Transformative leadership for women’s rights in Africa: Learning from Oxfam’s work

Abstract

abstractThis 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.