#8 Women at the Heart of Fair Trade
This session is built around a photo exhibition by Oxfam Magasins du Monde, created as part of its 2025–2026 adult education campaign. The exhibition explores gender-specific challenges and shows how Fair Trade can be a lever for women’s empowerment. At a time when women’s rights are increasingly being called into question around the world, it celebrates those who work every day to defend dignity, equality and social justice. Step into twenty personal stories, twenty women’s perspectives that reveal the often-unseen faces of Fair Trade.
Bridging India and Belgium, the exhibition highlights the diversity of women’s roles within this solidarity-based economy: craftswomen, directors, logistics specialists, volunteers and more. These paired portraits embody the collective strength of thousands of women committed to a fairer, more humane economy. Beyond stereotypes, discover how Fair Trade can be a pathway to empowerment, and what it tells us about gender-related challenges in our societies.
Expert guides will take you through the exhibition.
Afterwards, you’ll have the opportunity to join a dialogue with women fair traders from Bangladesh and Cameroon.
Mrs. Akono Mbida Jeannette Essono is an entrepreneur and artisan actively involved in promoting local products and fair trade initiatives in Ebolowa, Cameroon. A former employee of Camair, she turned to agriculture and cocoa processing in 2005.
Today, she develops several cocoa-based and locally sourced products while supporting producers through a Common Initiative Group (GIC) and a cooperative she helped establish. Strongly engaged in the Ebolowa Fair Trade Territory initiative, she works to promote women’s empowerment, local processing, and a more sustainable and inclusive economy.
The director of CORR-The Jute Works. This NGO was founded after the 1971 War of Independence in Bangladesh, to improve the living conditions of women who had been victims of the war and who were mostly living in disadvantaged rural areas. The organisation has enabled these women to engage in income-generating activities from home, and to develop their skills and independence. Originally, the craftswomen worked exclusively with jute (a very strong plant fibre, grown mainly in India and Bangladesh). Today, the workshops have diversified their activities and use a wide range of different natural fibres.
CORR-The Jute Works is a registered Fair Trade Trust of producing and marketing handicrafts. It is also a pioneer member of World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO).