One World Action is committed to the principle of gender equity* and seeks to make it alive in all areas of our work.
Political commitment
- We believe that women are disproportionately represented among the poor, most marginalised, and oppressed in the world.
- We recognise that women are not a homogenous group and that gender discrimination is often compounded by other axes of discrimination such as class, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation.
- We recognise the pluralism and diversity of women.
- We believe that women are active agents of change. We see women as `makers’ of their empowerment rather than `takers’.
- We will challenge policies and practices that make and keep women poor, marginalised and oppressed.
- We will strive to be a dynamic and learning organisation that places women’s empowerment at the heart of our work.
Policy/programmes goals
We will work with partners who share our vision for a gender just and equal world.
We will support organisations run by and for women.
We will ensure that our policy priorities reflect our partner’s experiences in working on gender equality and women’s rights.
We will promote a stronger understanding of the links between gender and good governance for us and our partners.
We will endeavour to secure resources to support our partners work on gender and women’s rights, including training programmes and public campaign work.
We will engage with women’s movements, organisations and networks North and South to strengthen our work on women’s empowerment.
Communications and fundraising
- We will challenge language that normalises women’s oppression and reinforces sexist and patriarchal stereotypes.
- We will promote women as active agents for change and avoid using negative stereotyped images of women and girls in fundraising materials.
Institutional
- We will ensure coherence between and among all our human resources policies – disability, diversity, gender, equal opportunities, health and safety, grievance.
- We will ensure that appropriate gender competencies are built into our job descriptions across the organisation.
- We will actively promote our gender commitment through recruitment, selection, induction and appraisal processes.
Implementation and accountability
- We will ensure that all staff understand the gender policy and have appropriate tools to implement it in their sphere of work.
- All staff will be responsible for reflecting One World Action’s values on gender equality and equity in their attitudes and actions.
- The Director will be responsible for ensuring implementation of the policy across the organisation.
- The policy will be reviewed annually to ensure that it is relevant and reflects progressive debate on gender equality and women’s rights.
October 2006
* Gender equity is the process of being fair to men and women. To ensure fairness, measures must often be put in place to compensate for the historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and men form operating on a level playing field. Gender equality means that women and men have equal conditions for realising their full human rights and for contributing to, and befitting from economic, social, cultural and political development. Equity is the means, equality is the result. UNESCO 2003.