Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, CARE has invested in listening to the voices of women and girls from vulnerable groups to understand the challenges they face, what they need, and the ways in which they respond and lead throughout the pandemic.
Women’s groups models vary widely across contexts, but context-specific documentation is limited. When such documentation is available, researchers, policy makers, and funders often describe groups inconsistently. The South Asia Gender Innovation Lab (SAR GIL) partnered with the Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups (ECWG) to develop a typology that can guide researchers and practitioners in describing women’s groups by using specific characteristics. The typology presented in this brief focuses on economic women’s groups models implemented in South Asia.
Self-help groups (SHGs) are an increasingly popular strategy to promote women's livelihoods and empowerment and improve women's long-term economic outcomes in South Asia, especially in India. This study estimates the return on investment (ROI) of a large-scale SHG program (JEEViKA) in the state of Bihar, India, operated by the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM). To estimate the cost-effectiveness of the program, we estimated three ROIs – (1) Early phase ROI; (2) Late phase ROI; and (3) Full ROI.
Food insecurity worsened significantly following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further entrenched preexisting inequalities, with women bearing the brunt of the social, educational, and economic consequences. CARE launched the Women Respond sub-initiative in October 2020 to better understand the unique challenges COVID-19 presented in order to guide programming and advocacy aiming to improve gender equality. Quantitative descriptive and regression analyses revealed that VSLA members in Nigeria and Uganda both experienced economic challenges caused by COVID-19-induced restrictions, but the consequences were&n
Communal life and communal activities are deeply rooted in African culture. Both internally driven and externally supported development activities have long drawn on this communal tradition, for example to build village-level infrastructure or to organize groups to clear land. Across sub-Saharan Africa, groups come together for many different purposes, such as funeral or burial societies, around various livelihood activities, and for savings and credit.
In Nigeria, different types of groups exist, including women’s groups, and groups focused on agriculture, savings, credit, religious and social pursuits, and business associations, all of which are avenues through which to deliver interventions that aim to improve women’s economic and social empowerment (Desai et al., 2019). However, only limited evidence is available on the impact of informal savings groups in sub-Saharan Africa despite their high prevalence, especially in rural areas.
The COVID-19 pandemic and some of the associated policy responses (e.g., lockdowns and gradual relaxations) had considerable gendered impacts that reversed some of the recent progress in gender equality. Women and girls experienced larger adverse consequences along health, economic, social, and educational dimensions than men and boys, though mortality rates for COVID‑19 are higher for men.
The Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups conducted a study to examine the convergence between large-scale self-help groups and public works programming in Bihar. We use publicly available administrative data from the National Rural Livelihoods Mission and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and merge those data with data from a randomised controlled trial (RCT). The combined dataset allows for an instrumental variable regression analysis to examine the impact of the number of SHG members on access to job cards and employment under MGNREGS.
The COVID-19 pandemic and some of the associated policy responses have had significant, negative impacts on women’s lives around the world, and in India (Agarwal, 2021). India experienced three COVID-19 waves, including a devastating Delta variant surge that peaked in March and April 2021. The Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups developed a brief that focuses on the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially the impacts on members of women’s self-help groups (SHGs) before the Delta variant peaked in India.