Collectives are a fundamental building block for much of CARE’s work. What are the greatest strengths of a collectives approach across projects? We combined data from many CARE collectives across projects and found that:
• The gender composition of the collective affects the intended outcomes.
• The most successful collectives are those with a balanced gender mix of collective members and women leaders. The second most successful collectives are those with a balanced gender mix and mixed gender leaders.
• CARE collectives are having an effect on women’s economic empowerment.
•CARE collectives are having a particularly strong effect on income, leadership, domestic decision making, production, violence and time use.