Last March 10, 2025, Oxfam Pilipinas brought together advocates, policymakers, and community leaders for a powerful discussion on gender justice, sexual and reproductive health, and women’s rights in the Philippines. The event, themed “Personal to Powerful: Our Power to Act,” highlighted the urgent need to protect bodily autonomy and push back against rising threats to gender equality.
As part of the celebration, Oxfam launched “SHE Rises: Stories of Change from People and Communities of the Sexual Health and Empowerment Project,” a collection of real-life narratives showcasing grassroots efforts to advance reproductive health and rights. Additionally, Oxfam’s latest global briefing paper, “Personal to Powerful,” was unveiled, outlining key challenges and solutions in the fight for gender justice.
With the 2025 midterm elections approaching, this event will serve as a rallying call for stronger commitments from policymakers, institutions, and communities to uphold the rights and dignity of all individuals, especially women and marginalized groups.
Share your photos!
Capture the moment and show the world what change looks like! Share your photos of the event using the hashtags, #PersonalToPowerful and #OurPowerToAct.
Download the SHE RISES book
SHE Rises: Stories of Change from people and communities of the Sexual Health and Empowerment project captures the stories of change from the Sexual Health & Empowerment project. These are stories of women finding their strength, men becoming allies, youth leading change, and health providers embracing inclusive care under the project. It highlights communities challenging harmful norms and systems, demonstrating that meaningful change is possible.
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Read the Oxfam Briefing Paper “Personal to Powerful”
Thirty years on from the commitments enshrined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) this briefing reveals a picture of broken promises and unfulfilled ambition by States. This failure is not just due to a lack of political will, but also an economic system that is unequal by design. A range of right-wing, religious, and conservative actors around the world are capitalising on persistent crises, to reorient state power towards a reassertion of racist and sexist profit-driven systems that favours the wealthy, privileges men, and harms and disadvantages women and LGBTQIA+ people in the name of ‘traditional’ family values. This diminishes governments’ capacity to protect, respect, promote, and fulfil bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice. As world leaders prepare to review their commitments to the BPfA, the consolidation and mainstreaming of these anti-rights movements risk eroding the hard-won gains of feminist, LGBTQIA+ activists and movements, ultimately breaking the social contract between the state and people.
