1.5 So what is change?

Yuli is a leader in the Indonesian Women with Disability Association and states that women with disabilities often face gender-based violence and many don’t know how to report the assault. Oxfam acknowledges the support of the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).

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Yuli is a leader in the Indonesian Women with Disability Association and states that women with disabilities often face gender-based ...

Here are some thoughts on what change is:

• Change comes in many guises and happens in many ways.
• Change is nearly always contested. Some people or institutions will support it, others will oppose.
• Change can be transformative when it challenges existing ways of doing things, or it can be incremental and piecemeal.
• Change can happen through strong and decisive leadership, or it can happen through shared interests and collective action.
• Change can appear to happen through luck, or a happy, or unhappy, accident.
• Change may be one small piece of a bigger picture where the long-term outcome may be unknown, and it may also involve one step forward and two steps back.
• Change can be scary. It is unpredictable and makes people feel insecure, even if those people stand to benefit from the change.
• Change does not affect all groups in the same way, and can be good for some while being less good (or bad) for others.
• Change can be highly beneficial, and it can be dangerous, putting certain groups at risk.
• Change can lead to a backlash, where individuals or institutions work to undermine a change achieved and try to restore the previous order of things.
• Change can be led from outside the community, often imposed from government or private companies, or it can come from within the community, from active people at the grassroots level.
• Change can be supported or opposed by governments or businesses, for good or for bad.
• Change can happen at different levels; at a personal level within ourselves, at a household level, community level, national level and global level.
• Change at a personal level can evoke strong feelings: fear, loss, anger, self-doubt, hope, joy, acceptance, solidarity.
• Change can be resisted by vested interests, which benefit from the status quo, but where outside interventions can loosen and overcome such resistance.
• Change can also be resisted by communities and disenfranchised groups, who consider it more of a threat than an opportunity.
• Change in some form is continuous and inevitable – even things that people consider to be immovable and fixed are always changing – culture, norms, beliefs and practices.
• Change can happen as the result of intentional action, and it can emerge in unplanned and unpredictable ways, with unintended consequences.
• Change often looks clear only in retrospect. While they’re happening, events are often confusing and contradictory.
• Change processes are seldom smooth – they often consist of long spells of stasis, punctuated by sudden spikes of good/bad change (‘windows of opportunity or threat’).