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Priority Areas

Supporting feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements to thrive, to be a driving force in challenging systems of oppression, and to co-create feminist realities.

Building Feminist Economies

Building Feminist Economies is about creating a world with clean air to breath and water to drink, with meaningful labour and care for ourselves and our communities, where we can all enjoy our economic, sexual and political autonomy.


In the world we live in today, the economy continues to rely on women’s unpaid and undervalued care work for the profit of others. The pursuit of “growth” only expands extractivism - a model of development based on massive extraction and exploitation of natural resources that keeps destroying people and planet while concentrating wealth in the hands of global elites. Meanwhile, access to healthcare, education, a decent wage and social security is becoming a privilege to few. This economic model sits upon white supremacy, colonialism and patriarchy.

Adopting solely a “women’s economic empowerment approach” is merely to integrate women deeper into this system. It may be a temporary means of survival. We need to plant the seeds to make another world possible while we tear down the walls of the existing one.


We believe in the ability of feminist movements to work for change with broad alliances across social movements. By amplifying feminist proposals and visions, we aim to build new paradigms of just economies.

Our approach must be interconnected and intersectional, because sexual and bodily autonomy will not be possible until each and every one of us enjoys economic rights and independence. We aim to work with those who resist and counter the global rise of the conservative right and religious fundamentalisms as no just economy is possible until we shake the foundations of the current system.


Our Actions

Our work challenges the system from within and exposes its fundamental injustices:

  • Advance feminist agendas: We counter corporate power and impunity for human rights abuses by working with allies to ensure that we put forward feminist, women’s rights and gender justice perspectives in policy spaces. For example, learn more about our work on the future international legally binding instrument on “transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights” at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

  • Mobilize solidarity actions: We work to strengthen the links between feminist and tax justice movements, including reclaiming the public resources lost through illicit financial flows (IFFs) to ensure social and gender justice.

  • Build knowledge: We provide women human rights defenders (WHRDs) with strategic information vital to challenge corporate power and extractivism. We will contribute to build the knowledge about local and global financing and investment mechanisms fuelling extractivism.

  • Create and amplify alternatives: We engage and mobilize our members and movements in visioning feminist economies and sharing feminist knowledges, practices and agendas for economic justice.


“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”.

Arundhati Roy, War Talk

Related Content

Riham Al-Bader

Riham was a lawyer and activist committed to monitoring rights violations in Yemen.

She worked with other activists to supply civilians trapped by Houthi militias in the outskirts of the city of Taiz with food and water.

Riham was killed in February 2018 and it is unconfirmed whether she was killed by a sniper or hit by an aircraft. Nobody has been held accountable for her murder. 


 

Riham Al Bader, Yemen

ما هي لغات المنتدى؟

لغات العمل في جمعية حقوق المرأة في التنمية هي الإنجليزية والفرنسية والإسبانية. ستتم إضافة اللغة التايلاندية كلغة محلية، بالإضافة إلى لغة الإشارة وإجراءات الاتصال الأخرى. يمكن إضافة لغات أخرى إذا سمح التمويل بذلك، لذا تحقق/ي مرة أخرى بانتظام للحصول على التحديثات. نحن نهتم بالعدالة اللغوية وسنحاول تضمين أكبر عدد ممكن من اللغات بقدر ما تسمح به مواردنا. نأمل في خلق فرص متعددة للكثيرين/ات منا للتواجد بلغاتنا والتواصل مع بعضنا البعض.

Florence Adong-Ewoo

Florence was a disability rights activist who worked with several disabled women’s organizations in Uganda.

She also held the position of Chairperson of the Lira District Disabled Women Association, as well as the Lira District Women Councilors’ caucus. Trained as a counsellor for persons with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities, she supported many projects that called for greater representation of persons with disabilities.

She died of a motorcycle accident. 


 

Florence Adong-Ewoo, Uganda
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Tributo: Recordamos a lxs activistas feministas que cambiaron nuestro mundo
En esta galería en línea, rendimos homenaje a más de 450 valientes feministas y activistas de todas las regiones del mundo y 88 países que ya no están con nosotrxs.

Lxs traemos a todxs a nuestra memoria colectiva y llevamos su legado de lucha como nuestra antorcha en los movimientos feministas y por los derechos de las mujeres.

