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Mechthild "Mel Hired" Möhring
Protection of the Family
The Issue
Over the past few years, a troubling new trend at the international human rights level is being observed, where discourses on ‘protecting the family’ are being employed to defend violations committed against family members, to bolster and justify impunity, and to restrict equal rights within and to family life.
The campaign to "Protect the Family" is driven by ultra-conservative efforts to impose "traditional" and patriarchal interpretations of the family, and to move rights out of the hands of family members and into the institution of ‘the family’.
“Protection of the Family” efforts stem from:
- rising traditionalism,
- rising cultural, social and religious conservatism and
- sentiment hostile to women’s human rights, sexual rights, child rights and the rights of persons with non-normative gender identities and sexual orientations.
Since 2014, a group of states have been operating as a bloc in human rights spaces under the name “Group of Friends of the Family”, and resolutions on “Protection of the Family” have been successfully passed every year since 2014.
This agenda has spread beyond the Human Rights Council. We have seen regressive language on “the family” being introduced at the Commission on the Status of Women, and attempts made to introduce it in negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Our Approach
AWID works with partners and allies to jointly resist “Protection of the Family” and other regressive agendas, and to uphold the universality of human rights.
In response to the increased influence of regressive actors in human rights spaces, AWID joined allies to form the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs). OURs is a collaborative project that monitors, analyzes, and shares information on anti-rights initiatives like “Protection of the Family”.
Rights at Risk, the first OURs report, charts a map of the actors making up the global anti-rights lobby, identifies their key discourses and strategies, and the effect they are having on our human rights.
The report outlines “Protection of the Family” as an agenda that has fostered collaboration across a broad range of regressive actors at the UN. It describes it as: “a strategic framework that houses “multiple patriarchal and anti-rights positions, where the framework, in turn, aims to justify and institutionalize these positions.”
Related Content
1. Gather your resources
This section highlights key resources recommended by AWID so you can conduct your own WITM research.
In this section
People needed
- 1 or more person(s) to lead overall implementation of research methodology and ensure all key pieces are on track (Sections 2-11)
- 1 or more person(s) to conceptualize the key research objectives and guiding questions
- 1 or more person(s) to refine and conduct the research methodology, including collecting data
- 1 or more person(s) to conduct relevant qualitative and quantitative analysis of collected data
- 1 or more person(s) to document and package research findings for desired audience(s)
- 1 or more person(s) to serve as an editor to your final products
- 1 or more person(s) to conduct outreach to spread the word about your survey and advocacy using your research results
Potential expenses
- Staff and/or consultant salaries
- Data analysis software if conducting analysis of large dataset in-house. Options:
- SPSS
- Stata
- R (this is free) - Cost of producing publications and research products
- If desired, incentive prize that survey participants can win if they complete the survey
- If desired, incentives to offer your advisors
Estimated time
- For research process: 6 to 18 months, depending on size of dataset(s) and staff capacity
- For advocacy: 1-2 years, as determined by your organizational goals
Resources needed
- List of advisor organizations, donors and activists
- List of online spaces and events/networks to distribute your survey and present your survey results
- List of donors, activists, and women’s rights organizations to interview
- Prepared interview questions
- List of publication sources to use for desk research
Resources available
- Sample 1 of Research Framing
- Sample 2 of Research Framing
- Example: 2011 WITM Global Survey
- Sample WITM Global Survey
- Sample letter to grantmakers requesting access to databases
- AWID Sample Interview Questions: Donors
- AWID Sample Interview Questions: Activists & Women’s Rights Organizations
- Sample Advocacy Plan
Online tools
- Survey Monkey: Free
- Survey Gizmo: Converts to SPSS for analysis very easily
- Tutorial: Gentle Introduction to Cleaning Data
- Visualization Tools
- “Ready to Go?” Worksheet
Once you gather these resources, you can estimate the costs for your research using our “Ready to Go? Worksheet”
Previous step
Next step
Previous step
Next step
The Ready to Go? Worksheet helps you estimate resources, staff and budget needed for your research
Can I fill the survey outside KOBO and share my responses with you via email?
Unless there are accessibility issues and/or you are filling the survey in other languages, we strongly encourage you to use KOBO for WITM standardized data collection and analysis.
Snippet FEA Agroecology And Food (EN)
AGROECOLOGY AND FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AS RESISTANCE |
Today, large-scale industrial food production uses single-crop plantations, genetically modified organisms and other pesticides that destroy the land and knowledge of local communities. |
Agroecology is a resistance to corporate-driven agriculture. It prioritizes smaller scale agriculture, multiple crops and diversified food production, and the centering of local knowledge and practices. Agroecology goes hand-in-hand with demands for food sovereignty, or the “right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems”(Via Campesina, Declaration of Nyéléni).
The role of women, indigenous and rural communities and people of color from the Global South is absolutely essential when it comes to food systems. Feminist agroecologists are working to dismantle oppressive gender roles and systems of patriarchy embedded within food production. As shown by the heroines of NSS, they are generating a liberatory agroecology by strengthening community resilience, empowering women peasants and farmers, and preserving local traditions, territories, and knowledge of food-producing communities.
Widad Mitri
5. Conduct interviews
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.
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
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.
Previous step
4. Collect and analyze your data
Next step
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
Ready to Go? Worksheet
¿Cuántas preguntas contiene la encuesta?
