The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) estimated that 2.8 million people would be
in need of food assistance between October 2015 and March 2016. As a result of this, a consortium of
INGOs (comprising Save the Children, Concern Worldwide, Concern Universal, Oxfam, and GOAL), and
the World Food Programme (WFP) came together to plan a response, with INGOS delivering a cash
transfer response to 450,000 people, while WFP distributed food or cash to 2.4 million people. As part of
the INGO Consortium, Concern Worldwide implemented cash transfers targeting 25,306 households in
Mchinji District and 1,990 households in Nkhotakota District, while GOAL targeted 4,585 households in
Nsanje district.
In recent years, Cash Transfers (CTs) have emerged as a cost-effective and efficient way of supporting
vulnerable people in times of emergency. A recent DfID/ODI (2015) report recommended that humanitarian
aid organisations should “give more cash transfers” and that CTs should be “central to humanitarian crisis response”1. CTs are perceived as ‘empowering’ as they allow people choice and options, and are seen to
contributing to local development by stimulating local markets.
However, the impacts of CTs are not gender neutral, as CT programming tends to be rooted in gender assumptions. It is generally assumed that targeting women for CTs increases the likelihood that the money will benefit the whole family; as women are seen as “the rightful recipients of the transfers, as women use cash for the households more responsibly than men”2. It is also assumed that giving cash to women empowers them economically, as “giving women money will give them the voice and power to raise their status within the household and the community, ultimately promoting gender equality”3. Concern Worldwide has commissioned a gender analysis of CTs in Mchinjiand Nsanje districts to unpack how these assumptions play out within the specific context of Mchinji and Nsanje districts in Malawi, to ensure that CT programming ‘does no harm’ while reducing the vulnerabilities of the poorest people.
The analysis aims to analyse the impact that emergency cash transfers have on intra-household gender dynamics, to capture learning, which will inform Concern and others’ future cash transfer programmes both in Malawi and more broadly.