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.
Read more >>
Featured image for “Why the UK must take a bold stance against global attacks on women’s rights”

Why the UK must take a bold stance against global attacks on women’s rights

March 19, 2025
Amid a worldwide backlash against women’s rights, and after its own aid cuts that further threaten those rights, it has never been more urgent for the UK government to speak up loudly for global gender equality, says the Gender and Development Network.
Read more >>
Featured image for “No one should be left behind in the shift to a greener future”

No one should be left behind in the shift to a greener future

March 10, 2025
After decades of delay, the move from burning fossil fuels to renewables is firmly underway – but the fairness of this unfolding transition is not inevitable. In fact, there is a real danger the world will simply swap one exploitative and unjust system for another. Natalie Shortall introduces a new Oxfam paper that calls on the UK to get wholeheartedly behind a “just transition”.
Read more >>

Confessions of a gender advisor: Why I avoid the word “empowerment”

February 27, 2020
Sabine Garbarino is an independent gender and inclusion consultant specialising in economic development programming. I have a confession: I’ve recently banned colleagues at a private sector development programme in Liberia from using the term empowerment or women’s economic empowerment or WEE.  Here is why (and it’s not just my personal dislike of an unfortunate abbreviation):  Language matters Over the last years, I’ve noticed
Read more >>

Why are we failing on gender? 3 bad excuses and 6 good ideas

March 21, 2019
March is women’s history month and Fabiola Esposito shares her reflections on the aid sector’s slow progress on women’s empowerment. Last week I went to a networking event for women working in international development about ‘women’s empowerment’ (WE) in Syria. During the Q&A one of the attendees asked an astonishing, but revealing, question: “Why do you think donors are now
Read more >>

“The Socialist and the Suffragist”: A poem for International Women’s Day

March 8, 2019
Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this was first published in 1895  Said the Socialist to the suffragist: “My cause is greater than yours! You only work for a special class, We for the gain of the general mass, Which every good ensures!” Said the suffragist to the Socialist: “You underrate my cause! While women remain a subject class, You never
Read more >>

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
Read more >>

Challenging humanitarianism beyond gender as women and women as victims

March 9, 2018
Dorothea Hilhorst , Holly Porter and Rachel Gordon introduce a highly topical new issue of the Disasters journal (open access for the duration of 2018). This post first appeared on the ISS blog. At the United Nations (UN) World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in May 2016, ‘achieving greater gender equality and greater inclusivity’ was identified as one of the five key areas of humanitarian
Read more >>

From sexual harassment to everyday sexism  – a feminist in Oxfam reflects on International Women’s Day

March 8, 2018
This guest post is by Nikki van der Gaag, Oxfam’s Director of Gender Justice and Women’s Rights This International Women’s Day feels different to any other for many working in the aid and humanitarian sector. Normally, it is a day where, like so many others, we celebrate women’s individual and collective achievements. But the reports of the appalling sexual exploitation
Read more >>

New Report from UN Women argues that Universal Childcare can unlock progress across multiple SDGs (and costs it)

February 15, 2018
Silke Staab and Ginette Azcona introduce their new report on gender and the SDGs, published yesterday UN Women has just launched its first monitoring report on gender equality and the SDGs “Turning promises into action: Gender equality in the 2030 Agenda”. The report offers the most comprehensive review to date on how gender equality features in the 2030 agenda, the
Read more >>

100 years after women got the vote, why is #StillMarching as central as ever to human progress?

February 6, 2018
Oxfam’s Emily Brown on today’s 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the UK Today marks 100 years since some women in the UK first gained the right to vote. The People’s Representation Act of February 6th 1918 represents both a historic milestone in the post-war opening of public and political spaces to women, but also a move designed to keep
Read more >>

Untangling inequalities: why power and intersectionality are essential concepts

January 12, 2018
Guest post from Fenella Porter, Oxfam’s Gender Policy Advisor In the small and rather quirky Chapel of the House of St. Barnabas in Soho, a group of UK civil society representatives gathered together to have a conversation about inequality. After having been in many discussions recently which have struggled to extend the understanding of inequality beyond wealth, what was interesting
Read more >>