Building Feminist Economies
Building Feminist Economies is about creating a world with clean air to breath and water to drink, with meaningful labour and care for ourselves and our communities, where we can all enjoy our economic, sexual and political autonomy.
In the world we live in today, the economy continues to rely on women’s unpaid and undervalued care work for the profit of others. The pursuit of “growth” only expands extractivism - a model of development based on massive extraction and exploitation of natural resources that keeps destroying people and planet while concentrating wealth in the hands of global elites. Meanwhile, access to healthcare, education, a decent wage and social security is becoming a privilege to few. This economic model sits upon white supremacy, colonialism and patriarchy.
Adopting solely a “women’s economic empowerment approach” is merely to integrate women deeper into this system. It may be a temporary means of survival. We need to plant the seeds to make another world possible while we tear down the walls of the existing one.
We believe in the ability of feminist movements to work for change with broad alliances across social movements. By amplifying feminist proposals and visions, we aim to build new paradigms of just economies.
Our approach must be interconnected and intersectional, because sexual and bodily autonomy will not be possible until each and every one of us enjoys economic rights and independence. We aim to work with those who resist and counter the global rise of the conservative right and religious fundamentalisms as no just economy is possible until we shake the foundations of the current system.
Our Actions
Our work challenges the system from within and exposes its fundamental injustices:
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Advance feminist agendas: We counter corporate power and impunity for human rights abuses by working with allies to ensure that we put forward feminist, women’s rights and gender justice perspectives in policy spaces. For example, learn more about our work on the future international legally binding instrument on “transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights” at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
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Mobilize solidarity actions: We work to strengthen the links between feminist and tax justice movements, including reclaiming the public resources lost through illicit financial flows (IFFs) to ensure social and gender justice.
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Build knowledge: We provide women human rights defenders (WHRDs) with strategic information vital to challenge corporate power and extractivism. We will contribute to build the knowledge about local and global financing and investment mechanisms fuelling extractivism.
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Create and amplify alternatives: We engage and mobilize our members and movements in visioning feminist economies and sharing feminist knowledges, practices and agendas for economic justice.
“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”.
Arundhati Roy, War Talk
Related Content
Snippet - WITM Acknowledgements - RU
Слова благодарности
AWID выражает признательность всем тем, чьи идеи, аналитические работы и вклад в развитие легли в основу исследования «Где деньги?» и его дальнейшей адвокации.
Прежде всего, мы выражаем глубочайшую благодарность членам AWID и активисткам(-там), которые участвовали в консультациях, и провели этот опрос вместе с нами, щедро поделившись своим временем, аналитикой и теплом.
Мы выражаем признательность феминистским движениям, союзницам(-кам) и феминистским фондам, включая (но не ограничиваясь ими) Black Feminist Fund, Pacific Feminist Fund, ASTRAEA Lesbian Foundation for Justice, FRIDA Young Feminist Fund, Purposeful, Kosovo Women’s Network, Human Rights Funders Network, Dalan Fund and PROSPERA International Network of Women's Funds , за ваше тщательное исследование состояния ресурсного обеспечения, вдумчивый анализ и постоянную адвокацию для достижения более объемного и эффективного финансирования для феминистских организаций и движений за гендерную справедливость во всех контекстах.
Присоединяйтесь к глобальному феминистскому сообществу, которое освещает состояние ресурсного обеспечения, требуя большего финансирования и влияния для феминисток(-ов) во всем мире
Louise Malherbe | Title Snippet EN
About the authors
Louise Malherbe is a film programmer/curator and a film critic based in Berlin. She worked as a film programmer for the Metropolis Cinema Association in Beirut and is now coordinating the Reel Streams project aiming at supporting the dissemination of independent cinema in the Arab region. She is Head of Programming for Soura Film Festival, a queer film festival focusing on the S.W.A.N.A. region, writes film critics for Manifesto XXI, and recently started curating films and festivals for Cinema Akil.
O nosso grupo, organização e/ou movimento não está registado - devemos participar no inquérito mesmo assim?
