Gender equality is an indispensable tool for lasting and deep social transformation. CARE International works towards this purpose in everything we do.
Gender equality is CARE International's central organizing principle. We cannot achieve women’s economic justice, climate justice, health equity, the right to food, water, and nutrition, or equal access to humanitarian assistance without addressing gender inequality.
By 2030, CARE International seeks to support 50 million people to experience greater gender equality in their lives.
Women and adolescent girls are CARE International’s primary impact population. With our partners, we pay particular attention to how our programming, advocacy and partnerships include, enable, and impact women and girls.
COVID-19 has exacerbated existing inequalities, underscoring society’s reliance on women on the front lines and at home, while exposing structural inequalities that are setting women and girls back.
The secondary impacts of COVID-19 include a shadow pandemic of gender-based violence (GBV), declines in mental health, economic recession, job losses, and hunger and food insecurity. An anti-feminist backlash is occurring globally as extremist governments seek to instrumentalize gender stereotypes and control women’s bodies for their political agendas and roll back the progress of recent decades. Although many donors have identified gender equality as a key factor of development, aid reaching women’s organizations remains negligible.
Gender discrimination also significantly harms people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. CARE International recognizes that gender is not binary and has expanded and adapted our work with LGBTIQ+ communities.
CARE International has wide-ranging gender experience. In all our focus areas – from humanitarian assistance to food and water security – we have learned that our gender perspective is among our greatest added value proposition to the development and humanitarian sectors.
CARE International’s gender equality work focuses on improving the rights of women, adolescent girls, and marginalized groups in three sub-programs:
Read our Vision 2030 Impact Area Strategy for Gender Equality here.
CARE has a vision. We seek a world of hope, inclusion, and social justice where poverty has been overcome and all people live with dignity and security and we put women and girls in the center, at the heart, in all that we do. To learn more, watch the video.
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The combination of hunger, reduced incomes and the skyrocketing cost of living creates huge amounts of stress on households, which increases the risks of gender-based violence.
New research reveals the stark truth: women across the globe are bound by gender norms which are stunting their business success.
Despite some positive steps having been made, progress during negotiations is continuing at a slow and disappointing pace.
From July through September 2022, CARE and our partners have provided direct humanitarian assistance to 7.3 million people in 58 countries.
Ethiopian communities are led by traditions and social norms. CARE is committed to gender-transformative work. To that end, we partner with communities to challenge and transform inequitable gender norms that restrict women’s and girls’ ability to achieve their best possible health and lives. In Social Analysis and Action (SAA) groups community members lead the transformation process.
Every second girl in Ethiopia is being cut. In the 1970s, even nine in ten girls have gone through this process. The Social Analysis and Action (SAA) is a facilitated process through which individuals explore and challenge social norms, beliefs, and practices such as female genital mutilation that shape their lives and health.
Women and girls in the most vulnerable and marginalized communities bear the biggest brunt of climate change. CARE has listed demands to world leaders on COP27 to build a gender-just climate action.
In 2021, CARE’s Vision 2030 was launched. By 2030, CARE commits to support 75 million people, to majority women and girls, to fulfill their right to food, water, and nutrition. From Fiscal Year 2021, CARE has assisted 2,437,157 people increase their access to food, water, and nutrition.
Since gaining its independence in 2011, South Sudan experienced renewed conflicts in 2013 and 2016 which have significantly undermined the development gains achieved post-independence and contributed to a worsened humanitarian situation. Gender relations in South Sudan are shaped by the social and economic realities of being one of the world’s poorest countries and by decades of conflict.
In 2021, CARE worked around the world, contributing to saving lives, defeating poverty, and achieving social justice.
