All our change processes rely on the relationships we build at spaces like the AWID Forums where you dance together, your humour comes through, your real self, you tell stories. That is what makes the difference.
- Nicky Mcintyre, USA

The in-focus section features the pressing issues affecting women, girls and transgender people around the world, and shines a spotlight on the critical work being carried out by women's rights movements. 

AWID and Mama Cash are advisory partners who offer ideas to the Guardian editorial team and help link the Guardian team with diverse women’s rights advocates, organizations and movements around the world.

With the Guardian’s global reach of over 82 million unique browsers a month and its position of influence with policy makers, AWID and Mama Cash see this partnership as an important opportunity to:

• bring a rights based analysis to a broad and powerful audience
• increase the visibility of diverse women’s rights organizing and make the case for the key role they play in advancing women’s rights
• raise the visibility of women human rights defenders at risk
• influence key global development policy processes and debates and support more diverse voices to frame debates and set priorities about women’s, girls and transgender people’s rights and the changes that are needed at global, regional and national levels.

If you would like to share suggestions for women’s rights issues, strategies, process or events that you would like to see covered by the in-focus section, you can pitch your ideas here. All suggestions collected through this online form will be shared directly with the Guardian editorial team.The Guardian is solely responsible for all journalistic output and all editorial content is strictly independent.

If you have questions about this project, email: contact@awid.org and/or hello@mamacash.org. 

View Guardian Hub

We know that first time travel can be exciting but also stressful. In recognition of the many challenges involved, we will be providing more information and details about how to get to Bangkok when Registration opens early next year.

Student, Writer, Leader, Advocate. Each of the four women honored below had their own way of activism but what they had in common is that they all promoted and defended Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer and Intersex rights. Join us in remembering and honoring these Women Human Rights Defenders, their work and legacy by sharing the memes below and tweeting by using the hashtags #WHRDTribute and #16Days. 

Please click on each image below to see a larger version and download as a file

See Our 2015 WHRD Tribute

New

Online & Hybrid

As an online participant, you can facilitate activities, connect and converse with others, and experience first-hand the creativity, art and celebration of the AWID Forum. Participants connecting online will enjoy a rich and diverse program, from workshops and discussions to healing activities and musical performances. Some activities will focus on connection among online participants, and others will be truly hybrid, focusing on connection and interaction among online participants and those in Bangkok.

Interviews produce in-depth information that you cannot easily obtain from surveys. While surveys focuses mainly on quantifiable data and closed questions, interviews allow for expert opinions from activists and donors, and open-ended questions which can provide context to survey data results.

In this section

• General tips
  1. Before conducting your interviews
  2. During the interviews
• Specialized interviews
  1. Donor interviews
  2. Women’s rights organizations and activists interviews
• Preliminary findings

General tips

1. Before conducting your interviews

Send the interviewees a concept note with your objectives for the interview and for your overall research, as well as a list of questions.

This allows them to prepare answers for more complicated questions and look up information that they may not have immediately on hand.

2. During the interviews

• You can conduct interviews while your survey is running, in order to save time.
• Try to keep your interviews as consistent as possible in order to facilitate systematic analysis of results. This means asking the same questions. Coding identical responses to each question will allow you to uncover hidden trends.
• The interviews can also be used to flesh out some of the survey findings

Do not base your questions on assumptions about your interviewees’ knowledge.
Instead, first clarify what they know – this will reveal information as well.

• DON’T: “Given the current funding trends in Switzerland, do you know of any opportunities for collaboration? This question assumes that the interviewee knows current funding trends and that their understanding of funding trends matches yours.
• DO: First ask “What is your understanding of current funding trends in Switzerland?”, followed by “Do you know of any opportunities for collaboration?” This will reveal what their understanding is, giving you even more information than the first question.

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Specialized interviews

1. Donor interviews

Interviews with donors will allow you to build deeper relationships with them, which will be useful when you conduct post-research advocacy. They will also provide you with deeper insight into funders’ decision-making processes.

Suggested topics of focus for donor interviews:

• What are their funding priorities? Why and how did they select those priorities? For example, why do they choose project-funding over core support or vice versa?
• What are annual amounts allocated to the advancement of women’s human rights? This will strengthen overall reliability of data collected.
• Have they noticed any funding trends, and what do they believe are the origins and politics behind these trends?
• What is their theory of social change and how does that impact their relationships with women’s rights organizations?

View samples of donor interviews

2. Women’s rights organizations and activists interviews

Interviews with women’s rights organizations and activists will provide you with insight into their on-the-ground realities. Again, these interviews will allow you to build deeper relationships that can be incorporated into your advocacy, particularly to encourage collaboration between donors and activists.

