Project Resilience, Women’s Economic Empowerment & The Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The concept ‘project resilience’ and its integration into development initiatives is important for sustaining and achieving development goals. This thesis discusses how external shocks, hazards, and crises, in this case Covid-19, have had both negative and positive impacts on development projects in terms of their resilience. Projects aimed at improving women’s rights and economic security have been negatively affected by crisis events in the past, highlighting the importance of furthering our understanding of disaster impacts on project resilience in this field in particular. This thesis investigates the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the resilience of two women’s empowerment projects in Kisumu, Kenya. The analysis is based on perspectives from follows feminist economic theory and organisational resilience theory, as well as the 3D resilience framework to understand project resilience. Data was collected through five interviews and 23 questionnaire responses, from employees and volunteers involved in the two women’s economic empowerment projects. The data was thereafter used to discuss and analyse the effects of the pandemic on the resilience of these projects, in an attempt to answer the research questions and to achieve the thesis aim, to deepen our understanding of the impact of crises like Covid-19 on the resilience of women’s economic empowerment projects.