Conflicts and disasters, including pandemics, affect women and men in all their diversity differently, and women and girls often suffer the most. Crisis-related hardships combine and compound pre-existing disadvantages, for example, they often cause women’s working conditions to worsen while increasing their overall workload and care responsibilities. At the same time, crises can give rise to changes that enable women to take up roles that were previously available only to men, and crises can open opportunities to address existing gender-based discrimination and violations of rights. 

Anchored in and building on these frameworks and UN inter-agency work and initiatives on gender equality and women’s empowerment and leadership, this guide aims to enhance awareness of gender dimensions and issues in fragile, conflict and disaster settings and to provide guidance on gender mainstreaming in initiatives related to employment and decent work across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus. It is intended to support both ILO staff and constituents and other stakeholders working at global, national or local levels in ensuring gender-responsiveness in the world of work across the triple nexus. The guide supplements existing ILO resources in the area of gender equality as well as disaster and conflict.