Clara Luper
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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
Disintegration | Content Snippet
On Wednesday a note arrives
with an address on the back.
5 pm, tonight.
The handwriting on the invitation—
coily and brusque—
I’ve seen it five times in five years.
My body rouses,
feverish.
I need to fuck myself first.
The tide is high tonight and
I get
off.
I want to slow everything down,
taste time and space, etch them
into memory.
*
I’ve never been to this part of town before.
Unknown places excite me,
the way limbs and veins and bones
resist decay,
their fate uncertain.
At the door, I think twice.
The hallway is pitch black
and it makes me pause.
On the other side,
a portal of smell and color
opens like a curse,
into a sunny afternoon.
The breeze
makes my hair dance,
piques its curiosity,
compels it to move.
I hear the wheelchair whirring,
shaping the shadows.
Then I see them:
a lynx face
and a body like mine
and I find myself desiring both
again.
The creature motions me closer.
Their gestures write a sentence;
as I move toward them,
I notice its details:
wither, flesh, bliss
On their command, the vine that covers the hallway
hugging warm stones,
snakes up the wall.
It becomes a verb,
“to climb,”
and I’m reorientated when their claws point
to the vine-bed in the center.
I hear the wheels behind me,
then that sound.
It reverberates
like no other.
Their long black wings
elevate toward the ceiling
then they lunge forward.
The feline vision scans every detail,
every change,
every longing.
Can desire liquefy your muscles?
Can it act sweeter than the strongest
of tranquilizers?
A lynx sews the world
across our differences,
weaving lace around my knees.
Can desire crush the distance of the world,
compressing the seconds?
They come closer still,
lynx eye meeting human eye,
sniffing the air,
turning body into
urgency.
They beat down their wings.
Stirred,
the vines tangle around my waist/waste.
Their tongue thins time,
shifting grounds,
soothes, with their magic,
what stirs beneath.
I see the world in you, and the
world is exhausted.
Then they plead:
Let me feast on you.
Snippet - CSW69 - Full Calendar - EN
Moving Conversation | Small Snippet AR
عودةٌ إلى ذواتنا
بالنسبة إليّ، هذه الأنواع من الدردشات كانت ضمن تعابير الحبّ التي أتاحت لي الحياة أن أستمتع بها حديثًا فقط. ما كنت أعرف أن هذه الأشكال الأخرى ممكنة – تلك التي توجَد خارج نطاق ورشات العمل، أو أماكن الناشطين أو غرف الصفّ أو أماكن العمل.
Snippet - CSW69 - What Can Feminist Movements Learn - EN
What Can Feminist Movements Today Learn from Beijing 1995?
✉️ By registration only. Register here
📅 Wednesday, March 12, 2025
🕒 6.30–8:00pm EST
🏢 Church Center of the United Nations, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017
🎙️Co-facilitated by: Inna Michaeli, Co-Executive Director
Organizer: Jass, Gender at Work, and Count Me In! Consortium
Celluloid Ishtar | Small Snippet AR
المقطع الأول
عندما كنت في السادسة من العمر، علِمت أنّ جدّي كان يملك داراً للسينما. أخبرَتني أمّي كيف أنه افتتحها في أوائل الستينيّات، وكانت هي حينها في مثل عمري، إذ كان عمرها قُرابة الستّ سنوات. تذكّرتُ أنهم في الليلة الأولى عرضوا فيلم «صوت الموسيقى».
Snippet - WCFM Movement and Struggle - EN
Movement in focus:
Filter your search by funders’ priority support areas that speak to your organizing efforts
#MeToo in China Snippet EN
#MeToo in China
#MeToo in China Exhibition was first held in 2019 and toured in 5 cities. The aim of the exhibition is to bring the personal experiences of the victims and activists to greater prominence and, through engagement with these stories, to inspire our audience to join in the fight. The exhibition has itself become a part of the #MeToo struggle—the exhibition has been beset by challenges on its tour throughout China, on more than one occasion even facing closure.
Snippet - WITM INFOGRAPHIC_1_EN_2 Annual budget size
In 2023, feminist and
women's rights organizations
had a median annual budget of
In contrast, over $1 billion went
to three anti-rights groups in 2021-2022,
with funding for anti-gender networks still rising.
Snippet Feminist Propositions for a Just Economy EN
AWID, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), and the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), offers this think piece to challenge mainstream understandings of development and put forward initial propositions for a feminist agenda for development, economic and gender justice.
Learn more about where this project comes from
The propositions
These propositions are intended to be just that - proposals, to be discussed, debated, added to, taken apart, adapted, adopted, and even to inspire others.
