End poverty together.

Women's rights

Alleged witches gather in Kukuo village, Northern Ghana
Photo: Jane Hahn/ActionAid

Women around the world are more likely to live in poverty – just because they’re women. We’re helping women to challenge discrimination, claim their rights, and transform their societies.

Around the world, women have less power, money, protection from violence and access to education and healthcare. Despite these injustices, women everywhere are standing up to claim their rights and to fight poverty.

Women are often not allowed to own property or keep the money they earn; as farmers they get the most marginal land, and as workers they are trapped in the worst jobs for the least pay. More girls than boys are denied education.

70% of people living in poverty are women

Men still dominate decision-making at every level, from village councils to national government, so even when policies are introduced to help the poor, they often ignore the needs of women.

Men’s power over women often costs women their lives. Women are more vulnerable to HIV infection because they are not able to insist on protected sex, even when they know their partner is infected. Men often use physical violence to reinforce their power over women and girls.

 

Women – the drivers of change

Yet despite all this, women are powerful forces for change, amazingly determined and resourceful in their fight to achieve a better future. Income in the hands of women has a dramatic impact on the wellbeing of their families, since they spend a significant proportion of it on children’s food, health and education.

Every time a family has good food to eat and clean water to drink, every day that a child arrives at school or a sick person makes it to the clinic, it’s usually a woman who has fought for this small, daily victory over adversity.

The best way to end poverty is to strengthen women in their own struggles, helping them to unleash their own potential to change the world.

ActionAid and women's rights

ActionAid is committed to being on the side of the poor and vulnerable, so we believe that gender inequality, in and of itself, is an injustice we must fight. We fund projects around the world which support women to claim their rights, and we also campaign for change.

We work to ensure that the effect on women is considered in the planning of all our programmes and campaigns, and we also support projects with the specific aim of raising the status, rights, livelihoods and political participation of women. Our key themes are:

  • Violence against Women and Girls
  • Women's access to and control over land
  • HIV and AIDS
  • Women's Unpaid Care Work
  • Women’s Rights to Sexual Autonomy and Bodily Integrity

For example, ActionAid Pakistan has been a key part of the campaign to challenge the Hudood Ordinance which, among other things, criminalises women who have been raped.  ActionAid India has provided micro-credit to women in fishing communities in tsunami affected areas.

We‘re redressing gender equality and changing the imbalances of power between men and women across all areas of our work.

We work on women’s rights with stand-alone programmes and also integrate it into all of our wider projects.

"Gender is not something we also do but at the heart of all that we do"

- (Salil Shetty, Former Chief Executive Officer, AAI)

 

The specific issues that we concentrate on in this theme are:

  • violence against women and girls
  • women in decision - making and leadership
  • women’s economic empowerment and economic justice

So we can tackle these issues, we support grassroots and national organisations to be articulate, accountable and powerful voices for concerns of women.

We’re campaigning to include women’s rights as a priority issue in key development policies and we’re advocating for spaces where the voices of women, particularly poor women, can be heard.

While we’re campaigning around violence against women and girls, we’re working together with The Ark Foundation to:

  • promote and protect the rights of women and girls
  • provide support to survivors of violence by meeting their immediate needs
  • counsel to alleviate trauma of violence

We’re also working with Abantu for Development to promote women’s leadership and decision-making, and to strengthen their contribution to policy-making and national structures.

Another partner, Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF) works under the sub-theme Women and Economic Justice and Empowerment to promote and protect the rights of women. This programme aims to:

  • strengthen legal rights programmes for women at the local, regional and national levels
  • provide assistance and training to groups for the development of legal literacy programmes, educational materials, lobbying, and mobilisation and network strategies.

By partnering with these organisations, we can support the collective power of women and girls to advocate for their rights, as well as challenging the policies, customs and laws and practices that hold back women and girls.

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