Anit-Racism Movement (ARM) / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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.
Around the world, feminist, women’s rights, and allied movements are confronting power and reimagining a politics of liberation. The contributions that fuel this work come in many forms, from financial and political resources to daily acts of resistance and survival.
AWID’s Resourcing Feminist Movements (RFM) Initiative shines a light on the current funding ecosystem, which range from self-generated models of resourcing to more formal funding streams.
Through our research and analysis, we examine how funding practices can better serve our movements. We critically explore the contradictions in “funding” social transformation, especially in the face of increasing political repression, anti-rights agendas, and rising corporate power. Above all, we build collective strategies that support thriving, robust, and resilient movements.
Our Actions
Recognizing the richness of our movements and responding to the current moment, we:
Create and amplify alternatives: We amplify funding practices that center activists’ own priorities and engage a diverse range of funders and activists in crafting new, dynamic models for resourcing feminist movements, particularly in the context of closing civil society space.
Build knowledge: We explore, exchange, and strengthen knowledge about how movements are attracting, organizing, and using the resources they need to accomplish meaningful change.
Advocate: We work in partnerships, such as the Count Me In! Consortium, to influence funding agendas and open space for feminist movements to be in direct dialogue to shift power and money.
Hevrin Khalaf was a prominent Syrian Kurdish political leader in the autonomous region of Rojava where Kurdish women are risking their lives to resist the Turkish offensive and build a feminist system.
She was Secretary-General of the Future Syria Party (FSP), a group that aimed to build bridges, reconcile different ethnic groups and work towards a “democratic, pluralistic, and decentralized Syria.”
Hevrin was a symbol of this reconciliation effort. She also worked to promote equality between women and men and was a representative for visiting journalists, aid workers, and diplomats.
Hevrin was also a civil engineer from Derik, and was one of the founders of the Foundation for Science and Free Thought in 2012.
On 12 October 2019 she was tortured and murdered by the Turkish-backed militia, Ahrar al-Sharqiya during a military operation against Syrian Democratic Forces in Rojava.
“The killing of Khalaf is a turning point in Syria’s modern history. It once again demonstrated the old Kurdish proverb “no friends but the mountains.” I will always be a friend of Khalaf and her vision of a better world.” - Ahed Al Hendi
Rosa Candida Mayorga Muñoz was a Guatemalan social worker, union leader and labor rights defender. She was affectionately called Rosita and she inspired change.
In the 1980’s, Rosa became the first female member of the Executive Committee of the Union of Workers of the Institute of National Electrification (STINDE), a union she first joined to advocate for women’s labor rights. For her, this meant fighting for equal opportunities in a company where many women faced a discriminatory and violent system created by company authorities. Rosa had also suffered sexual harassment in her workplace, both by co-workers and managers. She was not to be kept quiet though.
Rosa continued fighting and was part of the effort to mould the struggle into a more specific form, that of the INDE-STINDE Collective Pact of Working conditions. This pact was a pioneer, the first in Guatemala to typify the concept of (sexual) harassment. It serves as a reference for the Guatemalan legislation on labor matters and is an encouragement for other unions.
“She had no fighting tools other than her own ideals... Many times she was intimidated, harassed to put the fight aside, but her courage generated the image of hope for grassroots unionists. Rosita created an image of respect, not only within her union, but before the authorities of the institution, before the women's movement; she was recognized as a pioneer of the trade union women's movement, in a space that had been more dominated by men.” - Maritza Velasquez, ATRAHDOM
Rosa passed away on 4 April 2018 at the age of 77.
We are excited to share our new Strategic Plan (2023-2027) with the world. AWID will make an announcement to inform our community and members very soon.
The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) is a global, feminist, membership, movement-support organization.
For 40 years, AWID has been a part of an incredible ecosystem of feminist movements working to achieve gender justice and women’s human rights worldwide.
Our vision
GGAADD | Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) - modified
AWID envisions a world where feminist realities flourish, where resources and power are shared in ways that enable everyone, and future generations, to thrive and realize their full potential with dignity, love and respect, and where Earth nurtures life in all its diversity.
Our mission
Our mission is to support 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.
Our tactics
We advance our work through these tactics:
Influencing, advocacy and campaigning
We collaboratively leverage our access, power, resources and relationships to strategically influence policy and practice. We aim to advance feminist agendas through our work with policy makers, funders and activists in regional and global spaces. We also work to influence feminist and women’s rights movements to centre historically oppressed movements as part of efforts to strengthen our collective power and influence.
Convening and connecting
We use our convening power to facilitate dialogue and strategize on key issues. We connect our members and allies with one another, sharing and exchanging resources, ideas and action across relevant issues. We organize and facilitate spaces to strengthen and engage across movements, to imagine and envisage new futures, to develop effective influencing tactics and to co-create powerful agendas and processes.
