The Gendered Secondary Impacts of COVID-19 as a Critical Juncture for NGO Program Policy? Insights from The Hunger Project

Abstract: This thesis employs a historical institutionalist lens to analyze whether the gendered impacts of COVID-19 have initiated a critical juncture in The Hunger Project’s program policy. Crises such as COVID-19 may lead actors within organizations to question existing policies, giving them greater opportunities than normal to transform these, with lasting consequences. Theory-testing process-tracing is used to investigate whether the causal mechanisms needed to translate a crisis into lasting policy change are present. Using evidence from semi- structured interviews and documents, this thesis argues that while the primary impacts of COVID-19 created a critical juncture through the adoption of digital technology as an objective and tool, these effects cannot be isolated to the gendered impacts of COVID-19. Instead, the gendered implications of COVID-19 confirmed and accelerated THP’s already existing policies emphasizing women-focused community-led development. The thesis thus expands historical institutionalism to a new domain, NGOs, and shows that actors within these organizations are also guided by historically created institutions that may be altered through critical junctures. Additionally, it contributes an empirical account to otherwise largely speculative literature on COVID-19 as a critical juncture, employing a specifically gender-focused lens.