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How we work

Members of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement campaigning against war, racism and sexism.

The right to gender equality underpins all Oxfam’s work across the world. Gender discrimination, or the denial of women’s basic human rights, is a major cause of poverty. Oxfam is concerned about gender inequality because the majority of the world’s poor are women: around 70 per cent of the 1.3 billion people who live in extreme poverty, on less than one dollar a day, are women and girls.

Considering gender equality in every aspect of our work, means ensuring that both women and men are consulted, and their different needs considered in the design and implementation of work. Promoting gender equality shouldn’t be seen as privileging women and disempowering men, but rather ensuring equality and justice, and unlocking women’s potential, is to the benefit of everyone.

How we work in Emergencies

More women than men lost their lives to the tsunami. In Sri Lanka, local Oxfam staff working in the camps became aware that women survivors were experiencing harassment and violence within the camps. In a novel approach, water tanks in tsunami camps became an unexpected platform for campaign messages.

• Dousing violence against women with water

Campaigning to end violence against women

We Can is a South Asia Regional campaign supported by Oxfam International that works to end violence against women. We Can, which derives from “We can end all violence against women”, is a coalition of over 600 non-governmental organisations and individuals. We Can works to spread the message across South Asia that violence against women is unacceptable and that a change in attitude towards it is both necessary and possible. The campaign aims to mobilise five million men and women across South Asia to stand up and speak out against violence against women by 2011.

• Find out more about the We Can campaign on the Oxfam Great Britian website
  

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