption of CARE’s RGA approach, discussion and questions continue as to whether increased awareness of gender, power and disaggregated data sets are translating into safer, more responsive, and effective aid.
To answer these questions, CARE commissioned an external evaluation to ‘provide an analysis of the effectiveness and influence of the RGA approach on adapting programming to improve gendered outcomes for crises-affected communities.’ The scope of the evaluation was global and focused on rapid gender analyses and related humanitarian programming over the period 2015-2020. Read More...

Applying Behavioral Science to Humanitarian Cash & Voucher Assistance for Better Outcomes for Women in MENA

Ideas42 and CARE International conducted research in three of CARE’s countries of presence—Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey—to develop a thorough understanding of the contexts in which women recipients in these settings receive, make decisions on, and use CVA to support themselves and their households. In the pages that follow, we aim to share behavioral insights that shed new light on the many challenges facing women when using CVA in humanitarian settings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In summary, some of the key design principles that can increase the impact of CVA for women include minimizing the mental burdens placed on women throughout the transfer process, priming women to affirm positive identities at key times, making the full range of what CVA can be used for visible, and framing CVA in ways that encourages planning and careful consideration of spending priorities.

Though the guidance is best used during project assessment and design, it can be adapted to different phases in the project cycle. Users are encouraged to ensure that a wider range of specialists participate in discussions seeking to incorporate the guidance—including CVA Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) teams, and sector specialists or technical leads. It can also be used as a point of reflection for evaluation or after-action reviews. In addition, the involvement of program support staff and senior management will be valuable to ensure that the points are actionable and properly resourced. Overall, we hope that this guidance at the least starts a wider conversation on applied behavioral science in the humanitarian space and encourages humanitarian organizations to work to implement behaviorally-informed programs with CVA. Read More...

COVID 19 Rapid Gender Analysis Global Trends June 2020

In the three months since CARE released its first Rapid Gender Analysis of COVID-19, the situation has evolved quickly and spread globally. CARE has continued to closely monitor this situation, by conducting context-specific analyses in 5 regions covering 64 countries. This has included conversations and data collection with more than 4,500 women.
This new analysis confirms the initial findings and predictions of the first analysis. It also reveals new areas of high priority for women and girls—and for men and boys—as the crisis deepens. Our recent research reveals:
• The highest immediate priorities 3 months into the crisis are food, income, and rights—including concerns around Gender Based Violence, caregiving burdens, and mobility. Women and girls show these needs most acutely, but they also rise to the top of men and boys’ priorities in COVID-19.
• Women’s burdens are increasing. As frontline workers in the health system, as survivors of Gender Based Violence, as the people primarily responsible for food, cleaning, and childcare—especially with schools closed, women confirm that their burdens are rising, and so is the stress around them.
• Women are displaying remarkable leadership, but are still unable to access most decision-making, around COVID-19 and around daily life. They are also quickly approaching the end of their safety nets.
In this context, this document provides updated recommendations to focus on lessening the immediate impact on women and providing the chance to build back equal. These recommendations cluster around:
• Urgently addressing top priorities of food, income, and rights by expanding safety nets—both in the immediate response and in long-term ways for all people to provide their own food and livelihoods.
• Reducing women’s burdens by providing extra support for caregiving, services for GBV prevention and response, and investing in women healthcare workers.
• Prioritizing women’s leadership by creating space for women leaders at all levels of the response, and consistently listening to women’s perspectives and data as the crisis evolves.
Read More...

Rapid Gender Analysis – Middle East North Africa (MENA)

The COVID-19 pandemic and efforts at mitigating the virus’ spread in recent months have heightened the insecurity, psychosocial distress, economic vulnerability, gender inequality, and deprivation that already existed in countries in the Middle East and beyond. While men appear to have worse outcomes when infected with the coronavirus, women and girls are being deeply impacted– and fragile gains in women’s workforce participation are in jeopardy.

Refugees and the displaced, the majority of them located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, are now faced with the COVID-19 pandemic and economically damaging efforts at its mitigation. Fragile gains in women’s workforce participation are at risk, gender-based violence is on the rise, and women’s voices are going unheeded. CARE’s soon-to-be-released Rapid Gender Analysis gathers together data from its country offices in MENA and beyond to provide a sobering picture of the pandemic’s impact on women and girls. Read More...

The COVID-19 Outbreak and Gender: Regional Analysis and Recommendations from Asia and the Pacific

In March 2020, emerging gender impacts and trends were highlighted in an Advocacy Brief developed by GiHA resulting in key recommendations. Good practices from across the Asia Pacific Region have seen these recommendations being put into action and six weeks on, due to the scale and rapidly changing nature of the pandemic, it was seen as crucial to continue to document evidence of gender impacts across Asia Pacific and to update analysis and recommendations. Read More...

CARE Rapid Gender Analysis for COVID 19 East, Central and Southern Africa

The impacts – direct and indirect – of public health emergencies fall disproportionally on the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. Interconnected social, economic, and political factors pose complex challenges for the ECSA region’s ability to respond to COVID-19. The region already faces significant health challenges that would exacerbate the severity of COVID-19, such as high levels of malnutrition, malaria, anemia, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis. Access to healthcare in the region is the lowest in the world, thus there is limited capacity to absorb the pandemic1. Gender-based inequality is extensive in the region. Women are at a higher risk for exposure to infection due to the fact that they are often the primary caregivers in the family and constitute 70% of frontline healthcare responders.2 Most women already face limited access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services, and the region struggles with high levels of maternal mortality. For example, mother mortality rates recorded in South Sudan were 1150 per 100 000 live births3. COVID-19 will only increase women’s safety risks and care burdens as health services become stretched and resources shift to COVID-19 responses.
Women and girls are at increased risk of violence during the COVID-19 period. Current rates of violence against women and girls combined with the prevalence of harmful traditional practices leads to increased vulnerability. Income loss and limited mobility, compounded with existing gender role expectations, may contribute to increases in intimate partner violence and other forms of gender-based violence. Read More...

COVID 19 Rapid Gender Analysis Middle East and North Africa Region

The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been wreaking havoc on the international community in recent weeks and months, leaving almost no corner untouched. As of 8th April 2020, 1,464,852 cases and 85,397 deaths have been recorded in 212 countries1, including all countries in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region with the exception of Yemen. MENA is at a critical stage in containing the pandemic. Some countries have been successful in curtailing the spread by utilizing stringent lockdown measures, while other more fragile and conflict-affected countries, that are less equipped for additional crises, are only beginning to face the inevitable spread of the virus, with incredibly diminished health infrastructures. Widespread conflict, displacement, and migration in the region significantly complicates a controlled response to COVID-19, and extreme water scarcity makes
preventative measures even more challenging.
Women and girls in MENA faced numerous barriers to education, mobility, financial and asset control, and public leadership prior to the pandemic, and any positive gains made recently are at risk. They are impacted by losses in the informal labor market, elevated levels of violence and harassment, and increased burdens of caregiving for out-of-school children, sick and elderly family members.
Levels of psychosocial distress, already high in a volatile region are only escalating, with reductions in men’s roles as providers
being felt in a context of strict gender roles and stigmatization. The potential shift in men’s and boys’ role to provide increased
caregiving should be explored in contextually-appropriate manners. Read More...

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