By Emily Janoch, Andrew Patterson, and Swasti Gautam, CARE

Today, the world is grappling with some of the biggest crises in recent history. Conflict, the climate crisis, extreme weather conditions, and deepening socioeconomic disparities are escalating worldwide. Currently, more than 282 million people across 29 countries are facing food crisis, there is a famine in parts of the Sudan, and 600 million women live within 50 kilometers of a conflict.

Can prioritizing gender equality truly help us address this complex set of challenges? The answer is simple. If we leave out or underestimate about half of the people in the world, we can’t possibly solve any global issues. Closing the gender gap between men and women is imperative to overcoming any global crisis.

Over the past ten years, CARE has been investing in high-quality research that gives us an insight into the significant impact of focusing on equality, instead of looking into issues like food insecurity, health, or education in isolation. The findings have been so compelling that CARE has kept gender equality at the center of its programming. From 2015-2024, CARE and its partners have contributed towards the SDGs by positively impacting 210 million people across 86 countries, addressing various global challenges.

A review of CARE’s eight strongest studies shows us that investing in equality isn’t just good for women, or only good for improving equality. Investing in equality helps us deliver many other results – from better diets to higher incomes. It helps achieve the SDGs.

What worked and top recommendations

• Create space for women and men to talk to each other: The studies shows that focus on couples’ conversations and household dialogues pave ways for men and women to talk to each other about their goals for the future, the barriers they face, and how they can work together to get the best results for everyone.
• Get communities talking about solutions: Community activities like Social Analysis and Action help whole communities think about the barriers they are facing, and how gender inequality is preventing them from meeting other goals that matter to them. They build action plans to work together to solve those issues.
• Work with men and boys: Working with women is important, but it’s not enough. These projects all focused on ensuring that men and boys are part of the solution and are actively working towards equality. That means creating activities for men and boys, spending time understanding their perspective, and making sure they know what women and girls are facing.
• Change systems and structures: Individuals can’t achieve these goals alone. Working with community leaders, legal structures, and social norms is critical to ensure that progress can last, and that it reaches many more people than the project alone can support. That might mean training teachers, bringing in religious leaders as champions, or working with health workers and local government officials to promote equality.
• Use savings groups: Savings groups feature in almost all of these projects as a platform that brings people together and keeps them coming back. These groups build income, resilience, and solidarity, and are crucial components to most of this work.
• Build evidence: All the projects invested heavily in research, ensuring there is evidence to share with others about the differences between investing in gender equality and trying to tackle immense challenges with purely technical solutions.

Prioritizing equality and its impact on SDGs 

• SDG 1 (no poverty): By investing in equality, three out of eight programs had positive impacts of: increasing female participants’ likelihood of having cash income; enhancing their satisfaction with their ability to save; and improving household wealth. In Rwanda, women having cash income went from 49% to 68%. In Niger, the number of girls who were earning income in the last year was 56% for girls in the project, and only 44% for girls who weren’t. In Uganda, 72% of women in the project met their financial goals.
• SDG 2 (zero hunger): Four out of eight programs had positive impacts of: increasing household food security; increasing the proportion of students consuming food during the day; fostering more egalitarian social norms on household food allocation; and improving women’s dietary diversity and food consumption score. In Timor Leste, the number of children who ate at all during the day went up six percentage points. In Rwanda, food security went from 17% to 24%. Women in Burundi ate more, and more diverse diets.
• SDG 3 (good health and well-being): Three out of eight programs had positive impacts of: decreasing women’s depressive symptoms and psychological distress; and improving women’s treatment at health facilities. In Rwanda, women who had depression dropped from 22% to 14%. Women in Uganda showed fewer signs of psychological distress after the program. In Ethiopia, contraceptive use went from 35% to 42%.
• SDG 4 (quality education): Three out of eight programs had positive impacts of: increasing girls’ literacy; reducing girls’ drop-out rates; and decreasing the proportion of adolescent girls who never attended school. In Somalia, girls’ literacy went up by 3.7 percentage points. In Timor Leste, learning losses fell by 52%. In Ethiopia, girls were more likely to have gone to school if they were in the program than if they were not.
• SDG 5 (gender equality): All eight programs had positive impacts on increasing women’s and girls’ self-efficacy, mobility, and sexual and reproductive agency, advancing positive gender norms.
• SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation): One program had a positive impact on increasing access to water for food preparation. 
• SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth): Two out of eight programs had positive impacts on expanding access to banking and ensuring women’s access to and control over productive resources. 
• SDG 10 (reduced inequalities): All eight programs had positive impacts on reducing gender and income inequalities.

CARE’s evaluation report, which utilized rigorous quantitative evaluation methods, concludes that focusing on gender equality not only impacts women and girls but also creates broader sectoral impacts on poverty alleviation, food security, health, education, and water and sanitation. Achieving gender equality is not only an aim in itself (SDG 5) but of critical importance for achieving progress in many other SDGs.