Featured image for “Want feminist development that builds climate resilience? Then we have to talk about land and water rights”

Want feminist development that builds climate resilience? Then we have to talk about land and water rights

September 10, 2025
Millions of women across the globe farm and look after land – yet are excluded from owning it, hurting their incomes, depriving them of wealth and undermining their other basic rights. Anandita Ghosh and Shivani Satija on a wide-ranging issue of the Oxfam-edited Gender and Development journal that not only examines structural obstacles to women owning land but also looks at broader themes, including the way deprivation of land rights adds to women’s care workload – and, crucially, how securing women’s land and water rights will be essential for global food security and climate resilience.
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Let’s build a collective movement to win economic justice for carers

June 24, 2025
Too many unpaid carers in the UK are struggling by on their own, unseen by policy makers. Taking inspiration from the union movement, says Hannah Webster of Care Full, it’s time to build the collective solidarity that can amplify our demands for an economy that values and supports us – and lifts carers out of poverty.
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Featured image for “Austerity is creating fertile ground for the far-right: instead the UK must invest to fix its social infrastructure”

Austerity is creating fertile ground for the far-right: instead the UK must invest to fix its social infrastructure

March 25, 2025
The UK government needs to listen to Iceland’s progressive prime minister when she says robust welfare policies are the antidote to far-right extremism. And what’s more, investing in social infrastructure – in care, in health, in schools – is essential to driving the growth the government wants, says Amy Brooker of the Women’s Budget Group.
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Featured image for “Global South feminists know how our fixation with GDP hurts people and planet: it’s time to listen to them”

Global South feminists know how our fixation with GDP hurts people and planet: it’s time to listen to them

December 20, 2024
The world needs to stop relying on a metric that ignores two thirds of the work done by women and which promotes harmful policies, says Oxfam GB CEO Halima Begum. A new collection of feminist think pieces offers a compelling and inspirational tour of the arguments and pathways for moving Beyond GDP.
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Featured image for “It’s time to put care at the centre of our economics courses”

It’s time to put care at the centre of our economics courses

November 19, 2024
The UK government’s Francis Review of the English school curriculum is an unprecedented chance to shift the national and global conversation on economics education: let’s not miss it, say Alex Bush and Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann. They explain why we need to change an economics curriculum which perpetuates narratives that are bad for people and planet and erase care work.
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Featured image for “Why are care workers missing from the conversation about the gig economy in the UK?”

Why are care workers missing from the conversation about the gig economy in the UK?

November 13, 2024
Debates about workers on digital platforms too often focus on male-dominated sectors such as deliveries and ride-hailing. Veronica Deutsch explains how care workers, overwhelmingly women, are now central to the precarious UK gig economy – and sets out what campaigners, researchers, employers and policy makers can do to support them.
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Featured image for “How to get people to take the Care Economy seriously? Some top (evidence-based) tips”

How to get people to take the Care Economy seriously? Some top (evidence-based) tips

June 1, 2023
Been taking a look at Silvia Galandini, Anam Parvez and Nick Gadsby’s new Oxfam new ‘toolkit’ on building public pressure for change on the care economy, by constructing a ‘fresh and compelling narrative about the value of all care’. The toolkit is based on research to understand how the general public across the UK thinks about paid and unpaid care
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Featured image for “The Global role of Grandmothers in the Care Economy”

The Global role of Grandmothers in the Care Economy

February 1, 2023
In recent years, Oxfam’s been doing some pioneering work on the ‘care economy’, aka the bit Adam Smith left out (example here and here). My uninformed mental image of this had been all about the role of parents, generally mothers, in running the household and bringing up the kids, so I was struck by a recent Economist piece on the
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Featured image for “Do you want to get serious about the Care Economy? If so, read this (and if not, why not?)”

Do you want to get serious about the Care Economy? If so, read this (and if not, why not?)

October 27, 2021
Amber Parkes, Anam Parvez Butt, Marion Sharples and Vivian Schwarz-Blum talks us through an important new advocacy tool – the Care Policy Scorecard Everything gets a rating these days: apps, hotels, Uber journeys. And everyone wants that five-star rating. But what about government policies that affect people’s lives? What if we could rate them too, according to how impactful and
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Featured image for “How has Covid affected Fathers and Gender Equality? What’s Next?”

How has Covid affected Fathers and Gender Equality? What’s Next?

June 18, 2021
Nikki van der Gaag reflects on the state of dad-dom ahead of fathers’ day on Sunday. She is a co-author of this year’s State of the World’s Fathers report One thing is certain in these uncertain times. Being a father has changed. I have never seen so many dads out with their children as I did when I walked in
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A Caring Economy: What role for government?

March 12, 2018
Anam Parvez (left), Oxfam’s Gender Justice Researcher and Lucia Rost, research consultant, introduce their new paper on gender equitable fiscal policies. In economics we are taught that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Even if something appears to be free, there are always costs – to you and/or society. What is striking is that mainstream economists fail to
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Precarious Lives: Food, Work and Care after the Global Food Crisis. Launch of new report, 9th September

August 31, 2016
Oxfam researcher John Magrath profiles a new joint Oxfam/IDS report and tries to convince you to come along to the launch in London on 9th September Duncan has written previously about one of the projects he was most proud of initiating while in (nominal!) charge of Oxfam’s Research Team. This started out as Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility’ and
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