Usa los filtros para refinar tu búsqueda

كم تكلفة المشاركة؟

يرجى حساب تكاليف السفر إلى بانكوك، والإقامة والبدل اليومي، والتأشيرة، وأي احتياجات خاصة بإمكانية الوصول، والنفقات الطارئة، بالإضافة إلى رسوم التسجيل التي سيتم الإعلان عنها قريبًا. تتراوح أسعار الفنادق في منطقة سوكومفيت في بانكوك ما بين 50 دولارًا أمريكيًا إلى 200 دولار أمريكي في الليلة الواحدة في حالة حجز غرفة مزدوجة.

يحصل أعضاء جمعية حقوق المرأة في التنمية على خصم عند التسجيل، لذلك إذا لم تكن عضوًا/ة بعد، فإننا ندعوك إلى التفكير في أن تصبح عضوًا/ة والانضمام إلى مجتمعنا النسوي العالمي.

Sylvia Rivera

Sylvia Rivera was a civil rights activist, a transvestite and sex worker.

Known as the New York Drag queen of color, Silvia was fierce and tireless in her advocacy, in defense of those who  were marginalized and excluded as the “gay rights” movement mainstreamed in the United States in the early 1970’s.

In a well-known speech on Christopher Street Day in 1973, Sylvia, shouted through a crowd of LGBT community members: 

“You all tell me, go and hide my tail between my legs.
I will no longer put up with this shit.
I have been beaten.
I have had my nose broken.
I have been thrown in jail.
I have lost my job.
I have lost my apartment.
For gay liberation, and you all treat me this way?
What the fuck’s wrong with you all?
Think about that!” 

In 1969, at age 17, Silvia took part in the iconic Stonewall Riots by allegedly throwing the second Molotov cocktail to protest the police raid of the gay bar in Manhattan. She continued to be a central figure in the uprisings that followed, organizing rallies and fighting back police brutality.

In 1970, Sylvia worked together with Marsha P. Johnson to establish Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a political collective and organisation that would set up projects of mutual support for trans people living on the streets, those struggling with drug addiction and in prisons and in particular for trans people of color and those living in poverty. 

Defiant of labels, Silvia lived life in a way that challenged people in the gay liberation movement to think differently. She said: 

“I left home at age 10 in 1961. I hustled on 42nd Street. The early 60s was not a good time for drag queens, effeminate boys or boys that wore makeup like we did. Back then we were beat up by the police, by everybody. I didn't really come out as a drag queen until the late 60s. when drag queens were arrested, what degradation there was. I remember the first time I got arrested, I wasn't even in full drag. I was walking down the street and the cops just snatched me. People now want to call me a lesbian because I'm with Julia, and I say, "No. I'm just me. I'm not a lesbian." I'm tired of being labeled. I don't even like the label transgender. I'm tired of living with labels. I just want to be who I am. I am Sylvia Rivera. 

Through her activism and courage, Sylvia offered a mirror that reflected all that was wrong within society, but also the possibility of transformation. Sylvia was born in 1951 and passed away in 2002. 

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The Feminist Film Club

As part of AWID’s Feminist Realities journey, we invite you to explore our newly launched Feminist Film Club: a collection of short and feature films selected by feminist curators and storytellers from around the world, including Jess X. Snow (Asia/Pacific), Gabrielle Tesfaye (Africa/African Diaspora), and Esra Ozban (South West Asia, North Africa). Alejandra Laprea is curating the Latin & Central American program, which we’ll launch in September during AWID’s Crear, Résister, Transform: A Festival for Feminist Movements. In the meantime, look out for announcements on special films screenings and conversations with filmmakers!

هل هناك مواضيع ذات الخطوط الحمراء التي يجب علينا تجنب تقديمها؟

لقد كان منتدى جمعية حقوق المرأة في التنمية دائمًا مساحة لا تخجل من النقاشات الصعبة والمطلوبة بشدة. نحن نرحب بهذه المشاركات عندما يتمكن المنظمون/ات بعناية من توفير الاحترام والأمان في المساحة للمشاركين/ات.

Laurie Carlos

Laurie Carlos was an actor, director, dancer, playwright, and poet in the United States. An extraordinary artist and visionary with powerful ways of bringing the art out in others. 

