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PrintGender and basic rights
We work with marginalised people, particularly women and girls, to ensure they have access to education. Here students at Nong Por Village Primary School in Laos study geography in one of the classrooms Oxfam Australia helped to build. Photo: Jerry Galea/Oxfam AUS
The right to basic services
Access to education and health care is a basic human right. Education is essential for achieving equality and development, as it enables people to shape their own destiny. It is well documented that education for girls and women results in lower child and maternal mortality rates, reduced fertility rates, higher productivity and improved environmental management. All these factors can help lead to greater gender equality, faster economic growth and wider distribution of the benefits of growth.
Oxfam Australia has worked in formal (school-based) education in countries including Papua New Guinea, as well as informal education, such as literacy training for women in Bangladesh.
One health issue that is having great impact on women is the high incidence of HIV/AIDS in the developing world, largely the result of poverty. People in poor communities don't have access to health education, centres or facilities.
Women can be put at greater risk by the behaviour of their male partners, and often do not have equal power to negotiate safer sex, or access to resources such as female condoms. Oxfam Australia has worked in the primary health care movement in South and East Asia since the 1970s, and a number of regional teams now focus on HIV/AIDS.