Salwa Bugaighis
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Snippet - Join CSW69 Conversations Intro_EN
Join us through the #FreezeFascisms conversations!
As we navigate the global polycrisis, movements are tirelessly building power beyond traditional power structures. The wave of US presidential executive orders is intended to scare us, but no amount of fascist ideology can erase our existence and resistance.
We invite you to be a part of the solidarity-building campaign to expose and resist fascist forces undermining feminist and gender justice movements in your contexts!
- Spark conversations in a brave space: Share stories of struggles and resistance to fascisms in your contexts on the AWID Community Platform. Not a member yet? Join here
- Support movements that have been impacted: Amplify fundraisers, resourcing opportunities, mutual aid efforts using the #FreezeFascisms (we’re still on X, Instagram, LinkedIN, and we’re also on Bluesky)
- Organize around alternatives: We’ve been building our community of practice on feminist economic alternatives & autonomous resourcing. Sign up to be part of it here.
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مستشفى
ترجمة مارينا سمير
«الآن قد يكون وقتًا مناسبًا لإعادة التفكير في الشكل الذي يمكن للثورة أن تتّخذه. ربما لن تبدو كمسيرةٍ من الأجساد الغاضبة والقادرة في الشوارع. ربما ستبدو وكأنّ العالم واقفٌ في ثباتٍ لأن جميع الأجساد الموجودة فيه منهَكة – حيثُ أنّه يجب إعطاء الأولوية للرعاية قبل فوات الأوان».
- جوانا هيدفا
المستشفيات مؤسسات، ومواقع حيّة للرأسمالية، وما يحدث عندما يكون من المفترض أن يستريح شخصٌ ما ليس إلّا نموذجاً مصغّراً من النظام الأكبر. تَعمَد المؤسسات إلى فصلنا عن أنظمة رعايتنا – نَجِد أنفسنا معزولين في بُنى تراتبية راسخة، وغالبًا ما نشعر وكأنّ الرعاية هي شيء يُفعَل بنا بدلاً من أن تكون شيئًا يُعطى ويؤخَذ كجزء من محادثة. الرعاية المؤسسية معزولة بسبب اندماجها في الطلب الرأسمالي: شخص واحد يعالج رِجلك ورِجلك فقط، شخص آخر يعالج ضغط الدم وهكذا.
المستشفيات مؤسسات، ومواقع حيّة للرأسمالية، وما يحدث عندما يكون من المفترض أن يستريح شخصٌ ما ليس إلّا نموذجاً مصغّراً من النظام الأكبر. تَعمَد المؤسسات إلى فصلنا عن أنظمة رعايتنا – نَجِد أنفسنا معزولين في بُنى تراتبية راسخة، وغالبًا ما نشعر وكأنّ الرعاية هي شيء يُفعَل بنا بدلاً من أن تكون شيئًا يُعطى ويؤخَذ كجزء من محادثة. الرعاية المؤسسية معزولة بسبب اندماجها في الطلب الرأسمالي: شخص واحد يعالج رِجلك ورِجلك فقط، شخص آخر يعالج ضغط الدم وهكذا.
اضطرّت المصوّرة مريم مكيوي لإجراء عملية جراحية الشهر الماضي، ووثّقت هذا المسار. صورها للبيئات المعقّمة بألوانها الباهتة – أضواء نيون بيضاء وصفوف تلو صفوف من التكوينات المتكرّرة – تعكس مكانًا استُنزفت منه الحياة والحركة. كانت هذه إحدى الطرق التي حافظت بها مريم على بقاء روحها. لقد كان أحد أشكال الاحتجاج من داخل حدود مؤسسةٍ كان عليها التعامل معها.
تُشكّل الصور وصفًا لشيءٍ واهنٍ بشدّة، فمشاهدة شخصٍ ما وهو يعايش انهيار جسده هو دائمًا تذكير جليل بهشاشتنا. إنه أيضًا تذكير بهشاشة أنظمة الرعاية هذه، والتي قد تُمنَع عنّا لأسباب متعدّدة – بدايةً من عدم امتلاك الأموال وصولًا إلى عدم التواجد في جسدٍ يُعتبَر ذا قيمة كافية، فربما يكون أنثويًا أكثر مما ينبغي أو كويريًا أكثر مما ينبغي أو ملوَّنًا أكثر مما ينبغي.
