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Women inspiring women
Download the book and enroll in the course
“Women inspiring women” is a book and a unique peer learning course, grounded in stories shared by 177 women on the frontlines of health and humanitarian action. They are sharing their experiences for their daughters and other young women.
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What’s in the book?
From a midwife in Burkina Faso working through conflict zones to a public health specialist in Pakistan navigating both gender expectations and religious contexts, these accounts demonstrate how women’s experiences in health and humanitarian work are shaped by multiple, overlapping factors—never by gender alone.
“Someday, you will write a similar letter to your own daughter saying, ‘Empowered women empower women’. Just like my grandmother did for me.”
Dr Faiza Rabbani, Public health specialist (MPH), Lahore District, Punjab Province, Pakistan
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What is different about this book?
Far from a simple collection of success stories, these narratives reveal how women navigate the complex intersections of gender, geography, resource limitations, culture, and professional hierarchies to create change in their communities.
Who should read Women inspiring women?
Everyone. Whether you’re a health worker seeking inspiration, an educator looking for authentic learning materials, or a policymaker committed to genuine inclusivity, this collection offers unfiltered access to the complex realities of women working to transform health systems from the inside out—in their own voices, on their own terms.
These are not just stories of individual resilience, but powerful testimonies to collective wisdom that crosses borders while honoring diverse contexts. Together, they form an invaluable resource for anyone committed to building health systems where all women can thrive, not despite their multiple identities, but because of them.
Gender is one of many lenses
What makes this collection stand out is its centering of voices typically analyzed rather than amplified. The women who speak aren’t subjects of study but creators of knowledge, experts whose insights emerge from lived experience at the nexus of caregiving, crisis response, and community building.
“Women Inspiring Women” challenges conventional approaches that isolate gender from other aspects of identity and context. It invites readers to see how the barriers and opportunities facing women health workers are influenced by intricate webs of social, economic, cultural, and geographical factors that cannot be disentangled.
Take the peer learning course based on the book
Learn from women all over the world
This course will help you chart your own path.
You will learn from women are nurses, midwives, doctors, and community health workers from many different backgrounds.
- They face different challenges based on being women, where they live, what language they speak, how much money they have, and whether they work in cities or villages.
- They share what they have learned with their daughters and other young women.
- Their stories show how all these parts of who they are affect their work and lives.
Who is this course for?
- Women who work in health centers, hospitals, or communities.
- Women who help during emergencies like floods or diseasae outbreaks.
- Women who work in places facing poverty and economic injustice.
- Women who must be both workers and take care of their families.
- Women from different backgrounds, religions, or economic situations.
Everyone is welcome to join the course
The course shares women's stories but everyone is welcome to join, learn, and participate. Everyone has something to learn from these diverse experiences. This includes:
- Men who want to support women in health work.
- People who teach or train health workers.
- Anyone interested in women's experiences in health work.
“In a world of war, disease, and a worsening climate, literacy is vital for the next generation of women and girls to make better choices concerning health, marriage, and income. Literacy is key in transforming households out of poverty, no matter who they are or where they are born.”
Hauwa Abbas, Public health specialist (MPH), Nigeria
Why join this course?
- Learn from women with different backgrounds - from indigenous villages in Guatemala to refugee camps in Burkina Faso
- See how women find strength even when they face discrimination for multiple reasons
- Connect with people from other countries who understand different parts of your challenges
- Find new ways to solve problems that consider all aspects of women's lives
- See how women from Africa, Asia, and Latin America are leading health and humanitarian work in different ways
- Join others who understand that women's experiences are shaped by many factors working together
- Share your own wisdom and learn from diverse perspectives
Join us to learn with women who are making a difference in health around the world.
Why is this course free?
Our approach centers women as knowledge creators and experts in their own right.
This Women Inspiring Women course is free because we believe the women from Africa, Asia, and Latin America who shared their stories should retain agency over their knowledge and experiences. Their wisdom is too valuable to put behind a paywall.
- We seek to elevate women's direct voices and experiences in all their complexity.
- We believe that meaningful equality requires moving beyond frameworks where gender is analyzed in isolation from other factors like ethnicity, disability, class, and geography that shape women's lived realities.
We invite donors and partners to support this and other initiatives that recognize women not just as subjects of gender analysis, but as leaders and teachers whose individual and collective voices deserve the widest possible audience.
About The Geneva Learning Foundation
The Geneva Learning Foundation is a Swiss non-profit that helps professionals, volunteers, and community members defy boundaries to learn from each other. Our peer learning approach is built on a simple idea: the nurse in rural Ghana and the midwife in Pakistan have valuable knowledge that deserves to be shared directly, not filtered or analyzed through external experts. We create practical digital spaces where women and men can connect and share solutions that work in their specific contexts—recognizing that their challenges are shaped by multiple factors including geography, resources, and local realities, not just gender. Instead of paid training programs that teach others to analyze gender, we build platforms where women and men speak for themselves, learn from peers facing similar challenges, and develop practical solutions that fit their unique circumstances. Our work in immunization, climate change, and humanitarian response shows that when we respect people as knowledge creators rather than just knowledge recipients and support both learning and action, more effective and inclusive health systems follow.