Snippet - COP30 - Resisting Ecofascisms - EN
Resisting Ecofascisms: A cross-movement dialogue at COP30
How movements are resisting fascist agendas in relation to climate change.
📅 Tuesday, November 11, 2025
📍 Beira Rio Hotel, Belém, Pará
Snippet intro text_Festival (EN)
Our festival featured 130 speakers, facilitators & artists from 43 countries, spread across 40+ sessions!
Snippet - COP30 - Feminist Economic Alternatives Brief - EN
📖 Feminist Economic Alternatives Brief
A tool for feminist activists at COP30 fighting for transformative, equitable and community-centred solutions to address the climate crisis.
Women Human Rights Defenders
WHRDs are self-identified women and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBTQI) people and others who defend rights and are subject to gender-specific risks and threats due to their human rights work and/or as a direct consequence of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
WHRDs are subject to systematic violence and discrimination due to their identities and unyielding struggles for rights, equality and justice.
The WHRD Program collaborates with international and regional partners as well as the AWID membership to raise awareness about these risks and threats, advocate for feminist and holistic measures of protection and safety, and actively promote a culture of self-care and collective well being in our movements.
Risks and threats targeting WHRDs
WHRDs are exposed to the same types of risks that all other defenders who defend human rights, communities, and the environment face. However, they are also exposed to gender-based violence and gender-specific risks because they challenge existing gender norms within their communities and societies.
By defending rights, WHRDs are at risk of:
- Physical assault and death
- Intimidation and harassment, including in online spaces
- Judicial harassment and criminalization
- Burnout
A collaborative, holistic approach to safety
We work collaboratively with international and regional networks and our membership
- to raise awareness about human rights abuses and violations against WHRDs and the systemic violence and discrimination they experience
- to strengthen protection mechanisms and ensure more effective and timely responses to WHRDs at risk
We work to promote a holistic approach to protection which includes:
- emphasizing the importance of self-care and collective well being, and recognizing that what care and wellbeing mean may differ across cultures
- documenting the violations targeting WHRDs using a feminist intersectional perspective;
- promoting the social recognition and celebration of the work and resilience of WHRDs ; and
- building civic spaces that are conducive to dismantling structural inequalities without restrictions or obstacles
Our Actions
We aim to contribute to a safer world for WHRDs, their families and communities. We believe that action for rights and justice should not put WHRDs at risk; it should be appreciated and celebrated.
-
Promoting collaboration and coordination among human rights and women’s rights organizations at the international level to strengthen responses concerning safety and wellbeing of WHRDs.
-
Supporting regional networks of WHRDs and their organizations, such as the Mesoamerican Initiative for WHRDs and the WHRD Middle East and North Africa Coalition, in promoting and strengthening collective action for protection - emphasizing the establishment of solidarity and protection networks, the promotion of self-care, and advocacy and mobilization for the safety of WHRDs;
-
Increasing the visibility and recognition of WHRDs and their struggles, as well as the risks that they encounter by documenting the attacks that they face, and researching, producing, and disseminating information on their struggles, strategies, and challenges:
-
Mobilizing urgent responses of international solidarity for WHRDs at risk through our international and regional networks, and our active membership.
Related Content
Venecia Natinga
Rosalie Eldora Sindi Medar Gould e
Annual Report 2010
Our 2010 Annual Report highlights the major accomplishments of each of our strategic initiatives during the year.
Along with activity highlights, we include a brief analysis of the impact of our initiatives as well as reflections from our members and partners that further illustrate the relevance of AWID’s work and its connection to broader women’s rights movements.
This interactive document is complete with links to our websites and recent publications with in-depth information on the issues we address in the report.
Helen Bamber
Faye Macheke
Biography
Faye is a passionate Pan-African feminist, active in movements for women's rights, racial justice, migrant and labor rights, and environmental justice. Her activism builds on the legacy of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the aftermath of the apartheid era in Zimbabwe.
In 2019, Faye joined AWID as the Director of Finance, Operations and Development, and strived to ensure that AWID upholds the feminist principles and values in all of its operations. She brings over 20 years of experience in feminist leadership, strategy, and all aspects of finance and organizational development.
Faye is a committed Board Member of UAF-Africa and other women's rights organizations. She previously held a Head of Finance and Operations roles at Paediatric Adolescent Treatment for Africa and JASS - Just Associates Inc. in Southern Africa. She also held Directorship roles for International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL) in Central and Southern Africa. She holds a Bcompt in Accounting Science from University of South Africa and is a member of the Southern African Institute for Business Accountants.
Position
Co-Executive Director
Add to stories
Off
Ivonne Siu Bermudez