الرعاية الانفرادية والمجرّدة من جوهرها والتي قد تُسلَب منّا في أي لحظة لا تساعدنا على الازدهار. وهي مختلفة تمامًا عن الطريقة التي يسلكها البشر عند رعاية بعضهم البعض. كم سيبدو عالمنا مختلفًا إذا التزمنا بتفكيك الهياكل الرأسمالية الحالية حول صحّتنا؟ كيف سيبدو إذا أعَدنا تخيُّلَه بشكل جذريّ؟
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Find AWID staff at these partners' events!
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حلقة نقاش | النسوية “غير” الشاملة: فتيات بلا صوت في الحركة النسوية الهايتية
مع نايكي ليدان وفيدورا بيير-لوي
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Type of funder:
Filter your search by funders from different sectors i.e., philanthropic foundations, multilateral funders, women’s and feminist funds
#4 - Sexting like a feminist Tweets Snippet AR
ان كنت نسوية عن حق، فإنك سترفضين التحقير الموجّه ضد الممارسات الجنسية الغرائبيّة
تَلفَزَتُنا للثورة تحت حزامك مشروطة بطبيعة رغباتك
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Type of funding:
Be it core funding, programmes & projects or rapid response/ emergency grants.
Add your own propositions
Please take a look at the existing propositions for inspiration before submitting your own idea. Someone might already be thinking along the same lines! Send your proposition to contribute@awid.org.
We will review and include new propositions on this webpage as they come.
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$2.7 trillion for the military. $300 billion for climate justice. We're here to flip the script.
Get started with these resources.
COP30 Political Education Toolbox Play the Climate Justice Organizing Deckgame
Read the Feminist Economic Alternatives Brief Download the Climate Justice Zine
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📚 Political Education Toolbox
Expose corporate capture. Understand false solutions. Build alternatives. Everything you need to run your own "Whose COP Is It?" campaign.
Memory as Resistance: A Tribute to WHRDs no longer with us
AWID’s Tribute is an art exhibition honouring feminists, women’s rights and social justice activists from around the world who are no longer with us.
In 2020, we are taking a turn
This year’s tribute tells stories and shares narratives about those who co-created feminist realities, have offered visions of alternatives to systems and actors that oppress us, and have proposed new ways of organising, mobilising, fighting, working, living, and learning.
49 new portraits of feminists and Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) are added to the gallery. While many of those we honour have passed away due to old age or illness, too many have been killed as a result of their work and who they are.
This increasing violence (by states, corporations, organized crime, unknown gunmen...) is not only aimed at individual activists but at our joint work and feminist realities.
The stories of activists we honour keep their legacy alive and carry their inspiration forward into our movements’ future work.
The portraits of the 2020 edition are designed by award winning illustrator and animator, Louisa Bertman.
AWID would like to thank the families and organizations who shared their personal stories and contributed to this memorial. We join them in continuing the remarkable work of these activists and WHRDs and forging efforts to ensure justice is achieved in cases that remain in impunity.
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” - Mexican Proverb
The Tribute was first launched in 2012
It took shape with a physical exhibit of portraits and biographies of feminists and activists who passed away at AWID’s 12th International Forum, in Turkey. It now lives as an online gallery, updated every year.
To date, 467 feminists and WHRDs are featured.
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Sakine Cansiz
Rosa Helena Bernal Pinto
2019: Feminist Realities in a changing world
AWID began preparing this annual report just as the global pandemic began to unravel how we gather, organize and live our lives. It is impossible to review what we have done without COVID-19 tinting our assessment.
Download the full 2019 Annual review
Co-Creating Feminist Realities is no longer just an AWID Forum theme - it is a rallying cry in response to a pandemic that has laid bare the failures of social, political and economic systems.
It is an urgently needed affirmation that there are other, more just ways of organizing our lives. During 2019 hundreds of groups shared their experiences and proposals for feminist realities with us, ranging from radical networks of community support in Latin America facilitating self-managed abortion, to practices of community-centered economies in Indonesia and community-centered food systems in India and the US, to a re-imagination and new practice of harm-free rites of passage in Sierra Leone. These are the experiences that will chart a path forward for a “new normal”.
