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abstract
This article charts the journey of over fifteen years of Oxfam’s programming in support of more transformative leadership for African women’s rights. We reflect on lessons learnt from this collective experience and examine the principles, characteristics and strategies emerging from our programming that demonstrate the greatest transformative potential for overcoming women’s exclusion from systems and structures of power and leadership on the African continent.
We reflect on some of the tensions in the international development sector between support for individual women’s leadership and feminist movement building and on how these tensions have contributed to narrow definitions of - and funding for - leadership and empowerment programmes.
We draw deeply on the critical thinking of transformative feminist leadership activists such as Srilatha Batliwala to help redefine what is meant by – and needed from – leadership in our changing world. We share concrete examples of Oxfam’s experience of partnerships with African women’s rights organisations, networks and movements – often in mainstream development sectors – to trial and mature more transformative leadership in practice. Finally, we use emerging evidence from this work to make arguments for the support and investments required for more feminist – more effective – approaches and strategies for promoting African women’s leadership and power - in Oxfam and elsewhere.
Acknowledgement
This article has been compiled by Emily Brown, Esther Ekoue and Victoria Goodban on behalf of Oxfam’s global working group on Transformative Leadership for Women’s Rights - with additional guidance and invaluable inputs from Nicolette Matthijsen, Kim Piaget and Alivelu Ramisetty.
Notes
1. In recognition of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as a central global framework for upholding women's rights (Oxfam, Citation2011).
2. ‘Transformative leadership for women’s rights: Lessons and recommendations from Oxfam’s experiences’ (Smyth, Citation2015) and ‘Transformative and feminist leadership for women’s rights’ (Wakefield, Citation2017) The first of these was commissioned with the intention of providing suggestions and impetus for a global TLWR Programme Framework. This Framework was subsequently developed in 2016 based on additional work for Oxfam by Shawna Wakefield for Gender@Work and finalised by Oxfam’s TLWR Working Group in April 2017. Available on request from TLWR Working Group Co-Chairs: esther.ekoue@oxfam.org and embrown@oxfam.org.uk
3. See for example: ‘A feminist approach to monitoring and evaluation’ (Muñoz, 2007), ‘Women’s empowerment in Tunisia: Impact evaluation of the project ‘AMAL: Supporting Women's Transformative Leadership’ in Tunisia’ (Lombardini, Citation2018), Gender and Development issue ‘Gender, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning’, available at: http://www.genderanddevelopment.org/issues/22-2-mel/ (accessed 26 Feb 2019) and findings from a meta-review of Oxfam’s influencing initiatives (Mayne, 2018). A new EU-funded civil society strengthening collaboration between FEMNET and Oxfam in seven countries across Africa has a strong feminist MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning) component. This will provide us with an exciting opportunity to trial and learn from feminist MEAL techniques and methodologies for tracking the impacts of women’s transformative activisms and leadership over the next four years.
4. Project visit interview, Oxfam, May 2016.
5. AMAL (meaning ‘hope’ in Arabic) was a three-year transformative leadership programme working with 11 women’s rights partners in four countries with funding from SIDA and Oxfam designed in response to the Arab Uprisings. For details, see Final Evaluation and view http://raisinghervoice.ning.com/video/poverty-is-in-the-head-not-in-the-pocket-tunisian-women-leaders-s
6. Final Evaluation of the AMAL Programme: ‘Supporting Women’s Transformative Leadership at Changing Times in the MENA Region’ (Drinkwater et al, Citation2016).
7. See: http://eve-sn.org/a-propos-de-long-eve/ (accessed 26 Feb 2019).
8. ‘Transformative Leadership for Women’s Rights: Oxfam Global Program Framework’, April 2017, due to be shared externally in mid 2019.
9. Oxfam’s organisational ‘Gender Justice’ Theory of Change was developed with support from Gender@Work and based on their sector-leading work and Analytical Framework to understand systemic, organisational change and deep culture. See ‘Gender at work framework’, available at: https://genderatwork.org/analytical-framework/ (site accessed 26 Feb 2019).
10. References Oxfam’s internal ‘MEAL and Feminist principles’.
11. See also ‘Standing with the changemakers: Lessons from supporting women’s movements’ (Womankind, Citation2017), and Gender and Development issue ‘Feminist Solidarity and Action’, available at http://www.genderanddevelopment.org/issues/21-2-feminist-solidarity-and-collective-action/ (accessed 26 February, 2019).
