Her story matters.
We believe in the power of storytelling.
The Global Women’s Narratives Project
We want to end systemic harm to women worldwide. To this end, we gather and amplify women’s stories to drive change across war, health, law, religion, and human rights, dismantling harmful systems and fostering personal and collective healing.
The Problem We Face
Women's lived experiences remain significantly underrepresented in both policy development and research. This persistent gap in understanding creates serious blind spots in decision-making systems and policy agendas, including human rights mechanisms that fail to account for women’s realities. The consequences are far-reaching, undermining physical and mental health, security, and economic opportunity for half the global population. Our work directly addresses this gap by amplifying women’s narratives and generating evidence-based insights to inform policy, strengthen accountability, and advance women’s wellbeing and dignity.
What We Believe
GWNP’s Process
We want to end systemic harm to women worldwide. To this end, we gather and amplify women’s stories to drive change across war, health, law, religion, and human rights, dismantling harmful systems and fostering personal and collective healing. Through specialized training, we prepare individuals to bear witness and document these narratives with sensitivity, cultural awareness, and ethical care. These narratives collectively will inform region-specific practices, periodic reviews and UNHRC shadow reports, to drive meaningful new policy in war, health, law, religion, and human rights. Narratives are edited by our volunteer teams based in Oxford and Los Angeles and added to our web platform of women’s stories across themes and countries. The GWNP archival project is part of the primary mission of our parent nonprofit organization, the Oxford Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights (OI).
THEMES: WAR & PEACE | RELIGION | HEALTH | LIFE’S WORK | GBV | IDENTITY | WOMEN IN POLITICS
Our Team
The initiative is overseen with partners by a global advisory board. With editorial teams in Oxford and Los Angeles, the administration of the narratives project is managed by volunteer editors comprised primarily of teams of graduate students from the University of Oxford, Wellesley College, University of Southern California, University of California Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, and volunteers from around the world.
Our Partnerships
Our partners are connected to local nonprofits and universities in Oxford, the United States, Zimbabwe, Georgia, Brazil, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Ukraine, Greece, Ghana, Bosnia, and Ethiopia via our Advisory Board members. Our volunteer editorial teams work closely with the authors of the narratives over a multi-phased process. We have interviewed combatants, peace activists, religious leaders, rural coffee growers, former political prisoners, refugees, mothers, daughters, and politicians from the around the world.
We are pleased to share our recent project with UNESCO and the Institute of Social Ethics, University of Lucerne for Geneva Peace Week. GWNP Thembela Lubimbi participated from Zimbabwe. A special thank you to Dr. Evelyne Tauchnitz, our Advisory Board member from Oxford Global PeaceTech Project and Lucerne Graduate School in Ethics, and our UNESCO collaborators, Vincent Defourny and Edouard Joubeaud.
Danielle Perez, stand-up comedian and disabled woman, interviewed by Elisa D'Angelo in Los Angeles, CA.
Hillside in Bosnia where Lena Perenchio listened to six women's narratives about their lives and experiences during their war.
Tanvi Kodali, Wellesley student and GWNP senior editor, interviews Rohingya women refugees.