Gender Equity and Social Inclusion Brief

The Resilience in Action Series aims to bring development practitioners one step closer to bridging the gap between theory and practice for integrating a resilience lens in programming, answering questions such as: How does a resilience lens change the design of interventions in key sectors? How do we shift design and implementation of interventions to promote resilience-building within programs? 

In this brief, we focus on programmatic shifts at the intersection of resilience, gender equity, and social inclusion, which are essential in situations like the 2004 tsunami or extreme drought conditions. Sourced from existing literature and the growing evidence base of what works, this brief provides technical specialists and implementers, who are designing a new program or reviewing existing programs, with recommendations for how applying a resilience lens might require them to approach gender equity and social inclusion differently. 

The brief's focus represents a slight departure from the other cases in the Resilience in Action Series in that gender equity and social inclusion are not discrete sectors, but crosscutting themes, much like resilience itself. Their crosscutting nature requires us to consider how a gender equity and social inclusion approach might augment a resilience approach overall, or vice versa. To move recommendations from the realm of theory to practice, we highlight incremental opportunities for layering the two approaches or "lenses" during the three phases of programming: assessment; design; and implementation, monitoring and learning.