Oxfam's rationale for work on gender equality
The rights-based approach
Human rights are tied inextricably to gender issues. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states unequivocally that men and women have equal human rights. Oxfam takes a rights-based approach to addressing the root causes of poverty. Women and men, boys and girls, experience poverty when they are denied the right to livelihoods, water, education and health, protection and security, a voice in public life, or freedom from discrimination. Our definition of poverty goes beyond the purely economic to encompass capabilities, powerlessness and inequity.
Addressing gender-based violations of human rights is a crucial aspect of Oxfam’s development and anti-poverty work. Institutions and structures are predominantly shaped around men, and therefore both reflect existing inequalities and gendered power relations in society, and help to constitute them. By excluding women’s voices, they work to the advantage of men as a group and the exclusion and disadvantage of women. Whilst recognising the many different ways in which women and men across the world are influenced by race, class, caste, colour, sexuality, age, religion, politics, disability and other elements of identity, we can say that women’s overall access to and power within institutions and structures is systemically limited because of gender inequality and discrimination.
‘However poverty is defined, there is one common feature: women are disproportionately affected… Whichever approach to poverty Oxfam takes, therefore, it must pay particular attention to gender inequity.’ [1]
Poor women have less recourse than their male counterparts to legal and religious recognition and protection, as well as lower access to public knowledge and information, and decision making power over resources both within and outside the home. Women in many parts of the world frequently have little control over fertility, sexuality and marital choices. This systemic discrimination reduces women’s public participation, often increases their vulnerability to poverty, violence and HIV, and results in women representing a disproportionate percentage of the poor population of the world.
Addressing human rights and gender inequality in our programmes
A focus on women’s human rights can simultaneously address economic, social, civil and political rights. In many instances overcoming violence is the key to women having the opportunity to achieve social and economic rights such as having the right to work and to achieve an adequate standard of living. Oxfam’s programme work on violence against women has the potential to help women achieve both social and economic rights (e.g. access to HIV protection and health services, or to decent working conditions) as well as civil and political rights (e.g. freedom not to marry against their will, freedom to not be subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment).
Many boys and men are also sometimes subject to gender-based human rights violations, particularly in situations where violent and risky behaviour is seen as evidence of masculinity. Working with men to examine their gains and losses through rigid gender roles, can bring added impact to gender equality and women’s rights work. For example, in Brazil, Oxfam supports health and HIV programmes that have worked with groups of men to examine risky behaviour and have been able to address broader gender equality issues.
Gender inequality and economic poverty
‘Women are not a homogeneous group. However, there is a universal factor weakening women’s position vis-à-vis men in all major social institutions, namely, women’s responsibility for reproductive work. By reproductive work is meant activities such as childcare, housework and cooking. Such work tends to be taken for granted and undervalued in all societies and economic systems. Both women’s reproductive work burden itself, and the low value societies set on it, militates against gender equity.’ [2]
The effects of globalisation have had a devastating effect on the poor and particularly on women. Unfair terms of trade under the World Trade Organisation have negatively affected agriculture and economies across the developing world, leading to falling incomes and widespread food insecurity. Adjustment policies influenced by debt reduction and bilateral funding agreements have resulted in cuts in public expenditure and subsidies on basic services such as drinking water, food, health, education and transport. Women’s multiple roles within the household as well as their role in subsistence food production, coupled with wider ideas, beliefs and practices which discriminate against women, have culminated in a greater burden on women as workers and family caregivers. Cuts in social services, for example, have increased the burden on women as caregivers in the household. The introduction of user fees for health services in Zambia in the 1980s has meant that a sick person in a low-income household is more likely to be looked after by a female relative than taken to the clinic.
Most women do not have legal or traditional rights to land or other assets. They cannot get loans or credit because they have no collateral. They cannot leave abusive men because they are dependent on them for their economic survival and social status. In addition, they often lack the productive resources including skills, information and economic organisation, to be involved in the marketing of production. Women tend to be concentrated in the most risky, low profit areas of marketing.
Economic policy and analysis tend to focus on productive work and the money economy, ignoring production for household consumption and the informal economy, where women predominate, as well as the unpaid work of caring for family and household. This leads to aid, development, investment and finance policies which both fail to promote development and further entrench gender inequality through reinforcing stereotypes. The view that productive work is men’s responsibility, and consequently of greater value, is a serious barrier to development and detrimental to both sexes. Oxfam has a commitment to promoting a broader view of economics which values, protects and promotes unpaid caring work as much as work in the cash economy. This has the dual impact of creating drastically improved development opportunities for men and women and improving gender equality.
Once retrenched or unable to find employment due to global and local trends, women often seek inferior and less secure livelihoods in the informal sector, and/or though migration. In the transition economies of Eastern Europe, men have experienced absolute declines in life expectancies in recent years. This is associated with growing stress and anxiety due to rapidly worsening unemployment among men. [3] The trafficking of women from the former Soviet Union to Europe is another impact of the same situation.
A gender analysis will show the specific poverty issues that both women and men face, and enable programmes to directly address the underlying causes of poverty, not merely the symptoms.
World changes impact on gender inequality
With an increase in fundamentalism across the world, the rights of women have become the site for extremist argument on religion and politics. Women’s right to organise, question and debate in many countries is being curbed on the grounds of religious heresy and political disloyalty.
Widespread armed and ethnic conflict has gendered dimensions. Young boys, and often girls, in many conflict situations are compelled to leave school and risk their lives in dehumanising combat. Young girls are often also forced into sexual slavery to service militia. Huge numbers of men are killed in combat and women and children killed and maimed as civilians. Women and girls form the majority of refugees or displaced populations and the proportion of woman-maintained households in turbulent situations has increased. In addition, women in conflict situations suffer sexual assault and other forms of exploitation in the home during and after conflict. A large percentage of all Oxfam’s programmes are in humanitarian and conflict work. In accordance with Humanitarian Charters, Oxfam recognises that humanitarian interventions are more effective when they are based on an understanding of men’s and women's, boys’ and girls’ different needs, interests, vulnerabilities, capacities and coping strategies, and the differing impacts of disaster upon them.
In many parts of the world the AIDS epidemic has become the single most important issue affecting development and poverty. There are strong links between the spread of HIV infection, gender equality, and gender-based violence. The fastest growing group of those infected with AIDS is adolescent girls. In addition, the number of AIDS-related deaths has left a generation of orphans who are exposed to exploitation and high-risk behaviour. The extra burden of care is often placed on elderly women. These gender issues issues need to be considered together in all programme development.
1. Definitions of poverty Oxfam Fundamental Review Of Strategic Intent, Steering the course for the 21st century 1998 1.1.4
2. Geraldine Terry, Oxfam SCO 5 strategic Framework Document, 2000
3. World Bank, Engendering Development Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice, 2001
