What do we mean by marginalized girls and women?
All have agency over their lives and bodies, their voices become part of decision-making, and their equal role in society recognized.
A holistic and rights-based understanding of education is crucial in overcoming gender discrimination and reorienting education towards gender justice in society. Education has a potential that contributes specifically to the transformative leadership of women and gender justice.
While education can work as a catalyst for the empowerment and fulfilment of other rights, it has an even more powerful transformative effect in building the confidence, self-reliance and leadership of girls and women. Education can empower learners for active citizenship, allowing them to organize, challenge injustice and further develop their rights to gain political influence and social justice.
Oxfam and civil society partners engage in both programme and policy work with communities, stakeholders, education institutions and educators to influence decisions on 1) changing gender stereotypes, 2) eliminating violence and ensuring safety, and 3) challenging social, cultural and economic barriers in education and beyond.
At the community level, we engage with children, young women and men on gender equality and rights. This work includes creating school clubs for girls and adolescents, children’s parliaments and girls’ camps, to transform the ways young girls perceive themselves and ultimately provide them with the skills and confidence to stand up against abuse. The provision of intergenerational spaces and open dialogues allow girls and women to talk about sensitive issues (like sexual and reproductive health and rights) in safe and conducive environments, without shame and stigma. This is to generate reflection on discriminatory social norms and gender inequality, and to explore ways of shifting gender dynamics.
Discussions of barriers to the participation of girls and women in decision-making at home, in schools, communities and society at large is a key pathway to challenging systems that perpetuate those barriers. Our approach can reach the most marginalized girls and women, supporting them in knowing and exercising their rights and combating the inequity that they face.
Case Story
Mobilizing youth in Madrasas to end violence against women and girls in Bihar, India
In many parts of the world, violence against women is normalized and girls and women are treated as second class citizens worthy of less respect than men. However, these harmful misconceptions about and unjust treatment of women and girls can be changed through a community effort. Oxfam India have been working in the Bihar region with the women’s rights organization RAHAT (Rapid Action for Human Advancement Tradition) to address issues of gender discrimination and domestic violence.
To this end, Oxfam India and RAHAT have been working with village communities, religious leaders, children and young people in their educational institutions. They have been working with adolescent girls and boys in madrasas (an Islamic educational institution) since 2015 and have reached out to over 2000 children in the region. For example, sessions have been held every Sunday for the girls in the madrasas on gender discrimination and domestic violence. As Farzana Begum from RAHAT recalls, “These meetings were not mandatory for students, but they would come in droves for these sessions. During the meetings, discussions were held on education, health, gender-related issues, and violence against women and girls.” (p. 2).
Girls at the Jamia Aisha Ul-Islamia convene in large numbers to attend sessions on gender discrimination and domestic violence
In this way, young people are taught to question and challenge the many forms of violence against women in their home and in the community and provide them with a better vocabulary to speak up against injustice. Different aspects of what constitutes violence against women (not just physical – but also mental, sexual, or economical) were addressed by RAHAT’s councilors for the benefit of students and teachers to understand domestic violence in its many forms. As the meetings became regular, girls opened up about the cases they saw around them. The girls were encouraged to speak to their families and neighbors regarding violence against women and girls, not just with women but also men and boys.
“When we go back home, we discuss different types of domestic violence and avenues that can be used to end violence against women and girls. We speak to our families and women in the neighborhood. For women, domestic violence means physical violence. When they learnt about mental, sexual and economic violence, they started seeking help”
The effort to increase awareness about violence against women, and the availability of a councilors from RAHAT, has boosted the confidence of the girls to speak up against injustices and to demand better from their male family and community members. However, RAHAT also counselled boys in the boys’ madrasa on violence against women and harmful gender norms. As Farzana puts it,
“While it was important to address the issue of domestic violence among women and girls, it is essential to engage with men and boys. Violence against women and girls will not end unless everyone understands and accepts that this is wrong and completely unacceptable”
Several of the madrasas working with Oxfam India and RAHAT, 4 out of 10, have established a teacher-student committee at the school on issues related to gender discrimination and violence against women. These committees create awareness about problems, from physical violence in the neighborhood to sexual exploitation within the family, and provide solutions during the week until the weekly counsellor visited again.
The religious leaders, maulvis and ulemas, were invited by RAHAT to community meetings to orient them about violence against women and girls in its different manifestations and gender inequality.
Maulvis and Ulemas hold a session on gender discrimination at Darul Uloom Amjadiya Kadam Rasool, a madrasa for boys in Kishanganj
We hope that this case story has been useful in exemplifying how the education of community leaders and school children in gender discrimination and violence against women can lead to an increased awareness about but also action against gender injustices.