Equality & Women’s Voice in Resilience Programing
Enhancing Resilience through Gender Equality
Gender Equality and Women’s Voice in Asia-Pacific Resilience Programing
Research Report
CARE Australia has been working with communities in the Asia-Pacific region for over three decades, supporting women, their families, and local communities to build their capacities to prepare, adapt and respond to disasters and climate change. Using participatory, rights-based approaches, with a specific focus on women, CARE has made good progress in assessing and responding to the vulnerability and capacity of women, and in promoting and enhancing more gender equitable social relations in its programming.
This report is the culmination of desk- and field-based research across six of CARE Australia’s country programs – Cambodia, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Vanuatu, and Vietnam.
This report finds that highly gendered roles and responsibilities mean higher workloads and lower recognition of women for their work. Men and women have distinct gendered roles in agricultural production, income generation, management of natural resources and household activities, and men tend to have more authority and control of power and resources within the household and community. This leads to inequality for women in terms of division of labour, decision-making power, and access to resources.