É claro que sim, queremos saber mais sobre si e sobre a sua experiência com o financiamento.
Ester Lopes | Snippet
Ester Lopes is a dancer and writer whose research focuses on the body, gender, race, and class relations. She is a Pilates instructor and art educator. Ester graduated in Contemporary Theater – Creative Processes (at FAINC) and in Dance and Body Consciousness (at USCS). Her musical specialization includes popular singing and percussion. She received training in Novos Brincantes with Flaira Ferro, Mateus Prado, and Antonio Meira at Brincante Institute in 2015 and 2016.
كيف تعرّفون "التمويل الخارجي"؟
يشمل التمويل الخارجي المنح والأشكال الأخرى من التمويل من المؤسسات الخيرية، الحكومات، الجهات ثنائية الاتجاه أو متعددة الاتجاهات أو الممولين/ات من الشركات أو الممولين/ات الأفراد، إن كان ذلك من دولتكم/ن أو من الخارج. لا يشمل هذا الموارد التي تنتجها المجموعات، المنظمات أو الحركات بشكل مستقل مثل رسوم العضوية، تطوع الطاقم أو الأعضاء/ العضوات أو الداعمين/ات، تجنيد الأموال المجتمعي، تأجير الأماكن أو بيع الخدمات أو المنتجات. لتسهيل عملية تعبئة الاستطلاع، تم شمل تعريف أنواع التمويل ووصفها بشكل قصير في الاستطلاع نفسه.
Embodying Trauma-Informed Pleasure | Small Snippet EN
Embodying Trauma-Informed Pleasure
Trauma is not the event; it is how our bodies respond to events that feel dangerous to us. It is often left stuck in the body, until we address it. There’s no talking our body out of this response – it just is.
Доступен ли опрос для людей с ограниченными возможностями?
Да, опрос доступен людям с различными нарушениями слуха, зрения, движений и когнитивных способностей.
Snippet Kohl - Plenary: The revolution will be feminist | AR
جلسة عامة | ستكون الثورة نسوية وإلّا لن تكون ثورة
مع منال التميمي وبوبولينا مورينو وكارولينا فيكيفيتش وأنووليكا نوجوزي أوكونجو
Quanto tempo demora a preencher o inquérito?
O tempo estimado para preencher o inquérito é 30 minutos.
#7 - Sexting like a feminist Tweets Snippet AR
أداؤك في المضاجع مهاراتك في ضبط المراجع…
منجزاتك الأكاديمية جسر عبور نحو شهوتك الجنسيّة (جدّيًا، سلِّم الأوراق المطلوبة، الكترونية كانت أم ورقيّة)
لا أشعر بالراحة لمشاركة اسمي او اسم مجموعتي، منظمتي و\ أو حركتي مع AWID, هل أستطيع مع ذلك تعبئة الاستطلاع؟
طبعاً! هذه الأسئلة اختيارية. نقدّر جداً حقكم بالسرية. الرجاء تعبئة الاستطلاع دون علاقة بقراركم/ن بمشاركة اسم المجموعة، المنظمة أو الحركة أو تفاصيل التواصل معكم/ن.
Beijing Unfettered: the Power of Young Feminist Movements
In partnership with young feminist activists and youth-led organizations, AWID co-organized Beijing Unfettered in parallel to and independently from Beijing+25.
Могу ли я поделиться информацией об опросе с другими?
Да, пожалуйста! Мы просим распространить ссылку на опрос среди своих коллег по сети. Чем больше различных точек зрения мы соберем, тем более полным будет наше понимание финансового положения феминистских организаций.
Snippet "un"Inclusive Feminism_Fest (EN)
"un"Inclusive Feminism:
The voiceless girls in the Haitian feminist movement
Naike Ledan
Semi Kaefra Alisha Fermond, Trans Rights Activist ACIFVH
Natalie Desrosiers
Fédorah Pierre-Louis
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Register for the Forum!
When people come together on a global scale, as individuals and movements, we generate a sweeping force. Join us in Bangkok, Thailand and online in December 2024.
