When crisis hits: Strengthening resilience and recovery for women

For women around the world, significant life events — childbirth, family emergencies or external stressors like a global pandemic — can be significantly disruptive and life-changing. For the many women in low- and middle-income countries who are self-employed or working in the informal sector, these events can also lead to fear, uncertainty and deeper poverty and desperation. 

Take, for example, the case of a 28-year-old female farmer in Nigeria who faced financial ruin during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between feelings of stress and hopelessness, death seemed like it could be a relief. In her words, “There was a lot of thinking… sometimes they usually say if we want to die, we should die because there was nothing, we were just thinking too much that time, because there was no money and there was no one to help us.” 

Women in the Global South are particularly vulnerable to the aftershocks of significant life and global events. They often have little to no social protection, no paid sick leave and limited savings. The pandemic laid bare the heavy burden faced by women in these contexts. Many stopped earning an income, stayed home to care for family members or, out of desperation, risked infection by going to work. They lost access to critical health services, including essential services for mothers and children. 

Women RISE: Recovery and resilience 

The gendered impacts of the pandemic led to the creation of the Women RISE initiative, which aims to provide evidence-informed solutions and recovery strategies that are both inclusive and gender transformative. A partnership between IDRC, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Women RISE funded 23 research teams to support recovery and resilience.  

Two projects, one in Nigeria and another in Kenya, identified interventions to help women survive and even thrive as they navigate significant life events.

Nigeria: Solutions to support young self-employed women  

In Nigeria, where 86% of women are self-employed, young working women often lack financial literacy skills, peer support, health insurance and savings to manage the uncertainty and upheaval of life-changing events. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the impacts were far-reaching. Funded under Women RISE, the Advancing Resiliency in Self-Employed Women in Nigeria (ARISE&WIN) project explored the gendered impacts at the intersection of women’s health and economic wellbeing, with a focus on helping young women manage change with resilience and hope. A self-employed woman spoke about the impacts of the pandemic on her business and wellbeing:  

The ARISE&WIN research team set out to understand the impacts of COVID-19 and similar life events using a gendered situational analysis to explore these questions: 

• How does a global health crisis, childbirth, or family or health emergency affect the paid and unpaid work of young self-employed women in Nigeria? 
• What is the impact on their mental, physical and social wellbeing? 
• What are the strategies they use to cope with these types of events?

The goal was to produce and pilot a national scalable intervention to support self-employed young women to cope with disruptions in work and support their wellbeing.  

The solutions included capacity-building interventions such as: 

• strategies to improve digital literacy 
• tools to support business management and financial literacy 
• peer support and mentorship  
• training in law and human rights 
• strategies to promote health and wellness 
• training for intimate partners and other members of their support networks

Social protection solutions included increasing young women’s savings and providing health insurance. With these strategies in place, the research team aimed to improve the resilience of young self-employed Nigerian women to be better positioned to withstand significant future life challenges and thrive.

Kenya: Building resilience among women in remote regions  

Kenyan women recovering from the impacts of COVID-19 faced a polycrisis as a result of the pandemic, experiencing health-care disruptions, income loss, increases in gender-based violence and teen pregnancies, and social isolation for family caregivers. The Chamas for Change program has helped more than 16,000 women in five Kenyan counties adapt to this complex new reality.

Launched before the pandemic, the program adapted during the COVID-19 crisis by using mobile phone education and community health workers to serve women living in remote regions. The research team reported that the project created transformative change for women in remote areas, leading to significant increases in birth deliveries in health facilities, postnatal care visits and exclusive breastfeeding. The team also observed that communities were winning, too: the evaluation found that family and marital relationships improved, and women became leaders in their communities through empowerment and economic opportunities. 

“Looking ahead, we’re exploring how this model can be adapted for other contexts. We’re already seeing promising applications in Mexico, Nepal and Ghana,” said Julia Songok, dean of the Moi University School of Medicine in Kenya and principal investigator for Chamas for Change. “Our focus is on understanding how to scale effectively while maintaining the program’s core strength — its community-centered approach.” 

Future-proofing women with gender-transformative approaches 

The ARISE&WIN and Chamas for Change projects offer promising results for future scaling to address the needs of vulnerable populations and communities in different contexts. Evidence-based solutions such as these foster greater opportunities to engage with communities and influence policymaking for better outcomes for women and other underserved populations.