Deepening a transformative feminist approach and ways of thinking

Dinah’s time at Womankind Worldwide  

Dinah Musindarwezo (DM) is leaving Womankind Worldwide after 5 years of her time serving as Director of Policy and Communications and as an interim Co-CEO. She leaves at a time when the organisation has begun a new journey on transformative feminist co-leadership. Sally Akinyi (SA), Womankind’s Communications Manager, sat down with her to have an in-depth conversation reflecting on her time at Womankind and some of the beautiful lessons along the way. 

SA: You’re a known feminist leader in the women’s rights space, could you walk me through your time at Womankind? 

DM: I joined Womankind in February 2019 as Director of Policy and Communications and a member of the organisation’s senior leadership. This was an important year where feminists and activists all around the world were mobilising to reflect and celebrate 25 years of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing +25). 

My first assignment at Womankind focused a lot on Beijing +25 where working alongside colleagues and partners, we fully immersed ourselves in the global review process. With fresh knowledge and experience of working directly with African Women’s Rights Organisations (WROs), I knew that although they were expected to mobilise and organise around such important reviews, they rarely had the resources needed to do so.  We therefore prioritised funding partner WROs in our focus countries in Africa and Asia to mobilise at the local, national, regional and global levels.  

Together with like-minded organisations including The Association for Women’s Rights in Development,(AWID), Urgent Action Fund Africa, Gender and Development Network and CIVICUS, I had the honour of leading and coordinating the development of a groundbreaking Beijing +25 report: Feminist Movements and the Beijing Vision: Organising, resisting, advocating. – Womankind Worldwide . This report used a feminist analysis to assess the progress of the Beijing +25, further highlighting systematic challenges that need to be addressed. It also made key recommendations for transformative change towards gender equality and women’s rights.  

While still excited over the new possibilities for gender equality and women’s rights that might result from the Beijing +25 and the global campaign Generation Equality; COVID-19 hit the world bringing many things to a standstill. 

COVID-19 was a great reminder to reflect on feminist values as a feminist organisation and embed these in our work more. We questioned what solidarity and sisterhood would look and feel like with our partners in focus countries. Although COVID-19 affected everyone, it also amplified existing inequalities between genders and countries from vaccine apartheid to  staying safe and still put food on the table. Some of our partners were on the frontline providing life-saving services such as responding to increased incidents of violence against women and girls due to lockdowns. At Womankind, we responded by providing Resilience Grants to our partners that were fully flexible and did not require an application or proposal. I know that this funding was a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the need at hand. Grant making at this time spotlighted the nature of poor funding to WROs, but even in these circumstances, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback from partners on how this funding was useful particularly due to its flexible nature. This is why at Womankind we continue to champion advocacy influencing donors to roll out quality funding that directly reaches Women’s Rights Organisations and Feminists movements especially in the Global South. This means long-term, flexible, adequate, accessible and core support to diverse constituency-led feminist movements, including small and medium sized organisations operating at different levels (community, national, regional & global).  

SA: What has been your legacy and some of the milestones you’re leaving behind?

DM: Some of the work I am proud to have been part of at my time at Womankind include establishing Her Voice Fund as Womankind’s first flexible fund. In my first meeting with Caroline Haworth, Womankind’s previous CEO – I was informed that Womankind had received funding from one single individual donor who had donated £ 2 million as a gift in their will. And they were looking for innovative and impactful ideas of how to spend the money. We created a mechanism to get these funds to our partners in a flexible and timely manner and use it as an opportunity to demonstrate principles of feminist funding based on sisterhood, solidarity and trust.  

Off the back of the Beijing +25 review process, partners shared how difficult it was to raise funds for policy and advocacy work due to the rigid nature of traditional funding with strict project outcomes within a timeline. Funding for policy and advocacy must be flexible and agile to meet the ever-changing and emerging needs of partners and their communities. There must also be agility to allow feminist movement building while acknowledging the difficult environment activists and women’s human rights defenders operate in. That is how Her Voice Fund was born and is currently funding both Womankind’s existing partners, and informal groups.  

We have also grown the fund by raising external funding from human rights foundations such as the Hewlett Foundation to enable us to fund more partners and informal groups. I am also proud to have contributed to the creation of the most recent flexible fund of Womankind – Strategic Grants being led by colleagues in Programme and Learning. This is another example of how feminist funders should fund- flexibly and with no conditions.  

Working with various colleagues I have similarly contributed to resource mobilisation and fundraising efforts for the great work we have been doing at Womankind together with our partners and successfully brought in new donors. I directly contributed to donor cultivation and to the proposal and programme design of our biggest multi-million euros, multi-country programme: AWESOME in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda funded by the Dutch Government under the Power of Women Funding framework.  