Snippet - CSW69 - Feminist Solidarity Space 12 - EN
Feminist Solidarity Space
✉️ By registration for larger groups. Drop-ins for smaller groups. Register here
📅 Wednesday, March 12, 2025
🕒 2.00-4.00pm EST
🏢 Chef's Kitchen Loft with Terrace, 216 East 45th St 13th Floor New York
Organizer: AWID
Snippet - WCFM Database blurb - En
AWID’s Who Can Fund Me? Database
Regularly updated and searchable directory of 200+ funders across different sectors and regions that support vital gender justice work.
Snippet2 - WCFM Movement and Struggle - EN
Movement in focus:
Filter your search by funders’ priority support areas that speak to your organizing efforts
WITM - Refreshed Intro Text (EN)
Where is the Money? An Evidence-Driven Call to Resource Feminist Organizing
This new report shines a light on the resourcing realities of feminist and women’s rights organizations amid unprecedented political and financial upheaval. Drawing on over a decade of analysis since AWID last Where is the Money? report (Watering the Leaves, Starving the Roots), it takes stock of the gains, gaps, and growing threats in the funding landscape.
The report celebrates the power of movement-led initiatives to shape resourcing on their own terms, while sounding the alarm on massive aid cuts, shrinking philanthropy, and escalating backlash.
It calls on funders to invest abundantly in feminist organizing as essential infrastructure for justice and liberation. It also invites movements to reimagine bold, self-determined models of resourcing rooted in care, solidarity and collective power.
2019: Feminist Realities in a changing world
AWID began preparing this annual report just as the global pandemic began to unravel how we gather, organize and live our lives. It is impossible to review what we have done without COVID-19 tinting our assessment.
Download the full 2019 Annual review
Co-Creating Feminist Realities is no longer just an AWID Forum theme - it is a rallying cry in response to a pandemic that has laid bare the failures of social, political and economic systems.
It is an urgently needed affirmation that there are other, more just ways of organizing our lives. During 2019 hundreds of groups shared their experiences and proposals for feminist realities with us, ranging from radical networks of community support in Latin America facilitating self-managed abortion, to practices of community-centered economies in Indonesia and community-centered food systems in India and the US, to a re-imagination and new practice of harm-free rites of passage in Sierra Leone. These are the experiences that will chart a path forward for a “new normal”.
Yet long histories of oppression and violence can make it difficult to imagine the possible. A key part of our work in 2019 was to spark these explorations through a toolkit AWID launched to support groups interested in unearthing the stories and aspirations that are the building blocks of feminist propositions.
While we focus on our proposals for a different world, we recognize the challenging context around us.
Through the Observatory on the Universality of Rights, Feminists for a Binding Treaty, Count Me In! and other alliances, AWID has continued to push back against unfettered corporate power and fascist and fundamentalist agendas that undermine women’s rights and gender justice. With dim prospects for transformative change through multilateral processes and limited responsiveness from most states, we are redoubling our efforts to ensure that feminist movements, in all their diversity, are resourced in ways that match the critical roles they play - supporting their communities, demanding rights and responding to crises. In 2019 we introduced feminist principles and approaches to ground-breaking funds like the Spotlight Initiative and the Equality Fund, and succeeded in leveraging resources through feminist reality seed grant funding from feminist funders.
As we look ahead, it is clear that the context is calling for a transformation of our organizing strategies:
- we are learning to navigate global advocacy confined to online channels,
- we grapple with the uncertainty of when and how we can convene in person, and
- we use the tools at our disposal to tighten connections across local to global spheres.
AWID is embarking on a new membership model that lowers barriers to access and emphasizes opportunities for engagement and cross-member connection. We will continue to experiment with different online tools and processes for building community. Cross-movement engagement will stay at the center of our work. AWID’s actions in solidarity with oppressed movements and identities, even and especially where these are marginalized in feminist movements, are important to drive change and support broad and inclusive movements for all.
Crisis is not new to feminist and social movements.
We are resilient, we adapt, and we show up for each other. And we have to keep doing better. Thank you to all who are part of the journey with us.
Download the full 2019 Annual review