Suggested topics of focus for women’s rights organizations and activist interviews:

• Long-term funding priority trends noted by women’s organizations and their impact.
• Successful examples of feminist and collaborative resource mobilization strategies that build strong and complementary movements.
• “Making the case” for why it is important to support women’s organizations and organizing.
• How different actors understand the social change process and their role in advancing/achieving gender equality and women’s rights.

View samples of women’s organizations and activists interviews

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Preliminary findings

Through the course of your WITM research, we recommend analyzing your preliminary findings. Presenting your preliminary findings opens up opportunities to conduct more interviews and get feedback on your research process and initial results. This feedback can be incorporated into your final research.

AWID conducts “WITM convenings” to share preliminary results of survey data and interviews. These gatherings allow participants (activists, women’s rights organizations, and donors) to debate and discuss the results, clarifying the context, creating more ownership amongst members of the movement, and providing more input for final research.

For example, the Resource Mobilization Hub for Indigenous Women’s Rights at the World Summit on Indigenous Philanthropy was used as a space to debut preliminary results.

See the presentation given at the RMH

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Previous step

4. Collect and analyze your data

Next step

6. Conduct desk research

Estimated time:

• 1.5 - 3 months

People needed:

• 1 or more research person(s)

Resources needed:

• List of donors and women’s rights organizations and activists to interview
• Prepared interview questions
• Concept Note (You can use the research framing you created in the “Frame your research” section)

Resources available:

• AWID Sample Interview Questions: Donors
• AWID Sample Interview Questions: Activists & Women’s Rights Organizations

Previous step

4. Collect and analyze your data

Next step

6. Conduct desk research

Ready to Go? Worksheet

Download the toolkit in PDF

As feminists many of us feel frustrated as we lurch from one political ‘moment’ to another; our work constrained by the parameters of organisational mandates, funding trends or political agendas, our time spent arguing over the need for gender analysis rather than building alliances for change.

The Gender & Development Network’s project on Feminist Alternatives provides space to consider what is important, to listen deeply to others and to accept challenges to our assumptions. Transformative progress towards feminist societies requires fundamental change that is context-specific, recognising intersectionality, the multiplicity of feminism, and the pivotal role of women’s collective action.

Rather than attempt to write a single paper, we have therefore produced a collection of thought pieces from academics, activists and practitioners around the world – not to suggest that we have the answers, but rather to encourage and provoke debate with the hope that more articles can be added in the future.

We are delighted to link our collection to AWID’s Feminist Propositions for a Just Economy.

Find out more about the Feminist Alternative project

AWID in the media

News compilation regarding AWID's work and organization.

• Is #MeToo a West-only movement?. Aljazeera, Jan 2018
• The principles of self-care. Sur Conectas, Dec 2017
• Change Through Humour! Meet Nidhi Goyal, India’s First-Ever Disabled Woman Comedian. The better India, Sep 2017
• Women are still targeted over fighting for human rights. Egypt today, Dec 2017
• Egypt: Hunting out Feminists in Egypt – Azza Soliman and Mozn Hassan Embody the State’s Refusal of Feminist Activism in both Private and Public Spheres. World Organization Against Torture, Jan 2017
• Access to land for indigenous women: an essential condition for eradicating gender violence. Intercontinental cry, Dec 2016
• Get Bangladesh women in unions to improve worker rights: campaigner. Reuters, Sep 2016
• Funding for women’s rights groups in poor countries falls by more than half. The Guardian, Sep 2016
• Men are 'allies to the cause' of equality for women, says campaigner. Reuters, Sep 2016
• Violent Extremist Groups Take Special Aim at Women, UN Official Says. Voa news, Sep 2016
• At a global forum of feminists, one thing is clear: it's where you live that counts. The Guardian, Sep 2016
• To End Malnutrition, Empower Women, Say Experts. News deeply, Jun 2016
• Gloria Steinem supports Salvadoran women in their fight against femicide. PR Newswire, Jun 2016
• Every hour, five women are killed by partners or family members. Left foot forward, Mar 2016
• Combatting Violence Against Women in Algeria: Mobilizing and Challenges. Reuters, Dec 2015
• When women human-rights activists are in danger, it’s women who come to their rescue. Vanity Fair, Jul 2015
• Another World Is Possible, Without the 1 Percent. Huffington Post, Mar 2015
• Use the power of the people to challenge the people in power!. New internationalist, Mar 2015
• Brazil: Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHRs) Challenged by Religious-Based Political Parties. Reuters, Oct 2013
• Why Economic Justice Is Central to LGBT Rights. Huffington Post, Jul 2012

Press releases

Press kits and statements

Social Media Kits

• A tribute to WHRDs who are no longer with us
• “Movements Matter” digital visual art series
• Brazil 2016 Forum Social Media Kit

Videos

Conferences, talks, seminars video recordings

Media contact

Contact email

+1 416 594 3773