Where is the Money for Women's Rights?
This Friday File is the first of a two part series featuring select highlights from AWID’s action-research Initiative “Where is the Money for Women’s Rights”. It illustrates some of the most significant general trends and opportunities that are impacting the current funding landscape. The second Friday File in this series will share further research related to various funding sectors, as well as recommendations and potential strategies for expanding the quantity and quality of resources for women’s organizing and women’s rights.
AN OVERVIEW OF FUNDING FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS
The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) launched its “Where is the Money for Women’s Rights?” Action-Research initiative in 2004 in response to overwhelming requests from member organisations for tips on fundraising and donors. Through research, advocacy and collaborative analysis with diverse stakeholders, we set out to understand the trends and dynamics shaping funding for women’s rights work, to document how women’s organisations have been faring in the last decade and to advocate for more, better quality resources from donors.
Based on AWID’s survey results that targeted over a thousand women’s organisations from 2005 to 2008, we saw a clear picture of shortages across different funding sectors—cutbacks within many donor agencies or inaccessibility of many funding sources for the large majority of women’s organisations. Recognizing that women’s organisations play vital roles in advancing women’s rights and gender equality, it was alarming to see that between half and two-thirds of the women’s organisations surveyed reported annual budgets of less than USD 50,000.