Empowering women for the good of society: gender-based resilience

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Let’s change the resilience paradigm

What are the root causes and drivers of resilience? Societal resilience is shaped by the unique roles that individuals play and their ability to respond to shocks, gender-based expectations and discriminations hinder women’s and girls’ ability to participate in, and contribute to, society. In times of crises, their vulnerability intensifies resulting in a weakened response that ripples throughout society.In response, UNESCO designed the first Gender-Based Resilience Framework. As a compass for inclusive policymaking, this report analyzes how differences in opportunities, needs and constraints impact resilience and proposes a measurement Framework based on: (1) fundamental human rights; (2) socioeconomic characteristics, such as health, education, work, political engagement, and climate justice; (3) contextual factors, such as values and perceptions.Moving beyond the standard approach of coping with and recovering from shocks; UNESCO calls for a gender-transformative resilience, which leverages the interrelations between individuals and institutions. Decision- and policy-makers, researchers, and gender equality advocates are invited to use and add to this Framework to effectively navigate through current and future crises.It is only by empowering all women and girls, and people of all genders, that we will be able to face the challenges ahead.