A Global Overview of 20 WEE Programmes and Projects in over 45 countries. We take a look at some of our WEE programmes below.
Jump to thematic area examples
- Inclusive Markets and Value Chains
- Enterprise Development and Financial Inclusion
- Influencing Stakeholders
- Dignified and decent work
Inclusive Markets and Value Chains
What is it?
Inclusive market systems approaches focus on recognizing and redressing power imbalances between men and women, and between smallholder producers and large market actors. Value chains approaches focus on how increased knowledge, climate-resilience strategies and more equitable land rights enhance women’s collective power.
Who does it?
- GRAISEA – Focus on responsible and inclusive business, women’s economic empowerment, and climate change resilience in Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
- Enhancing Livelihoods Fund (ELF): Innovative funding mechanism working with Unilever’s value chains to improve outcomes for smallholders e.g. women ylang-ylang pickers, women farmers in cocoa, gherkin and cocoa coop’s in India, Comoros, Indonesia, Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya.
- Her Veggie Basket– Oxfam India, Oxfam Germany, SEWA – Bihar: Promoting organic farming methods, training and formal government recognition of women vegetable farmers collective in India
- Women Ambassadors of Agriculture– KEDV Turkey: Collective leadership training for seasonal migrant agricultural workers in the hazelnut supply chain. Focus on: improving living and working conditions and negotiating power
- AgriMulheras – Mozambique: Strengthen women’s access to land, technical training and markets in horticulture, in partnership with rural women’s rights organizations and civil society organizations
- HAKBIIT-Timor Leste: Increase women’s access to social, political and economic spheres through a disabilities-centred, hybrid approach. Focus on savings groups, gender norms, resilient livelihoods and income generation
Financial Inclusion and Enterprise Development
What is it?
Leadership and economic opportunities through savings groups, SMEs and incubators. Focus on: women’s control over productive assets, increased income and social capital, and business support through partnerships.
Who does it?
- The Enterprise Development Programme (EDP): Pioneering, business approach providing mix of loans and technical support to enterprises focused on women’s leadership and enterprise development. e.g fruit processing in Rwanda, organic cashews in Honduras, Handicrafts in Nepal
- Agriprenneurs-OPTI: Develop young women’s start-up agriculture ideas in partnership with local university incubator. Projects include: sugar substitutes; gluten-free flours; Azolla (fern) production as local animal fodder
- FINLIT Programme- Vietnam: Financial literacy and upskilling in household financial management through a partnership with VBSP Bank app, connecting women to good financial practices from other women entrepreneurs
- IBV- Jordan : Incentive-Based Volunteering offers refugee women unable to work outside of refugee camps the opportunity to use existing skillsets while offering them cash-for-work opportunities, training and a modest source of income
- Savings for Change: Savings groups boosting women’s financial independence and self-confidence. Focus on: member loans, profit sharing and network building in Mali, El Salvador, Timor-Leste, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala and Senegal
Influencing Stakeholders
What is it?
Influencing policy and partnering with local government, civil society organizations, international campaigns and private sector actors, to value women’s paid and unpaid work.
Who does it?
- WE-CARE: Tackle women and girl’s heavy, uneven unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) through rapid care analyses, private sector partnerships, time- and labour-saving equipment, and influencing government to shift norms and policy on UCDW in Southern and Eastern Africa and in Asia
- Behind the Barcodes Campaign: Scores British, American, Dutch and German food retailers’ labour conditions in their supply chains. The public Supermarket Scorecard includes specific indicators on gender equality
Dignified and Decent Work
What is it?
Supporting rural and urban women workers – garment workers, domestic workers, home-based and gig economy workers. Focus on: re-valuing women’s work, building women’s collective power and fairer distribution of unpaid and paid care work.
Who does it?
- Care for Carers Campaign- South Africa: Partnering with the Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union to ensure fair treatment, safe work conditions and reduced unpaid care work for women health care workers to enable a quality, universal healthcare system
- Securing Rights Project-Bangladesh: Ensuring better work conditions for domestic workers, which includes use of digital platform with embedded two-way feedback system for domestic workers and the employers
- Inclusive Economies- Mexico: Strengthen capacities of mostly rural women collectives and Indigenous groups in Puebla and Oaxaca ( e.g. coffee, cinnamon, agave, textiles, plant-based traditional products, eco-tourism)
- Domestic Workers Rising Campaign – South Africa: Collective mobilization of domestic workers to influence government recognition of their precarious work. Upskilling and bilateral learning to strengthen workers own voice in digital campaigning
For the most up-to-date information on Oxfam’s WEE programmes, check out our related publications thread here and subscribe to the Women’s Economic Empowerment Knowledge Hub Newsletter.
Note: This overview is a rolling document to represent of the diversity of Oxfam’s WEE work. It is updated quarterly to reflect project changes and is not a complete catalogue of all of Oxfam’s WEE projects.
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