La encuesta contiene 47 preguntas en total, de las cuales 27 son de respuesta obligatoria* y las 20 restantes son opcionales. La mayoría de las preguntas de la encuesta son de opción múltiple. Invitamos a responder la totalidad de las preguntas.
Snippet FEA Bio fertilizer and Sum-Pack (ES)
Kate Millett
Contenu lié
TV5Monde: Kate Millett, décès d'une féministe qui combattait avec caresses et plaisir
Cecilia Loria
Gracias por participar en la creación de nuestros Futuros Feministas
¡Gracias por haber sido parte del Foro AWID 2016!
AWID agradece enormemente a todxs ustedes que han compartido con nosotrxs estos últimos cuatro días de aprendizaje, celebraciones, ideaciones, sueños y la construcción conjunta de nuestros futuros feministas en el Foro AWID 2016.
Nos sentimos muy inspiradxs, maravilladxs y llenxs de energía con todo el trabajo colectivo que hemos hecho para crear nuestros diversos futuros feministas.
Para más imagen, blogues y recursos:
Dois-je répondre à toutes les questions en même temps, ou puis-je y répondre en plusieurs fois?
Au besoin, vous avez la possibilité de sauvegarder vos réponses en cours d’enquête, pour y revenir plus tard. KOBO enregistrera vos brouillons de réponses dans le coin supérieur gauche de la page de l'enquête et rechargera votre dossier lorsque vous reviendrez à l'enquête. Assurez-vous simplement de continuer à partir du même ordinateur et du même navigateur.
Snippet FEA FEMINIST COOPERATIVISM (FR)
Coopérativisme
Féministe
Quand le travail et
la solidarité vont de pair
Obiageli “Oby” Nwankwo
With a legal career spanning more than 30 years, Oby was known across Africa and around the world as a champion for gender justice and human rights.
She founded and served as Executive Director of the Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre (CIRDDOC), a Nigerian NGO which sponsors trainings and network-building activities for members of civil society, parliamentarians and other key stakeholders to promote human rights, good governance and access to justice and rule of law.
Oby is remembered fondly by activists in Nigeria as an “extraordinary activist who displayed energy and passion towards the fight for gender equality and gender justice in Nigeria and across Africa.”
Digna Ochoa
Les savoirs communautaires pour bâtir des futurs justes
Le contexte
Aujourd'hui, de nombreux systèmes de savoirs communautaires sont en danger.
Les changements qui surviennent à une vitesse effrénée sur le plan économique, politique et culturel détruisent les environnements, les pratiques et les moyens de subsistance. Diverses formes de connaissances sombrent dans l’oubli, sont marchandées et colonisées dans le cadre de la mondialisation massive, de la promesse de gains à court terme, ou encore contre des solutions de fortune.
Définition
Le Buen Vivir (le bien-vivre), un concept adapté à partir des connaissances des peuples autochtones andins, est décrit comme la réalisation collective d'une vie d'accomplissement fondée sur des relations harmonieuses et équilibrées entre les êtres humains et tous les êtres vivants, dans la réciprocité et la complémentarité. Cela implique de reconnaître que les êtres humains sont une partie intégrante de la nature, que nous dépendons de la nature et que nous sommes interdépendant-e-s entre nous.
La vision inhérente à la notion de Buen Vivir intègre la production et la reproduction comme processus indissociables de l'économie, de la production de richesse et des conditions de vie.
Perspective féministe
D’une perspective féministe, le Buen Vivir valorise les relations et les ressources mobilisées dans les cycles de production et de reproduction, favorisant l’équilibre (non seulement celui des marchés) afin de garantir la continuité et les changements, tant qu'ils sont compatibles avec la justice économique et la pérennité de la vie.
Certaines conceptions binaires liées au genre et à la complémentarité entre les hommes et les femmes ont été critiquées par les féministes puisqu’elles laissent peu de place à une discussion plus approfondie sur le patriarcat hétérocentrique et les relations de genre ‘non conformes’.
Cela dit, l'une des principales contributions de l’application du principe Buen Vivir aux cadres politiques, économiques et sociaux, consiste à ce que l'égalité ne représente plus le paradigme des droits individuels, ayant plutôt pour objet la transformation de l’ensemble de la société.
Pour en savoir plus sur cette proposition :
- Buen Vivir: An introduction from a women’s rights perspective in Bolivia (Une perspective des droits des femmes sur le Buen Vivir en Bolivie : Une introduction, disponible en anglais). Dans son article, Martha Lanza conteste l'idée que le Buen Vivir est neutre en matière de genre et réclame le démantèlement des structures de pouvoir patriarcales qui persistent. Dans la même publication, Magdalena León analyse d’une perspective de genre la façon dont la cosmovision du Buen Vivir cherche à vaincre les idéaux d'expansion et de croissance permanentes, en plus de mettre en lumière les préjugés sexistes qui doivent être pris en compte.
- Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrows (Les lendemains d’aujourd’hui) par Eduardo Gudynas (en anglais).
- Indigenous Women's Visions of an Inclusive Feminism (Visions de femmes autochtones pour un féminisme inclusif), par Myrna Cunningham (en anglais). Un document qui met en évidence les contributions essentielles des femmes autochtones à la construction d'un mouvement féministe plus diversifié, inclusif et fort.
The resourcing realities and state of funding for feminist movements change quickly, is this survey a one-off?
No, it's not. This survey builds on AWID’s 20-year history of mobilizing more and better funding for feminist-led social change and is the third iteration of our Where is the money for feminist organizing? research. Our aim is to repeat the WITM survey every 3 years.