CARE Norges utenlandssjef Gudrun Bertinussen i Burundi som snakker med mennesker som er med i en CARE støttet spare- og lånegruppe

Reviewing to learn and improve

Recent midterm review shows promising results and important learnings for CARE’s gender equality and women empowerment program

CARE Norway is pleased to publish this report containing findings of an external midterm review of the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment Program (GEWEP), phase III.

GEWEP is a multi-country development program implemented in Afghanistan, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Myanmar, Niger, Rwanda, Jordan, and Palestine. The overall aim of the program is to strengthen gender equality and women’s rights. This is achieved through five intervention strategies: Women’s economic empowerment, engaging men and boys in transforming gender norms, strengthening civil society , sexual and reproductive health and rights, and building resilience in vulnerable households.

Due to the need to limit the scope of this midterm review, the research focuses on two outcome areas of the program: Engaging men and boys in gender equality and strengthening civil society with a special focus on women-right and women led organizations.

CARE Norway thanks the research team for conducting this research and delivering the global synthesis report and the country study reports. We acknowledge the efforts that were made to investigate the research questions under challenging contexts across many of the study countries. The outcomes of this study offer interesting insights into the two thematic areas across the countries included in the study. It is an important contribution to reflecting on the GEWEP III to date and what to focus on as we proceed.

Key Findings

Men who participate in GEWEP are 2.5 times more likely to take action that reduces gender inequality within the household, the workplace, or the community.

Women-led organizations are viewed with greater credibility as trusted allies assumed to seek social, rather than political or financial, benefits.

Planned use of the evaluation

CARE Norway is committed to continuous learning and improving, including through external evaluations such as this one. The findings and recommendations of this research are important input to the design of future programs. We believe that the results this research offers will not only provide valuable insights for GEWEP and CARE Norway but also for other new or existing programs with relevant areas of activities. We also see this study contributing to the learning agenda for CARE International’s Vision 2030.GEWEP is supported by Norad – the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

Read the GEWEP III mid-term review global synthesis report: GEWEP III Midterm Study Global Synthesis Report

Read the CARE Management response to the mid-term review global synthesis report here: GEWEP III Midterm Review Management Response

Jordan and Palestine are part of the GEWEP, funded by the telethon TV fundraiser. Since the program scope for these two countries was slightly different and program length was shorter (2020-2023), they were not included in the mid-term review. The volatile security situation in Myanmar raised significant concerns around the feasibility of some of the data collection necessary for the MTR to be conducted. Based on this, Myanmar was not included in this mid-term study.