I also played an immense role in steering the communications strategy process at Womankind that is focused on storytelling and centring the voices of our partners. This has laid a solid foundation of our thought-leadership externally in strategic spaces and positioning the organisation as a knowledgeable and sought after expert in the feminist space- particularly in movement strengthening, advocacy and flexible funding.

And this journey has taught me how important it is to grow allyship with your communications team to land your messaging and tell your story. I further influenced how we should portray the work we do with our partners and communities they serve. This is essentially moving away from ‘saviourism’ comms presenting them as ‘beneficiaries’ to rightsholders, experts and active actors of transformative social change.  

As part of the leadership team and a member of the working group, I contributed to Womankind’s 10-year 2030 Feminist Future Strategy  which is groundbreaking on so many levels. We did not just recommit to deepening our feminist work guided by feminist principles and values, we also made a new commitment to be actively anti-racist and work in a decolonised way recognising our role in colonialism as a British founded and based organisation. As senior leadership team, we were keen to bring along everyone in the development of this strategy, including the cross-team members internally, the board, partners, allies and donors. We weren’t always on the same page but had the same vision and wanted a feminist future where all women and girls and people of all genders are free. I am proud to have been part of this process and part of an organisation that dared to commit to such a bold and radical strategy and vision for the future. 

I am most grateful to have worked with the diverse policy and communications team who are talented, committed and passionate professionals that extend kindness to each other. It is also the only team with a majority of black Africans, and I hope that this can act as one example to other directors of ways we can put our strategy into practice not just to have more diverse teams but to also create an environment in our organisation where everyone can fully thrive and enjoy their work.  

SA: You have pushed some boundaries around Womankind’s decolonial and anti-racism approach. Could you share more on this? 

DM: When I was appointed to join Womankind, I was excited to join an organisation that did not shy away from calling itself feminist. However, I was bothered to be the only and first black African woman living in the continent working for the organisation. In my first week at Womankind, I took the liberty of challenging the CEO and senior management team to look at ways in which we could pivot to an international feminist organisation that is representative of the diverse women and girls we work with- as staff and the board. Furthermore, I championed anti-racism and decolonisation within the organisation- a voluntarily role I took on as unpaid work! This came with a lot of emotional labour and burnout. But was it worth it?  Yes- I am proud to leave Womankind with a board and staff that has diverse representation across some of our focus countries.  

Our anti-racism and decolonisation journey was inspired by the #BlackLivesMatter Movement that led us to develop an anti-racism pledge which also informed our strategy. Due to this work being extremely personal I found myself at its forefront and so did other African and people of colour colleagues and board members. The former board chair Twasiima P. Bigirwa played a key role in supporting the board to understand the opportunity at hand of doing this work. She greatly volunteered her invaluable expertise and knowledge to teach and hold the space for both the board, African colleagues and people of colour at Womankind. I am forever grateful for her support and the space she held for me.   

SA: Please share your experience on transformative feminist leadership during the previous leadership transition phase at Womankind 

DM: It was a great honour to be appointed by the board to act as an interim Co-CEO for the organisation during the leadership transition. Having served as an Executive Director in a previous role before joining Womankind, this was a great opportunity to put my experience and lessons into practice. However, I quickly learnt that being a CEO is different from co-leading an organisation alongside other Co-CEOs. None of us had been Co-CEOs from experience so we saw this as a great opportunity to learn together.  

During this period, we supported the team through leadership and strategy changes. We held the first residential staff retreat which created space for the team to strengthen relationships, reflect and co-create. It was very clear that there are conversations that simply can’t be had virtually, and we re-affirmed the need to institutionalise in-person spaces for staff to come together to build trust, sisterhood and solidarity. This is not a nice thing to do, it is a must to support our feminist values.  

Together, we delivered board meetings ensuring that the board has the resources and information needed to continue to provide strategic direction for the organisation.  

And finally, we progressed work on equitable terms and conditions for staff based in Kenya. This is still work in progress, but I am proud of the progress made so far.  

My main contribution throughout the leadership transition was to consistently remind my Co-CEOs of the need to continue to embed our feminist values and principles including centring wellbeing, self and collective care as an organisation. This also mainstreams cross-organisationally from our programming to grant-making and how we organise in policy and advocacy work.  

SA: What message/ advice are you leaving behind from your experience?

DM: I will leave you with my favourite quote from my favourite black feminist, writer and Poet on self-care.

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”- Audre Lorde.

Dinah Musindarwezo is an African feminist and Gender and Development expert who is passionate about creating an environment, systems and structures that work favourably for all women and girls without any form of discrimination.    For over 15 years, Dinah has dedicated her time to work towards achieving Gender Equality, Women and Girls Human Rights and Empowerment of women and girls   through working with national, regional and international NGOs and movements. 

Sally Akinyi is an award winning global communications leader passionate about social impact with 12 years experience in the international development, tech and philanthropy sectors. She’s supported brands to tell their corporate stories and drive their purpose driven agendas through high impact communication strategies across various international markets.