Assessing Women’s Leadership in Disaster and Climate Resilience: Assessment Framework and Tools

There is international recognition that disasters affect people differently, which is highlighted in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in 2015-2030. Recent research confirms that women and girls, in particular, experience disproportionate impacts from disasters, and gender inequality has been identified as one of several underlying factors increasing women’s vulnerability to multiple hazards.

The framework and tools were developed through consultation with key actors, in addition to building on existing approaches to measuring women’s leadership and participation in COVID-19 responses and localization. It includes six domains of measurement: transformative leadership, safe and meaningful participation, collective influencing and advocacy, enabling partnerships, capacity for supporting leadership, and funding. The framework and tools were piloted in Vanuatu and a baseline report was produced. This document provides an updated framework and tools incorporating learning from the piloting. The framework and tools were developed as part of UN Women’s flagship programme, the Women’s Resilience to Disasters (WRD) programme.

This document includes two stand-alone self-assessment tools that organizations or stakeholders can use to carry out a more targeted progress assessment, including 1) Stand-alone self-assessment tool to assess internal organizational progress in supporting women’s leadership in disaster and climate resilience; and 2) Stand-alone self-assessment tool to assess support for the leadership of women’s organizations in disaster and climate resilience.

Funding for this publication was provided by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).