Gender Inclusive Disaster Risk Financing

As the Start Network continues to focus on Disaster Risk Financing programming, this research was commissioned to analyse the issues and additional considerations around gender in DRF programming. Making programming most effective includes ensuring that the DRF systems that we build or support are fully gender-sensitive and adequately account for gender differences at different points of the project cycle. This includes how gender issues might differ across different hazard types (eg. fast vs. slow onset) and geographic contexts, and the approaches we can take to account for them. Specifically, the purpose of this research is to answer the following two questions: 1) Which points in DRF System development and implementation are likely to have the most significant gendered aspects? How might this vary between hazards and contexts? 2) How can our disaster risk financing ‘building blocks’ (i.e the guidance we give to Start Network members for building quality DRF systems) be enhanced to fully mainstream gender? This research was led by Practical Action Consulting and the case studies were carried out by CARE Bangladesh and CARE Philippines, with close support from the Start Network.

This study utilised the Practical Action "Missing Voices" Methodology, which seeks to hear from those individuals who are most marginalised from mainstream datasets. The method works through identifying those who face multiple axes of marginalisation, working in partnership with intermediary organisations to build trust, and actively listening to diverse experiences, gaining a “rich intersectional and context specific perspective on the impacts of disasters on marginalised groups” (Brown, S. Budimir, M., Upadhyay Crawford, S., Clements, R., and Sneddon, A., 2019c, Gender and Age Inequality of Disaster Risk, UN Women and UNICEF, report commissioned for Global Platform on DRR 2019.)

As Start Network is supporting locally-led systems to enable early, predictable disaster risk finance, NGOs are supported to collectively analyse and quantify crisis risks and set trigger levels for action, pre-agree plans, and prearrange financing ahead of crisis events. To date these systems, which include country-specific trigger funds and insurance policies, protect more than 450,000 people from hazards including forecasted drought and heatwaves in countries such as Pakistan and Senegal. This study focused on gender inclusion in three key points of the Start Network’s DRF programming cycle - risk analytics, contingency planning, and financing.

Read the Executive Summary here.