Addressing Poverty and Inequality Through a Gender Lens

For more than a decade, Gender at Work has been a strategic ally to Oxfam globally, integrating a gender perspective into their mission of combating inequality and addressing poverty and injustice.

Integrating a gender perspective into Oxfam’s mission

Over the past decade, in collaboration with Oxfam Belgium, Gender at Work has spearheaded Gender Action Learning processes in numerous francophone African countries, catalysing meaningful change at individual, familial, civil society organisational, and community levels.

In 2022, Oxfam Belgium launched its third five-year programme funded by the Belgian government, and invited Gender at Work to support initiatives with Oxfam offices in Mali, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as a technical partner.

In Burkina Faso, we initiated a new Gender Action Learning (GAL) cycle in 2023, engaging Oxfam Burkina Faso and four other partner organisations to advance gender justice, particularly among young people, and to better address their realities and expectations.

Additionally, Gender at Work recruited two Burkinabe facilitators to support our work with the francophone local partners. Similarly, preparations for a new GAL cycle in the DRC are underway in collaboration with local facilitators, which were due to begin in 2023 but were postponed for a year because of the violence and insecurity in the region.

In Mali, a workshop held in May 2022 empowered local facilitators from the previous programme to take ownership of the gender facilitation Référentiel (see below) by actively testing its exercises, leading to the development of a more structured curriculum for future facilitation training. This experience allowed the Gender at Work team to develop a more structured curriculum to support the next phase of facilitation training in the country, to ensure activists will be better equipped to hold and facilitate gender justice discussions in their communities.

Additionally, building on prior collaborations, Oxfam Belgium integrated a Gender Action Learning process into a West Bank programme in 2020. Despite COVID-19 restrictions, an experienced Palestinian facilitator successfully led the GAL process in 2021 with four local organisations, supported remotely by Gender at Work. Adaptation and translation of the Référentiel for the Palestinian and Arab-speaking context commenced in 2023, although activities were disrupted by the ongoing war in Gaza and restrictions in the West Bank.

Référentiel sur les pratiques de facilitation pour avancer l’égalité des genres : expériences d’Afrique Francophone

With the aim of disseminating knowledge and training francophone facilitators in Gender at Work's approaches and methodologies, we developed a training programme and published the 'Repository on Facilitation Practices to Advance Gender Equality: Experiences from Francophone Africa' at the end of 2021.
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This document encapsulates a broad spectrum of practices, reflections, insights, and facilitation tools garnered by Gender at Work Associates across various contexts.

Structured around six fundamental questions guiding facilitators in reflection and training sessions on power and gender dynamics, it equips practitioners to navigate complex gender-related challenges:

  1. Who am I as a person, change agent, and gender facilitator?
  2. How can we create a space for sharing and learning?
  3. How can we understand gender-based relationships and power dynamics?
  4. How can we foster change for greater gender equality?
  5. How can we learn from our experiences and those of others?
  6. How do we evaluate the process and outcomes of the training workshops?

 

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