This research pack brings together Oxfam studies and evidence that explore how inequality, poverty, climate crisis, pandemics and conflict disproportionately affect women, girls, and gender-diverse people—while also highlighting the strengths, leadership, and solutions women and women’s rights organizations already deliver every day.
Alongside exposing structural barriers and power imbalances, this collection celebrates:
- The resilience, organizing power, and leadership of women and feminist movements
- Proven, women-led solutions that drive social, economic, and climate justice
- What becomes possible when women’s rights organizations are resourced, trusted, and centered
These studies affirm a core truth: advancing gender justice is not only about addressing harm, but about building on women’s knowledge, collective power, and capacity to lead change.
Building Disaster Resilient Communities Through Women’s Leadership (2026)
Drawing on programs in Nepal and the Philippines, the findings are clear: investing in women’s agency does more than improve response—it shifts power. Women leaders redefine leadership as relational, community-anchored, and grounded in solidarity. Where women lead, communities are more cohesive, adaptive, and inclusive. This webinar explores why centering women’s leadership is not optional—it is essential to building resilient communities in a climate-uncertain future.
Roadmap for Feminist Local Humanitarian Leadership (2026)
Oxfam in Asia and its partners acknowledge that deeply rooted, intersectional gender and power inequalities continue to shape both crisis‑affected communities and the humanitarian system itself. Developed with a diverse feminist network across Asia, this roadmap builds on past work, aligns Oxfam’s internal policies with broader research, and commits Oxfam and its partners to advancing feminist local humanitarian leadership alongside local actors.
For more information, visit https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/roadmap-for-feminist-local-humanitarian-leadership-621777/
Women’s Humanitarian Leadership Fund (2025)
The Women’s Humanitarian Leadership Fund (WHLF) gives us lessons on power, trust and impact. It is an effort to turn commitments on localization and support for women’s leadership into action – a learning journey that aimed to test, adapt and innovate through trust-based, flexible funding. In its first phase in Ukraine, Oxfam and ActionAid together with twelve Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs), tested a simple but transformative idea: trust WROs to decide how humanitarian resources are best spent to support affected communities. Through flexible, core-style funding and light, transparent processes, the WHLF gave WROs the autonomy to act quickly, adapt to shifting realities, and strengthen their organizations from within.
In the Philippines, women and girls face persistent barriers, including gender inequality, limited decision-making power, entrenched norms about women’s roles, and restricted access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. Harmful practices like child marriage, restrictive parental consent laws, and the criminalization of abortion exacerbate these challenges. Beyond the numbers these stories of change captures only some of the stories of change from the project. These are stories of women finding their strength, men becoming allies, youth leading change, and health providers embracing inclusive care under the project. It highlights communities challenging harmful norms and systems, demonstrating that meaningful change is possible. Let us listen to their stories, honor their experiences, and carry forward the lessons from this remarkable journey.
Women Nourishing Cities: Recipes for transforming the urban food systems of the Philippines (2024)
Rising food prices and hunger in Philippine cities have intensified attention on urban food systems, highlighting persistent challenges to food and nutrition security. This report underscores the need for more resilient and sustainable food production, distribution, and consumption, with women’s leadership at its core. Oxfam Pilipinas advances this transformation by promoting social enterprises and business models that expand women’s economic opportunities and leadership across urban food value chains, recognizing strong evidence that women’s empowerment improves food access, nutrition, health, and overall community well‑being.
Centering Women’s Rights Organizations (2023)
From the literature, as well as from Oxfam’s experience in Colombia, Iraq, and Kenya, it is evident that WROs have been key figures in the COVID-19 response while also managing acute challenges around lack of recognition, funding, and exclusion from decision-making spaces. Local organizations, including WROs, have continued their work in humanitarian response, shouldering even more as international actors have reduced their participation. By adopting a feminist approach that pays close attention to unequal gender norms, incorporates an intersectional lens, and delves into power dynamics, this study provides a clear assessment on the ways that Oxfam—and other international actors—can better support WROs involved in humanitarian response.
This report examines women’s leadership in locally led humanitarian action with case studies from Bangladesh and South Sudan. Co-authored with two women’s organizations, Ashroy Foundation of Bangladesh and Rural Women for Development in South Sudan, it seeks to understand whether and how local humanitarian leadership (LHL) can promote or constrain women’s leadership. The report finds that women’s leadership in LHL is limited in both countries, with women’s leadership facing many of the same challenges as LHL itself. However, by encouraging collaboration between women leaders, women’s organizations, and LHL actors, progress toward a more gender-transformative humanitarian system can be achieved.
The Power of Local Action: an Oxfam Learning Compendium on Local Humanitarian Leadership | Oxfam (2020)
The Power of Local Action is an Oxfam learning compendium on local humanitarian leadership (LHL) that arose out of learning events and global meetings held in 2019 in Nairobi, Mexico City, Jakarta and Istanbul, and draws from the recommendations of partners and Oxfam staff as well as more recent research. The aim is to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive reference on positive LHL practices and ideas for change that are in line with Oxfam’s commitments and values. There were over 50 contributors to this learning document, a combination of Oxfam staff and partners that graciously shared their ideas, suggestions and practices to help Oxfam learn, adapt, and improve.
A Feminist Approach to Localization: How Canada Can Support the Leadership – Oxfam Canada (2018)
Local and national women’s rights organizations are vital to effective humanitarian action, as their deep community roots enable them to respond quickly in crises and address women’s specific needs. To support meaningful, long-term change, it is necessary to adopt feminist policies that integrate development, humanitarian, and security efforts, ensuring responses are grounded in local realities and advance sustainable, gender‑equitable transformation.
