Gender Justice

Addressing issues of Gender Justice and empowering women lies at the core of all programmes and projects at Oxfam. Recognising the need to bring about the wide ranging social change required for enabling women to lead dignified lives, the programmes inherited by Oxfam India display multiple range of strategies addressing various stakeholders who are important players in the process.

Our focus is not just on women but on communities to create spaces for empowered women. As a consequence Oxfam supports both "stand alone" gender programes and projects as also emphasises on mainstreaming gender in other programes. Ensuring equal spaces, opportunities and benefits for women in social, economic and political spheres is the general goal cutting across most of Oxfam's projects. Thus we have efforts at addressing gender concerns in society whether it is looking at recognising women as farmers in rural livelihood projects or addressing caste and gender discrimination in disaster risk reduction project in Western Rajasthan or assessing and responding to women's needs in a humanitarian context as part of projects supported under other thematic areas. These under the gender justice portfolio comprise projects with specific focus to address gender discrimination and they specilly include women from the marginalised communities. These have attempted to address women's empowerment in all aspects of their lives where gender roles impact them adversely.

Some of the issues covered are education, health, rights of women as workers in the informal sectors, savings and credit with a focus on the informal sectors, savings and credit with a focus on micro-enterprises, women's participation in Panchayati Raj Institutions, violence against women, working with laws etc. The strategies and activities include an intermix of awareness raising, organising and mobilising women and communities, creating women's community based institutions/ mechanisms, training and capacity building on issues and support for practical needs and providing access to strategic support for negotiating gender relations within public and private domains.

The largest portfolio of Oxfam's work around gender revolves around addressing gender based violence and violence against women with the objective of reducing the social acceptance of all violence against women, bringing a positive change in the policy and environment that perpetuates its acceptance at an institutional and community level, and enhance provision of appropriate support to women experiencing violence.