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.
The new CARE study indicates that gender inequality makes it more difficult to access food in an already challenging context that includes drought and a severe economic and liquidity crisis.
A CARE analysis, for the first time, highlights a global link between gender inequality and food insecurity: 2021 data from 109 countries shows that as gender inequality goes up, food security goes down.
Seven women from countries including Ukraine, Afghanistan and Bangladesh have written to G7 leaders to offer a first-hand perspective on how the world’s most pressing crises are affecting women and girls globally.
“As a peer leader I am teaching girls to be confident and to make decisions that build their future. Everyone should be able to say no and not be passive. This has brought discipline at school and both boys and girls are now more confident to report abuse. Both boys and girls now understand the importance of education and dreaming bigger." Chidzabwe
“The (VSLA) training showed us how to properly manage our money. We discovered we were wasting money and not working together to find the right solution. This is when I decided that my wife would be the best person to look after the money and organize the family expenses.”
What’s the first thing you remember reading? A children’s book? A magazine? A sign in a classroom? In Timor Leste, for people under the age of 20, the first thing they remember reading is probably something CARE produced. If you have anything in your house to read in rural Timor Leste, it’s going to include Lafaek—a suite of magazines that CARE has been producing since 2001
CARE has conducted regional and whole country Rapid Gender Analyses to better assess the needs amid the critical humanitarian emergency in Syria.
Here, we highlight the perspective of some of CARE’s women-led partner organizations working on the humanitarian response to the Ukraine War and call for increased support and inclusion of these actors in decision-making processes
New CARE study shows for the first time the deep connection between gender equality and food security: the more gender inequality there is in a country, the hungrier people are
In 2021, CARE worked around the world, contributing to saving lives, defeating poverty, and achieving social justice.
