Influencing the Agenda

Under our strategy to 2030 – Our Feminist Future – we have five strategic goals.  The second is: Influence the agenda. 

The collective voices of feminist organisations, movements and activists are more powerful and influential in demanding positive, irreversible change. Therefore, our second strategic goal focuses on Womankind influencing a transformative, feminist agenda for change, in collaboration and solidarity with feminist movement partners and allies. This is why we continue to influence for change locally, nationally and internationally through our support to partners and our own direct advocacy work.  

Here’s just a few examples of how we did that in 2022/23.  

16 Days of Activism – from awareness to accountability for femicide 

For the 16 Days of Activism in 2022, Womankind drew attention to and voiced a call for action on the most extreme form of gender-based violence against women and girls: femicide.   

We produced a global factsheet on femicide with statistics and calls to action for individuals, civil society organisations, funders and governments. We successfully raised awareness on femicide globally and in our focus countries, in terms of how it manifests, how patriarchal structures, systems and intersecting forms of discrimination contribute to its existence, how countries document and address cases of femicide. We called for strengthened accountability by governments to address impunity for femicide. We also engaged in cross movement strengthening regionally and internationally through sharing information on the work of our partners on the issue. 

Though all of this, our engagement contributed to global solidarity on addressing femicide from an intersectional feminist perspective through raising awareness on the issue. 

Advocating for meaningful participation of women in the 2022 elections with Sankalpa 

In the run-up to the 2022 elections in Nepal, Womankind funded Sankalpa to increase women’s participation in the elections, document obstacles to women’s electoral participation, ensure women candidates were informed about the roles and responsibilities of elected leadership and push for policies that would enable women’s participation in political life. Diverse women from each of the 7 provinces of Nepal participated.     

Following participation in Sankalpa’s capacity development programme, several elected women leaders launched policies in their constituencies to support women and enable their political participation. These policies included:  

• ending the use of temples as election polling places, which previously excluded women who were menstruating from participating;   
• establishing a feeding room for women working within the local municipal government to ensure nursing mothers could take up these roles;   
• allocating a social protection allowance for single women and sexual minorities, especially those who were the mothers of girls, which helped to reduce the number of female feticides.   

These policies broke down barriers and supported women to fully participate in political life.  Furthermore, this highlights how supporting women in leadership positions results in feminist action and in turn creates local change. This influences norms of leadership roles within communities and opens space for women’s political participation more broadly.  

“We support the next generation of feminist leaders – existing feminist leaders and emerging feminist leaders, so they can have a sharing approach and unite in a place and learn together. Every day there is learning in feminism here.” - Srijana Bastola, Programme Coordinator, Sankalpa 

Creating spaces for diverse women and grassroots movements to influence international decision-making spaces 

At Womankind, we believe that in order for change to happen, voices from grassroots movements must be heard and listened to. Therefore, ensuring that the voices of diverse women are present and centred in international decision making and agenda setting spaces is a vital part of our influencing work. The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum are two of these key spaces.  

In March 2023, Womankind joined the other six organisations in the AWESOME consortium –EWDNA, FIDA Kenya, FOWODE, NUWODU, SWDA, WCC – to carry out joint advocacy at CSW67. Together, we held an event: Rural Girls’ and Women’s Feminist Movement Strengthening. Our partners shared their experiences of working with rural women from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, from an intersectional feminist movement strengthening perspective with a global audience in the room.  

The SVRI Forum provides a unique opportunity for collective learning on tackling violence against women and children. Through Womankind’s Her Voice Fund, five AWESOME consortium partners attended the forum in September 2022. Together, they advocated for disability centered inclusion in feminist movements that are working to end violence against women. Partners held events, chaired panels, met with survivors, practitioners, and activists from around the world and shared their vast expertise.   

Additionally, we awarded a strategic out of cycle Her Voice Fund grant to SVRI for Womankind to co-sponsor the Forum. This sponsorship contributed towards the attendance of 86 delegates working on violence against women and violence against children, including emerging scholars, practitioners, and activists who would not otherwise be able to attend. This added to the programme, by including issues such as disability access, LGBTQI+ rights, indigenous rights, and others.     

Holding the UK government to account  

Over the last year, Womankind has worked to influence international development policies related to gender equality and women’s rights. We encouraged key state and policy actors to influence change through our inputs into the development of and our response to the UK Government’s Women and Girls Strategy. We are part of key UK coalitions including The Gender and Development Network (GADN), Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS) and Bond, where we work together to influence UK government and the feminist narrative in UK international development work. Through this work, we have called for quality funding for and meaningful engagement with women’s rights organisations, centring a gender and human rights approach in the UK’s investment, trade, debt, and tax policies.