Walking the Talk: Cash Transfers and Gender Dynamics

Concern Worldwide (Concern) and Oxfam GB (Oxfam) jointly commissioned this report to look at the impacts of cash transfers (CTs) on gender dynamics both within households and communities. This report was commissioned because of the agencies’ concerns that while CTs, now being used in many different emergency contexts, are expected to benefit women and contribute towards their empowerment, there was little evidence being collected to see whether this was in fact happening. The learning from this report will inform future gender sensitive CT programmes. The research included a literature review, programme evaluations from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and three country studies. These were Indonesia (rapid onset, earthquake), Kenya (rapid onset, food price spikes) and Zimbabwe (protracted crisis). In all three contexts women were the primary beneficiaries of the cash.