Her Voice Fund: resourcing advocacy, accelerating women’s rights
By Dinah Musindarwezo, Director of Policy & Communications
Advocacy. What is it and why is it important for women’s rights? For many of us advocacy can feel out of our reach and like something that is for the world’s elite and has little impact on our day to day lives. But in truth advocacy is more closely linked to our everyday lives than we might imagine.
Advocacy influences the policies, laws, attitudes and behaviours that make up our societies. It impacts everything, from how we work, the conditions we live in and even who we can love.
Simply put advocacy has the ability to shape the world.
Yet despite being such an integral part of how decisions are made about the world, women rights activists are often excluded. Women’s rights organisations and the movements they are a part of have the knowledge, experience and expertise to create change and progress women’s rights but face huge barriers to participating in decision-making spaces. When women’s rights organisations are excluded, decisions are made that either ignore or actively work against the needs and interests of women and girls.
At Womankind we know the power of women’s movements and know that only when women and girls in all their diversity have their voices heard can progress towards women’s rights be made.
We also know it is not enough to talk about the change we’d like to see, real progress requires action.
So today we are launching Her Voice Fund, an initiative that provides flexible funding to support our partners to engage with advocacy work at local, national, regional and international levels.
Rising up in the face of adversity
The world is becoming increasingly hostile for women and girls. Inequality is deepening, violence against women and girl is rising and women and girls are being pushed further to the margins of society. COVID-19 has hit women and girls particularly hard with them being disproportionately affected by the social and economic impacts of the pandemic. Furthermore the pandemic has impacted the most marginalised the hardest.
At the same time there has been a rise in anti-rights groups mobilising and lobbying nationally and internationally, pushing to rollback hard won women’s rights. The world has become a tougher place for women and girls. Now, in the face of this adversity, the meaningful participation of women’s rights organisations in decision-making spaces has never been more important.
Her Voice Fund – shifting power to change makers
Women’s rights organisations and their movements have been leading the resistance to the rollback and championing women’s rights. Yet despite being drivers of change, women’s rights organisations (particularly those in the Global South) are woefully underfunded and lack the resources they need to realise their visions, including through engaging in strategic advocacy in a timely and meaningful manner.
Her Voice Fund seeks to shift more power to women’s right organisations in the Global South. Through more flexible funds and fewer reporting requirements, Womankind partners will have more time and resources to do what they do best – challenge systems of oppression and advocate for women’s rights.
Her Voice Fund will be open to all Womankind partners but will have a particular focus on supporting groups who are most excluded from engaging in advocacy opportunities, including women’s rights organisation that work with historically marginalised groups.
Womankind partners who receive funds will set their own priorities based on strategic opportunities that work best for them and helps them champion the rights of the women they work with. Her Voice Fund is part of Womankind’s approach to increase flexible funding, a strategy which has already led to success with the Womankind COVID-19 Resilience Grants.
Resourcing today for an equitable tomorrow
This week thousands of rights-based organisations, government representatives and business leaders are gathering at Generation Equality to agree a plan to make women’s rights a reality. We know that for any sustainable progress towards women’s rights Global South based women’s rights organisations and movements must be meaningfully engaged in decision making spaces.
Now is the time to seize the opportunity to accelerate women’s rights and create a more equitable future.
Now is the time to properly resource women’s rights organisations who are the drivers of change.
Now is the time to ensure women’s voices in all of their diversities are heard.
