Attachments
INTRODUCTION
The use of cash and voucher assistance (CVA) in humanitarian action is increasing rapidly. With this rise, there is also growing demand by stakeholders to ensure CVA is more gender-responsive, addressing gender gaps and moving towards greater gender equality. Gender-responsive CVA, which recognizes existing disparities and addresses the needs of all crisis-affected people equally, has the potential to positively impact women and girls by improving their protection and promoting their empowerment, while also strengthening sector-specific impacts which can lead to more resilient and empowered households and communities in recovery from crises.
There are, however, challenges to implementing gender-responsive CVA in humanitarian contexts. In emergency settings, where meeting basic needs is of primary concern, the necessary steps to implementing gender-responsive CVA may be overlooked. There is also often a lack of funding to enhance CVA features, such as transfer size, frequency and delivery modality. These features, when optimized, help ensure that CVA works best for all crisis-affected persons in different types of emergencies across different political, economic and cultural settings. Yet, without proper consideration of issues such as women’s and men’s use of time, burden of care, mobility and cultural differences, the programme design could potentially have the opposite result, leading to greater marginalization and exclusion.
The purpose of these guidelines is to provide hands-on, practical guidance on how to recognize and address these challenges to effectively integrate gender into CVA in humanitarian responses. They serve to help practitioners to:
- Identify where CVA might be gender-blind, failing to acknowledge the different roles of women, men, boys and girls and therefore not adequately responding to their diverse needs.
- Transition to CVA that is gender-responsive, where gender differences are recognized and inequalities are actively redressed.
- Finally, find ways to promote gender-transformative CVA that works towards redefining women and men’s gender roles and relations to create greater equality.