12. Raising Her Voice, a global Oxfam programme in 17 countries empowering women to participate, lead and influence local and national governance systems and processes (2008-1013), included seven projects in sub-Saharan Africa. For more information, case studies and the independent Final Evaluation (Beardon and Otero, Citation2013) see: http://raisinghervoice.ning.com/ (accessed 26 Feb 2019).
13. See: ‘Strengthening governance programming through tackling VAWG, learning from Raising Her Voice experience’ (Repila and Brown, Citation2013).
14. See policy practice paper, ‘A case for gender-responsive budgeting in Myanmar’ (Burnley et al, Citation2016).
15. ‘Ligalas’ came about following the 2015 crisis. The rise in unemployment amongst young men led many of them to form groups which then met to spend their time playing cards, drinking, etc. It is a leisure activity that has become a serious problem for the local administration.
16. In line with the African Union (AU) Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.
17. Joint Press Statement Commemorating International Women’s Day, 5th April 2016.
18. See: ‘Co-Creating Feminist Realities: The journey continues’ (AWID, Citation2017).
19. See upcoming Meta-Evaluation Management Response (due March 2019) and ‘Strengthening governance programming through tackling VAWG: Learning from Raising Her Voice experience’, available at: http://bit.ly/19isxWI (accessed 26 Feb 2019).
20. The January 2019 Internal Review of uptake and use of the TLWR Global Programme Framework, from launch to date, included a small-scale organisational online survey and review of self-assessment notes from six regional webinars to socialise the framework. Additional interviews are now being planned to provide more qualitative feedback and learning.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Emily Brown
EMILY BROWN is Oxfam's Transformative Leadership for Women’s Rights Lead, currently based in Oxford. She joined Oxfam to support the coordination of Raising Her Voice (RHV), Oxfam’s global programme supporting initiatives to enhance women's participation in local and national leadership and governance structures in 17 countries worldwide. Emily is a member of Oxfam’s Transformative Leadership for Women’s Rights Working Group; providing practical advisory support and accompaniment to Oxfam colleagues and feminist partners developing new projects globally. Emily also supports Oxfam’s learning – and Oxfam’s upstream donor influencing – grounded in a growing body of work on women's voice and transformative feminist leadership. This includes close collaboration in RootsLab, a new, young feminist innovation pilot developed in partnership with FRIDA/The Young Feminist Fund, Global Fund for Women and the Young Foundation – now nearing the end of its first exciting phase in Lebanon – and a four-year collaboration with FEMNET to support and strengthen local African feminist movements and their advocacy and influencing within key global policy debates. Email: EmBrown@oxfam.org.uk
Esther Ekoue
ESTHER EKOUE is Oxfam’s Regional Gender Advisor in West Africa. She holds a MSc+ in Economy and Rural Sociology and is a gender specialist with 15 years of experience in gender, youth, rural livelihoods and women’s economic development, with additional skills in grants management and resource development. Throughout her career, Ms Ekoue has successfully collaborated with a wide range of stakeholders, from men, women, and youth in rural communities and local organisations to implementing national development programmes as well as managing regional gender, advocacy, and humanitarian training programmes. Since January 2012, she has worked for Oxfam America (OA) in West Africa. She serves as Regional Joint Programming and Gender Advisor, accountable for the delivery and management of the gender portfolio and coaching Gender Justice focal points in five countries. In this position she also leads the West African Gender Justice Group. Email: esther.ekoue@oxfam.org
Victoria Goodban
VICTORIA GOODBAN has worked for Oxfam since 2011 and is currently seconded as Policy Lead for the Rohingya Crisis Response in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Vicky is co-chair of Oxfam's Transformative Leadership for Women's Rights working group and in her current and previous roles with Oxfam works to strengthen gender responsive programming and feminist leadership capacity within our campaigns, development and humanitarian teams. In her current role, she works closely with the humanitarian colleagues – including Water & Sanitation, Protection, Food Security, and Gender – to utilise the evidence from Oxfam’s field operations to support immediate and longer-term advocacy and policy solutions to the current humanitarian crisis. Critical to this is creating spaces and opportunities for refugees – particularly women – to have roles and their voices heard in decisions affecting their lives by working to support women’s leadership in the response alongside local and national women’s rights organisations and allies. Email: vickygoodban@gmail.com