“Laurie walked in the room (any room/every room) with swirling clairvoyance, artistic genius, embodied rigor, fierce realness—and a determination to be free...and to free others. A Magic Maker. A Seer. A Shape Shifter. Laurie told me once that she went inside people’s bodies to find what they needed.” - Sharon Bridgforth 

She combined performance styles such as rhythmic gestures and text. Laurie mentored new actors, performers, writers and helped amplify their work through Naked Stages, a fellowship for emerging artists. She was an artistic fellow at Penumbra Theater and supported with identifying scripts to produce, with a goal of “bringing more feminine voices into the theater”. Laurie was also a member of Urban Bush Women, a renowned contemporary dance company telling stories of women of the African diaspora.

In 1976, as Lady in Blue, she made her Broadway debut in Ntozake Shange’s original and award-winning production of the poetic drama For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. Laurie’s own works include White Chocolate, The Cooking Show, and Organdy Falsetto

“I tell the stories in the movement—the inside dances that occur spontaneously, as in life—the music and the text. If I write a line, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a line that is spoken; it can be a line that’s moved. A line from which music is created. The gesture becomes the sentence. So much of who we are as women, as people, has to do with how we gesture to one another all the time, and particularly through emotional moments. Gesture becomes a sentence or a state of fact. If I put on a script ‘four gestures,’ that doesn’t mean I’m not saying anything; that means I have opened it up for something to be said physically.” Laurie Carlos

Laurie was born and grew up in New York City, worked and lived in Twin Cities. She passed away on 29 December 2016, at the age of 67, after a battle with colon cancer.



Tributes:  

“I believe that that was exactly Laurie’s intention. To save us. From mediocrity. From ego. From laziness. From half-realized art making. From being paralyzed by fear.
Laurie wanted to help us Shine fully.
In our artistry.
In our Lives.” - Sharon Bridgforth for Pillsbury House Theatre

“There’s no one that knew Laurie that wouldn’t call her a singular individual. She was her own person. She was her own person, her own artist; she put the world as she knew it on stage with real style and understanding, and she lived her art.” - Lou Bellamy, Founder of Penumbra Theater Company, for Star Tribune 

Read a full Tribute by Sharon Bridgforth

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ماذا عن التأشيرات؟

نحن ندرك تمامًا العقبات العملية والضغوط العاطفية المرتبطة بالسفر الدولي، وخاصة من الجنوب العالمي. تعمل جمعية حقوق المرأة في التنمية مع TCEB (مكتب تايلاند للمؤتمرات والمعارض) لدعم المشاركين/ات في المنتدى في الحصول على التأشيرات. سيتم توفير المزيد من المعلومات حول هذه المساعدة للحصول على التأشيرة عند التسجيل، بما في ذلك معلومات الاتصال الخاصة بمكان وكيفية التقديم.

English article

English article created from Spanish site

Esther Mwikali

Esther Mwikali’s home was in Mithini village, Murang’a County, Kenya. A prominent and valued land rights activist, she looked into abuses against squatters who are living on land claimed by tycoons. The investigation Esther was part of also involved land rights’ violations in Makuyu by powerful individuals.

After failing to attend a village meeting, a search party went looking for Esther. On 27 August 2019, two days after her disappearance, her body was found on a farm near her homestead, displaying signs of torture. She was brutally murdered. 

“Esther was renowned for her work to prevent community members being evicted from land claimed by tycoons. Local activists had no doubt her murder was related to the area’s ongoing land struggles, a tragic reminder of the alarming regularity with which extra-judicial killings are routinely carried out in Kenya,” - Global Witness Report, July 2020

“We associate Mwikali’s death with land struggles around here. We are asking the Government to investigate the matter without delay.” - James Mburu, spokesperson for the squatters

“Action should be taken on individuals who are alleged to have threatened the squatters including Mwikali's family.” - Alice Karanja, National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders

“The impact of her work and tenacity will remain alive in Kenya for decades. CJGEA consoles with the bereaved and it calls for justice.” - Center for Justice and Governmental Action (CJGEA) Press Release, 13 September 2019

CFA 2023 - breadcrumbs Menu _ FAQ-thai

2. Frame your research

A framework for your research will guide throughout your research process, and the framing document you develop can also serve as a concept note to advisors and partners, and a funding proposal to potential donors.

Before conducting any research:

Your research framing may evolve over time as you refine your questions and gather new information. However, building an initial research framing will allow you to work from a solid foundation.


Goals

To create a strong foundation for your WITM research, it is important to clarify what you hope to accomplish.

For example, one goal of AWID’s WITM global research was to provide rigorous data to prove what we already knew anecdotally: that women’s rights organizations are discrepantly underfunded. With this data, we felt we would be better positioned to influence funders in their decision-making.