Solidarity and bridge-building
We work to mobilize our members and the movements we support to strengthen collective action in solidarity with feminist causes and defenders at risk. We build partnerships, engage in active listening and ongoing, long-term, solidarity. We work with defenders to build a body of knowledge and support networks of solidarity on protection and wellbeing.
Arts and creative expression
We recognize the unique and strategic value of cultural and creative strategies in the struggle against oppression and injustice. We work with artists who centre feminist voices and the narratives of historically oppressed communities. In this emerging tactic, we see art and creative expression helping us envision a world where feminist realities continue to flourish and be celebrated.
Marcha da Mulheres negras - 2016
Our initiatives
Our initiatives work at the intersections of the sites of change we work to address, the movements we prioritize, and the tactics we use:
We monitor, document and make visible how anti-rights actors are operating and colluding in multilateral spaces and support feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements and allies to counter their influence and impact.
Working on extractivism, tax justice and corporate accountability, we build knowledge on corporate power and influence; advocate for corporate accountability and equitable distribution of wealth; and amplify feminist proposals for just economies.
We develop accessible, action-oriented analysis on the state of resourcing for feminist movements. We aim to influence funders’ policies and practices, deepen and sustain funding for feminist social change, and support movements’ needs and strategies.
In addition to the impact we aim to have in the world, AWID is expressly committed to strengthening our own organizational learning and resilience in order to further strengthen global feminist movements.
Our donors
Thank you!
Without the generous funding and support from our donors, our work would not be possible
In our 2015 Online Tribute we honor five Women Human Rights Defenders murdered in the Middle East and North Africa region. These defenders worked for women and civil rights as lawyers and activists. Their death highlights the often dangerous and difficult working conditions in their respective countries. Please join AWID in honoring these women, their activism and legacy by sharing the memes below with your colleagues, networks and friends and by using the hashtags #WHRDTribute and 16Days.
Please click on each image below to see a larger version and download as a file
This year, we, alongside feminist activists from across the world, will be at CSW68 in New York, to challenge capitalist, neoliberal narratives and false solutions around poverty, development and financing. Through in-person events, lives on our socials, an exhibit booth and more; we are showing up to convene, amplify and support the voices and participation of our members, partners and allies.
Learn more about our program this year below.
6. Conduct desk research
Desk research can be done throughout your research. It can assist you with framing, help you to choose survey questions and provide insights to your results.
Conducting desk research throughout your research process can assist you with framing, help you to choose survey questions and provide contextual clarity or interesting insights to your survey results, such as comparing similarities and differences between your survey results and information produced by civil society and donors.
Perhaps you notice trends in your survey data and want to understand them.
For example, your survey data may reveal that organization budgets are shrinking, but it cannot tell you why this is happening. Reviewing publications can give you context on potential reasons behind such trends.
Desk research also ensures you are building your research on the existing knowledge regarding your topic, confirming the validity and relevance of your findings.
They may be complimentary or contradictory to existing knowledge, but they must speak to existing data on the topic.
To ensure comprehensive research of the entire funding landscape related to your topic, look at a diverse set of funding sectors.
You can consider:
Women’s Funds
Private and Public Foundations
International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs)
Bilateral and Multilateral Agencies
Private Sector Actors
Individual Philanthropists
Crowdfunders
Include any other relevant sectors to this research.
For example, you may decide that it is also important to research local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Potential sources for desk research (non-exhaustive)
1. Donors’ websites and annual reports
These are direct sources of information about what funders are actually doing and generally contain information on policies and budgets. Researching this before interviewing donors can result in more focused questions and a stronger interview.
Shines a light on the financial status of diverse feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+ and allied movements in all regions and all contexts
Thank you to our partners
Our partners
This project is built in collaboration with:
Our contributors
We would also like to thank the following people for their valuable contribution:
Nebila Abdulmelik
Radhika Balakrishnan
Selamawit Tesfaye
Hakima Abbas
Patita Tingoi
Ana Abelenda
Snippet - WITM Our objectives - EN
Our research objectives
1
Provide AWID members, movement partners and funders with an updated, powerful, evidence-based, and action-oriented analysis of the resourcing realities of feminist movements and current state of the feminist funding ecosystem.
2
Identify and demonstrate opportunities to shift more and better funding for feminist organizing, expose false solutions and disrupt trends that make funding miss and/or move against gender justice and intersectional feminist agendas.
3
Articulate feminist visions, proposals and agendas for resourcing justice.
Twitter Test
@shalinikonanur sharing a comment by her colleague debbie @salco "we can talk about shattering the glass ceiling, but we have to talk about who are sweeping those broken glasses?" challenging the #G7 to truly see who's vulnerable domestically & globally #W7Canada@kramdas@AWIDpic.twitter.com/1rs0SpLYHp
The survey is available on KOBO, an open-source platform for collecting, managing, and visualizing data. To participate, simply click on the survey link here and follow the instructions to complete the survey.
