Three decades after the landmark Beijing declaration to advance women’s rights, right-wing, religious, and conservative actors are reversing and obstructing hard-won progress. This International Women’s Day, our new Oxfam campaign calls on governments across the globe to reassert their commitment to gender justice, bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights, say Lata Narayanaswamy and Amina Hersi.
Four ways to boost investment in women-led small businesses
Oxfam’s conversations and projects with entrepreneurs across the globe reveal a big gender gap in access to finance, says Windy Massabni. Women in business tell us that better support for them will include loan guarantees, alternative credit scoring systems and building the gender awareness of lenders.
How the pregnancy penalty supercharges global inequality
In a blog for International Women’s Day, new parent Anthony Kamande reflects on the heavy cost his partner and family have paid for the simple act of having a baby. The world, and especially its poorer countries, needs a pregnancy rights revolution, he says, and international funders such as the IMF must play their part.
Why we must never repeat the mistakes of a ‘gender-blind’ COVID response
Pandemics are bad for women’s health – but they are also bad for their labour rights, suggests research from Matahari Global Solutions and the People’s Vaccine Alliance. Harry Bignell and Abha Jeurkar set out key gendered impacts of the pandemic – including the impact on trans and non-binary people – and call for pressure on global leaders to make sure we avoid them in future.
Four ways women can help to end the Middle East’s water crisis
We know women have to be at the heart of designing and delivering the response to the region’s water problems, says Oxfam MENA’s Sally Abi Khalil. She sets out four principles for a fresh, feminist approach to managing water.
The messy realities of governance in conflict-affected areas: six dilemmas for development practice
Development projects too often assume there is a simple structure of local governance. But innovative research based on people in Mozambique, Myanmar, and Pakistan writing diaries reveals how in fact their lives are governed by many competing informal and formal actors. Katrina Barnes of Oxfam and Colin Anderson of the Institute of Development Studies on key dilemmas this complexity raises for practitioners
Inclusive growth for more jobs for women and youth in the MENA region
By Ahmed El Assal, Meta Bilgrav Bodenhagen and Shekhar Anand For growth to be inclusive, decent work must be equally accessible to women and men. The Youth Participation and Employment (YPE) program has been trying to meet this objective by addressing factors of inequality. Youth Participation and Employment (YPE) programme, implemented by Oxfam IBIS, in the framework of the Arab …
Increasing Participation & Creating Inclusive Employment Opportunities for Youth
by Ahmed Elassal and Shekhar Anand Oxfam’s Youth Participation and Employment (YPE) Program supported by the Danish Arab Partnership Program (DAPP) works with a wide range of partners in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia. The program developed interesting interventions for youth employment responding to the context, needs and factors such as skill levels of entrepreneurs, educational and geographic background, extent of exposure …