The United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, also has the highest number of cases of COVID-19 in the world, far surpassing global hotspots like Italy and China, with cases continuing to rise at concerning rates. In this humanitarian crisis, CARE is bringing its global expertise—from more than 75 years of implementing humanitarian responses in more than 100 countries—to the context of COVID-19 in the United States. In addition to its expertise in humanitarian and crisis response, CARE developed the industry-standard Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) that builds upon several efforts by humanitarian actors to bring gender to the forefront of programming. The standardized tool to enable humanitarian actors to quickly build crisis responses that take into account the different needs of people of all genders, as well as disenfranchised groups, the extreme poor, and other groups often overlooked by policy, crisis planning, and data.

Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, CARE has responded in 67 countries—including the United States—and has published 27 of an anticipated 54 RGAs in contexts around the world. We hope that applying this tool to the specific American context will enable CARE and others to create better responses to the pandemic that meet the needs of all people.

This RGA relies on secondary data collected between May 25 and June 10, 2020. It specifically focuses on highlighting the historic and institutional systems of oppression, gender bias, and racism targeting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). These structural realities and cultural biases put BIPOC communities, especially the women in these communities, at higher exposure to infection and higher risk of death. Simultaneously, these realities and biases exacerbate the already dire lack of access to basic services (such as health, food, housing, etc) experienced by these communities on a regular basis. This RGA offers policy and institutional recommendations for COVID-19 responses to meet the needs of the most vulnerable and affected communities in the face of systemic race, gender and class-based oppression. Without acknowledging these historic legacies around race, gender, and class in the U.S., the entire nation is at risk of perpetuating longstanding injustices and facing even more severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.