Your goals could be to:

  • Generate hard data on funding realities and trends to prove or disprove existing myths.
  • Gain deeper insight into differences between the perspectives of donors and women’s rights organizations.
  • Influence donors in grant-making.
  • Add crucial input to key funding debates.
  • Explore collaboration between donors and women’s rights organizations on issues that emerge from the research.

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Key questions

Frame your research process with key questions that only your research can answer and limit those questions to a specific time frame (e.g. past five years, past year, etc.).

Consider the following points:

  • What exactly do you want to learn more about and what is the hypothesis you would like to test? Writing this out will assist you in your thought process.
  • Is there existing research on this? If research already exists, it may not make sense to conduct new WITM research unless you feel like the existing research is not extensive or specific enough.  
  • What time frame do you want to cover in your analysis? For example, will your research analyze only the past year, or several previous years, such as the past five years?
  • Are you planning to repeat your survey to collect data in the future?

Choosing a specific timeframe for your research can result in more precise findings than working with an open-ended timeframe. Also, deciding whether you will repeat this research at regular intervals will allow you to set up data collection benchmarks for easy replication and comparison over time.

These were the key questions that guided AWID’s WITM research process:

  • What is the current state of women’s organizations’ financial sustainability across the world?
  • What external and internal trends are impacting donors’ funding decisions to support women’s organizations and movements?

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Type of data

Now that you determined your key questions, you can determine what kind of data will help you answer your key questions. This will allow you to plan the rest of your schedule for your WITM research.

For example, will you conduct a survey that covers an extensive portion of your priority population? Will you analyze the applications that funders are receiving from a certain region? Will you also conduct interviews (recommended)? By determining the types of data you need, you can reach out to external parties who will provide this data early on, and plot out your full schedule accordingly. Some suggested sources of data could be:

  • Surveys you create for women’s rights organizations and donors
  • Application and grantmaking data from donors funding cycles
  • Interviews of prominent activists, organizations, and donors
  • Donor data from membership organizations and networks, such as  the Foundation Center, regional or national donor affinity groups.

Diverse data sets are a great way to create robust and rich analysis.

The data from AWID’s 2011 Global Survey formed the backbone of our analysis in Watering the Leaves, Starving the Roots report. However, we also collected data from interviews and interactions with several actors in the field, ranging from donors to activists and women’s rights organizations.

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Final products

In addition to allowing you to set your schedule, creating an initial plan of what products you will develop will also allow you to work out what resources you need.

For example, will you only produce a long research report or will you also create infographics, brochures and presentations? Depending on your products, you may need to hire a design firm, plan events and so on.

These products will also be the tools you use to achieve your goals, so it is important to keep those goals in mind. For example, is your WITM research exclusively intended as an advocacy tool to influence funders? In that case, your products should allow you to engage with funders at a deep level.

 Some sample products:

  • Long report for dissemination with key funders and organizations.
    Historically, AWID WITM research has centered on a long report, from which AWID distilled other smaller products  - see rest of list.
  • Infographic for viral distribution online
  • Short animation demonstrating key findings
  • Short brochure(s) distilling your findings and messages
  • Articles and blog posts on key findings to draw interest to your larger report
  • Seminars or webinars presenting key findings.

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Conclusion: Framing your research will give you the big picture

Framing your research to cover goals, key questions, types of data, and final products will allow you to create a well-planned schedule, prepare your resources in advance, and plan a realistic budget.

This will make interactions with external partners easier and allow you to be nimble when unexpected setbacks occur.


Previous step

1. Gather your resources

Next step

3. Design your survey

 


Estimated time:

• 1 month

People needed:

• 1 or more Research person(s)

Resources available:

AWID Research Framing: sample 1
AWID Research Framing: sample 2


Previous step

1. Gather your resources

Next step

3. Design your survey


Ready to Go? Worksheet

Download the toolkit in PDF

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Snippet - WITM Who should - EN

Who should take this survey*?

The survey is for groups, organizations and movements working specifically or primarily for the rights of women, LBTQI+ people and on gender justice in all contexts, at all levels, and in all regions. If this is one of the core pillars of your group, collective, network or any other type of organization - whether registered or not, newly formed or long-standing, we invite you to take this survey.

Girl in a jacket

*At this time, we are not asking for responses from individuals or funders.

Learn more about the survey:
Consult the F.A.Q.