Closing the gender gap
The InsuResilience Partnership – Envisioning Climate Risk Adaption
The InsuResilience Global Partnership (IGP) for Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance (CDRFI) Solutions was established to strengthen the resilience of developing countries and pro-tect the lives and livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people against the impacts of disasters. In times of increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, the Partnership has launched the Vision 2025, a six-year work plan setting ambitious and comprehensive resilience targets. Crosscutting to all efforts of the Partnership, a comprehensive gender strategy is driven forward by the InsuResilience gender working group. The group brings together the latest research on the gender dimension of CDRFI, facilitates best practice exchange and defines goals for a gender-responsive and climate-resilient future.
A Gender-responsive Approach – Research, Ambition and Action
Women and girls are increasingly more vulnerable to the impacts of climate and disaster risks for multiple interacting reasons. Gender-responsive CDRFI solutions can provide risk protection that addresses differences in women and men’s vulnerability. Furthermore, the international Finance Corporation estimates that the global women’s insurance market has the opportunity to grow to three times its current size, to US$ 1.7 trillion by 2030. A soon to be endorsed Gender Statement will commit the members of the IGP to acknowledge the gender gap and to mobilise financial resources to scale-up and implement gender-responsive CDRFI.
The Partnership aims at closing the knowledge gap about gender dimensions in CDRFI by commissioning different studies and engaging with various stakeholders. An analytical study provides a detailed analysis of gender-responsive climate risk insurance for various systems and provider types at the micro, meso and macro level. The recommendations, such as the creation of a gender centre for excellence, guide the activities of the gender working group and the Partnership as a whole until 2025. The Partner-ship with its multi-stakeholder community serves as intermediary to connect political and business interest in gender and strongly underlines the business case for the integration of gender-responsive solutions to CDRFI. The collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated data will further inform the design, promotion and integration of gender-responsive coping mecha-nisms.
The IGP and the Access to Insurance Initiative jointly sponsor the participation of two senior insurance supervisors and high potential women in their regulatory authorities to attend the Leadership and Diversity Programme for Regulators. This nine-month programme, taught by Women’s World Banking and the faculty of the Said Business School at Oxford University, promotes the financial inclusion of women and builds the leadership capacity of its participants.
Mahila Housing Sewa Trust (India) –
Poor slum women investing in resilience through savings with microinsurance
Mahila Housing Sewa Trust works with poor women from urban slums and in rural areas in India on habitat issues to improve housing and basic services and to access home finance, legal advice, technical assistance and influence hous-ing and infrastructure-related urban and rural development policies and programmes.
In 2018, MHT was the winner of the Popular Choice vote of the 2018 “Absorbing Climate Im-pacts” contest, funded by the InsuResilience Global Partnership. MHTs’ proposal seeks to tap women’s habit of saving to manage climate-induced risks through an innovative chit fund cum microinsurance scheme. MHT takes advantage of slum women being used to save small sums through chits funds by designing a chit-fund cum microinsurance product with payment of premium based on contribution from subscribers and interest accrued from corpus that operates like traditional chit fund with members entitled to index based microinsurance along with savings and credit benefits.
Following the award, MHT presented their work at the Partnership Forum 2018 of the IGP that took place on 10 December 2018 during COP24. Furthermore, MHT is now an important member of the IGP gender working group.
Leadership and Diversity Programme for Regulators
The Partnership awarded its scholarship in 2019 to Ms Hery Rakotoarimanana, Head of the Financial Institutions Department in the Ministry of Finance of Madagascar.
Ms Rakotoarimanana found that her expectations were met in full. The programme enabled her to improve her leadership skills and exchange knowledge and experiences across country authorities. It also supported her with specific tasks, such as preparing draft legislation on regulating savings groups in Madagascar.
During the programme, different financial inclusion policies were presented from the countries of the participants. The presentations showed that each participating country had already started implementing financial inclusion policies. On that basis, participants exchanged ideas on the potential for improving various policies.
“The programme allowed me to reflect on our proposal for appropriate follow-up of savings groups in Madagascar to promote the empowerment of vulnerable women in rural communities and remote areas through their access to basic financial services (savings and credit) and non-financial services (financial education and training). Our proposed policy also encourages savings groups to establish contacts with formal financial institutions in Madagascar.”
– Hery Rakotoarimanana
The InsuResilience Secretariat
In 2016, the InsuResilience Secretariat was established in Bonn, Germany, as a support unit for the multi-stakeholder partnership. It is hosted by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and located in G320 as a part of the Climate Policy unit.
The Secretariat supports the development of pro-poor and demand-led climate risk insurance solutions in developing countries and enhances the visibility of the InsuResilience Global Partnership. It fosters communication and cooperation among all the relevant actors of the Partnership, facilitates knowledge management and ensures progress and target achievement. The Secretariat supports the Partnership in all tasks and serves all stakeholders equally – donors and partner countries as well as actors from politics, the private sector, civil society and academia across the globe.