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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Our understanding of how women experience war and respond in highly complex crises is often clouded by narratives that frame them as, at worst, invisible, or at best, victims. But women are the active first responders and recovery leaders in regions wracked by conflict.
The grave findings of the latest Global Report on Food Crises reinforce the urgent need to integrate gender equaliy in the fight against hunger.
After 12 months of a devastating conflict, the pervasive use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is laid bare in a new advocacy brief issued today by CARE and partners.
To address the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs of pregnant adolescents and first-time mothers in crisis-hit countries, the Adolescent Mothers Against All Odds (AMAL) initiative was launched to promote access to SRH information and services while creating conversations around gender, power, and social norms to support a more enabling environment for adolescents to seek care.
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While millions of women around the world continue to have no access to menstrual protection, putting hteir health at sever risk, menstrual taboo and certain false beliefs further prevents them from living their periods with dignity.
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Addressing women’s digital exclusion in a digitally advanced yet divided world, CARE implemented a comprehensive strategy, focusing on providing digital tools and skills to VSLA members.
The unsung heroes of crisis, women are grossly overlooked when it comes to dialogue and decision-making. This report by CARE, based on a survey conducted since 2020, highlights women’s experiences in conflict and how their leadership is critical for surviving a crisis.
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The focus of this Rapid Gender Analysis is to better understand the experiences of women, men, girls and boys in Rafah, and to identify how CARE and the local and international humanitarian community can best respond and provide support amidst the crisis.
This report, by CARE International and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, demonstrates how and why governments and decision-makers should invest in building caring economies to achieve gender and economic justice globally.
In FY2023, CARE worked around the world, contributing to saving lives, fighting poverty, and increasing social justice.
