Gender Equality and Cash and Voucher Assistance: Tools and guidance

With the continuous uptake and scaling of cash and voucher assistance (CVA), it is more critical than ever that humanitarian and development actors shift their focus away from measuring gender mainstreaming and gender equality efforts by metrics (e.g. targeting at least 50% women), towards strategically including women, girls and other vulnerable groups in decision-making at all steps of the project cycle and facilitate their safe access to services and assistance. Furthermore, gender mainstreaming should be linked to general protection mainstreaming and do-no-harm principles in humanitarian programming.

Integrating gender and CVA was set as a priority action under the Grand Bargain Cash Workstream in 2018. During the 2020 Grand Bargain meeting, gender considerations in CVA were widely cited by signatories and the meeting concluded with a priority to: “Continue efforts to ensuring consistent analysis of gender and gender-based violence concerns in needs assessments and analysis, including with cash partners…”.

This overview represents some key practical resources to integrate gender mainstreaming and gender equality in CVA. This document is an output of the gender and cash sub workstream of the Grand Bargain’s Cash Workstream, designed with the input of various members, led by Key Aid Consulting and funded by CARE.