This Gender Policy defines CARE’s explicit commitments to support gender equality and the principles expressed in international agreements.The accompanying implementation guideline sets out mechanisms and minimum common standards for all CARE members and Country Offices. This policy statement therefore strives to make our collective programming efforts more effective, builds on commitments made in the existing Policy Statements and reflects subsequent developments in gender equality policies of development organizations working to end poverty and social injustice. It thereby, sets the stage for increased accountability.

For CARE's 2018 Gender Equality Policy Commitments, please visit here

Through this policy CARE seeks to promote equal realization of dignity and human rights for girls, women, boys and men, and the elimination of poverty and injustice. Specifically, this policy is intended to improve the explicit incorporation of gender in programmatic and organizational practices.

CARE International commits to:

1. Promote gender equality as an explicit internationally recognized human right.
2. Address systemic and structural practices that create barriers to the realization of women’s rights and gender equality; including prevention and response to gender based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse.
3. Support the empowerment of women and girls as a key strategy toward ending poverty, conflict, human suffering and gender inequality.
4. Actively involve men and boys as allies in promoting gender equality.
5. Analyze and implement strategies to manage potential risks and harms to women, girls, boys and men.
6. Engage and coordinate with partners, governments, funders and civil society organizations to promote and support effective, creative and impactful ways to promote gender equality
7. Monitor, evaluate and institutionalize organizational learning regarding specific gender equality results.
8. Actively hold ourselves and others accountable to gender equality standards.
9. Ensure that key organizational policies, systems and practices including but not limited to budgeting, human resource recruitment, training and management, and decision making support women’s rights and gender equality.
10. Ensuring adequate funding to realize our commitments.
11. Apply these commitments within CARE and across all programme areas using integrated planning approaches and recognized gender sensitive tools and techniques such as gender analysis frameworks, collection of age/sex disaggregated data, and results-focused design and evaluation.

Policy Implementation

The policy is accompanied by proposed implementation arrangements, common standards and supporting definitions. More operational guidance and enforcement will be developed by CI members supported by the CI Gender Network as required to support the policy implementation. To ensure the policy is effectively applied and achieves expected results, each CARE member can further tailor implementation to their own organisational arrangements.

Policy Review

CI will work collaboratively to undertake a review of this common gender policy. This will take place after four years. The CI member representatives in the CI Gender Network will report annually their progress in regard to their respective implementation plans. An annual summary report will be submitted by the CI Gender Network to the CI Board via the CI Secretary General.

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CI will implement, monitor and evaluate this policy. Each CARE member is encouraged to devise a context-specific and realistic implementation plan / process, with appropriate investment of resources, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Common Standards in Support of Gender EqualityCARE members are required to meet these standards in order to end poverty and support the dignity of all people.CARE members will ensure that the following standards are applied, monitored, adhered to and reported on:1. Key organizational policy, planning and programmes will:

• incorporate gender and power analysis as a mandatory operational and/or design feature.
• be based on data disaggregated by sex, age and other relevant diversity factors such as ethinicity, religion, caste, etc
  • i) explicitly state gender equality results and
  • ii) include relevant and feasible gender sensitive indicators for every stage of planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
  • iii) ensure sufficient funding to meet gender requirements and
  • iv) formulate staff work plans and budgets accordingly.

2. Human Resources policies and practices will adequately address gender equality. CARE members will track and report annually on gender balance in staffing and governance structures and implement specific strategies to balance male/female representation.

3. CARE executive and senior management staff report regularly to beneficiaries, donors and the public on progress on gender equality in CARE’s work through appropriate reporting channels.

4. Each CARE member (office) must assess and enhance accordingly the organizational capacity for the implementation of the policy.

2015 summary of progress toward Gender Policy Commitments - 2015_gender_policy_report.pdf

Click here for a brief summary of our progress toward Gender Policy Commitments in 2014

2011 Consolidated CI Report on the Implementation of the CI Gender Policy

2011 Summary of the Implementation of the CI Gender Policy

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CARE International Gender Policy and FAQs - Englishenglish_ci_gender_policy_and_faq.pdf

CARE International Gender Policy and FAQs - Spanishspanish_ci_gender_policy_and_faq.pdf

CARE International Gender Policy and FAQs - Frenchfrench_ci_gender_policy_and_faq.pdf

CARE International Gender Policy and FAQs - Portugueseportuguese_ci_gender_policy_and_faq.pdf

CARE International Gender Policy and FAQs - Arabicarabic_ci_gender_policy_and_faq.pdf

Annexes 1-3 (.doc):

Annex 1 includes the background, scope of work and rationale for the CI Gender Policy.

Annex 2 includes terminology for key Gender-related words

Annex 3 includes Programming Principles

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