Yet long histories of oppression and violence can make it difficult to imagine the possible. A key part of our work in 2019 was to spark these explorations through a toolkit AWID launched to support groups interested in unearthing the stories and aspirations that are the building blocks of feminist propositions.
While we focus on our proposals for a different world, we recognize the challenging context around us.
Through the Observatory on the Universality of Rights, Feminists for a Binding Treaty, Count Me In! and other alliances, AWID has continued to push back against unfettered corporate power and fascist and fundamentalist agendas that undermine women’s rights and gender justice. With dim prospects for transformative change through multilateral processes and limited responsiveness from most states, we are redoubling our efforts to ensure that feminist movements, in all their diversity, are resourced in ways that match the critical roles they play - supporting their communities, demanding rights and responding to crises. In 2019 we introduced feminist principles and approaches to ground-breaking funds like the Spotlight Initiative and the Equality Fund, and succeeded in leveraging resources through feminist reality seed grant funding from feminist funders.
As we look ahead, it is clear that the context is calling for a transformation of our organizing strategies:
- we are learning to navigate global advocacy confined to online channels,
- we grapple with the uncertainty of when and how we can convene in person, and
- we use the tools at our disposal to tighten connections across local to global spheres.
AWID is embarking on a new membership model that lowers barriers to access and emphasizes opportunities for engagement and cross-member connection. We will continue to experiment with different online tools and processes for building community. Cross-movement engagement will stay at the center of our work. AWID’s actions in solidarity with oppressed movements and identities, even and especially where these are marginalized in feminist movements, are important to drive change and support broad and inclusive movements for all.
Crisis is not new to feminist and social movements.
We are resilient, we adapt, and we show up for each other. And we have to keep doing better. Thank you to all who are part of the journey with us.
Download the full 2019 Annual review
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Margo Okazawa-Rey
Biography
Margo Okazawa-Rey is an activist-educator and transnational feminist working on issues of militarism for nearly 30 years. She is a founder member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, the US group of the Network. She has long-standing activist commitments with Du Re Bang/My Sisters Place in South Korea and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling in Palestine. She also serves on the International Board of PeaceWomen Across the Globe in Bern, Switzerland and is President of the Board of Directors of Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). Her foundational activist/life principle is that love is a radical act. She is also known as DJ MOR Love and Joy.
Position
President
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Izabela Jaruga Nowacka
Eni Lestari
Biography
Eni Lestari is an Indonesian domestic worker in Hong Kong and a migrant rights activist. After escaping her abusive employer, she transformed herself from a victim into an organizer for domestic workers in particular, and migrant workers in general. In 2000, she founded the Association of Indonesian Migrant Workers (ATKI-Hong Kong) which later expanded to Macau, Taiwan, and Indonesia. She was the coordinator and the one of the spokesperson of the Asia Migrants Coordinating Body (AMCB) - an alliance of grassroots migrants organisations in Hong Kong coming from Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Nepal and Sri Lanka. She is also the current chairperson of International Migrants Alliance, the first-ever global alliance of grassroots migrants, immigrants, refugees, and other displaced people.
She has held important positions in various organizations including and current Regional Council member of Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), former Board Member of Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), spokesperson for Network of Indonesian Migrant Workers (JBMI), advisor for ATKI-Hong Kong and Macau as well as the Association of Returned Migrants and Families in Indonesia (KABAR BUMI). She has been an active resource person in forums organized by academics, interfaith groups, civil societies, trade unions and many others at national, regional, and international arenas.
She has actively participated in United Nations assemblies/conferences on development and migrants’ rights and was chosen as a speaker at the opening of the UN General Assembly on Large Movement of Migrants and Refugees in 2016 in New York City, USA. She received nominations and awards such as Inspirational Women by BBC 100 Women, Public Hero Award by RCTI, Indonesian Club Award, and Non-Profit Leader of Women of Influence by American Chamber Hong Kong, and Changemaker of Cathay Pacific.
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