Grassroots groups are helping improve the living and working conditions of hundreds of thousands of low-income women in urban informal settlements across India. By organising and influencing local service providers, local women help improve the reach and quality of local services, strengthen resilience to climate change and now provide awareness-raising and practical support about Covid-19. To date, they have helped …
The power of radio
For World Radio Day Shivanee Harshey explains how Oxfam India was able to take their message about gender based violence to new audiences through a popular radio show. Radio is a powerful means of communicating at scale. You can make good radio, interesting radio, compelling radio even, without an urgent question or a burning issue. In the development sector our …
New Delhi: a city of men?
What does it mean to be a man? Prescriptive gender norms limit the lives of both men and women. Earlier this week Neha Kagal described how women’s empowerment in wastepicker communities in India has had a transformative impact on gender relations. Here Shannon Philip looks at how men and women in New Delhi are affected by ideas of masculinity and …
A man’s path to gender equality?
What happens to the gender dynamics in a community when women become socially and economically empowered? Neha Kagal conducted research among Dalit communities in India which found pathways to gender equality are far from straight forward. The feminist trade-union of women wastepickers in India, has 8,000 members all of whom belong to the ‘lower’ Dalit caste. Established in the early …
Nothing for us without us: Participatory processes and the New Urban Agenda
Half the world’s population live in cities, and urban informal workers make important economic, social, and environmental contributions to city life. Rhonda Douglas from WIEGO argues that the New Urban Agenda must include all urban stakeholders, including the working poor, to ensure it doesn’t leave anyone behind. More than 50% of the non-agricultural work force in most developing countries is …
Tale of Buguru Chitamma: How a cooperative transformed fisher women into leaders
How can cooperatives help women to lead and take control of their livelihoods? In the first of our new ‘Her Series’ pieces, Savvy Soumya & Ranjana Das from Oxfam India takes us through an initiative in Odisha where women are working together in fishing communities. With a striking red bindi, about the size of a coin, and a radiant smile …