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Special Focus

AWID is an international, feminist, membership organisation committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women’s human rights

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

ما هو الهدف من استطلاع "أين المال"؟

الهدف الأساسي من وراء استطلاع "أين المال" هو تسليط الضوء على على وقائع التمويل المتنوّعة والمركّبة للحركات النسوية، حركات النساء، حركات العدالة الجندرية وحركات مجتمع الميم - عين والحركات الحليفة لها على المستوى العالمي. بناءاً على هذا، وبناءً على ذلك - تعزيز قضية تحويل أموال أكثر وأفضل وتحويل السلطة باتجاه الحركات النسوية.

Ana M. Tallada Iglesia

Ana was a strong advocate of women’s rights and worked with a broad cross-section of women, from those in grassroots networks to those in the private sector.

She believed in building bridges across sectors. Ana was a member of the National Network for the Promotion of Women (RNPM), and was active in developing many social programs that address issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights. 


 

Ana M. Tallada Iglesia, Peru

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For additional questions, please use our contact form, and select “14th AWID Forum" from the dropdown menu.

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Snippet FEA Workers demonstrations in Georgia 3 (FR)

La photo montre une manifestation où une foule tient des affiches vertes et blanches.

WHRDs from the South and Southeast Asian region

7 Women Human Rights Defenders from across the South and Southeast Asian region are honored in this year’s Online Tribute. These defenders have made key contributions to advancing human and women’s rights, indigenous people’s rights, and the right to education. These WHRDs were lawyers, women’s rights activists, scholars, and politicians. Please join AWID in commemorating t their work and legacy by sharing the memes below with your colleagues, networks and friends and by using the hashtags #WHRDTribute and #16Days. 


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

 

Мы распределяем деньги среди наших грантополучающих партнерок(-ров) и являемся феминистским и/или женским фондом – можем ли мы участвовать в опросе?

Нет, мы высоко ценим вашу работу, но в данный момент мы не просим откликов от женских и феминистских фондов. Мы будем рады, если вы поделитесь информацией об опросе со своими партнерками(-рами) и контактами внутри феминистской сети.

Marceline Loridan-Ivens

Nacida en 1928, Marceline trabajó como actriz, guionista y directora.

Dirigió The Birch-Tree Meadow en 2003, protagonizada por Anouk Aimee, así como varios otros documentales. También fue una sobreviviente del Holocausto. Tenía solo quince años cuando ella y su padre fueron arrestadxs y enviadxs a campos de concentración nazis. Los tres kilómetros entre su padre en Auschwitz y ella en Birkenau eran una distancia infranqueable, sobre la cual escribió en una de sus novelas más influyentes: Pero no regresaste.

Al hablar sobre su trabajo, una vez afirmó: «Todo lo que puedo decir es que todo lo que pueda escribir, todo lo que pueda develar, es mi tarea hacerlo».


 

Marceline Loridan-Ivens, France

Why did AWID choose Taipei as the location for the Forum?

We see Taipei as the location in the Asia Pacific region that will best allow us to build that safe and rebelious space for our global feminist community.

Taipei offers a moderate degree of stability and safety for the diversity of Forum participants we will convene. It also has strong logistical capacities, and is accessible for many travellers (with a facilitated e-visa process for international conferences).

The local feminist movement is welcoming of the Forum and keen to engage with feminists from across the globe.

Read more about our considerations when choosing Taipei

Snippet FEA different lines of work FOR S4 (EN)

Lines of work:

FOR

Before you begin

Before starting the WITM research methodology, it is important you prepare the background and know what to expect.


Capacity

With AWID’s WITM research methodology, we recommend that you first review the entire toolkit.

While this toolkit is designed to democratize WITM research, there are capacity constraints related to resources and research experience that may affect your organization’s ability use this methodology.

Use the “Ready to Go?” Worksheet to assess your readiness to begin your own WITM research. The more questions you can answer on this worksheet, the more prepared you are to undertake your research.

Trust

Before beginning any research, we recommend that you assess your organization’s connections and trust within your community.

In many contexts, organizations may be hesitant to openly share financial data with others for reasons ranging from concerns about how the information will be used, to fear of funding competition and anxiety over increasing government restrictions on civil society organizations.

As you build relationships and conduct soft outreach in the lead-up to launching your research, ensuring that your objectives are clear will be useful in creating trust. Transparency will allow participants to understand why you are collecting the data and how it will benefit the entire community.

We highly recommend that you ensure data is collected confidentially and shared anonymously. By doing so, participants will be more comfortable sharing sensitive information with you. 


First step

1. Gather your resources

We also recommend referring to our “Ready to Go?” Worksheet to assess your own progress.

Join Us - old 5 Apr 2023 (changed by Ritu)

Join Us

By joining AWID, you are becoming part of worldwide feminist organizing, a collective power that is rooted in working across movements and is based on solidarity.

Become a member

Posso aceder a e realizar o inquérito no meu telemóvel?

Sim, o inquérito pode ser acedido através de um smartphone.

Dilma Ferreira Silva

Dilma Ferreira Silva fue una destacada activista por los derechos de las comunidades del Amazonas y luchó durante décadas por los derechos de las personas afectadas por las represas.

Ella misma fue una de las 32.000 personas desplazadas por el Tucuruí, una mega central hidroeléctrica, construida en Brasil durante la dictadura militar de 1964-1985.

En 2005 Dilma fue invitada a unirse al Movimiento de los Pueblos Afectados por las Represas en Brasil (MAB), y en 2006 formó el colectivo de mujeres, y eventualmente se convirtió en coordinadora regional del movimiento.

Al hablar de su activismo, sus colegas comentaban:

"Se destacó muy rápido porque siempre fue muy intrépida en la lucha".

Dilma vivió en el asentamiento rural de Salvador Allende, a 50 kilómetros de Tucuruí, y dedicó toda su vida a proteger a las comunidades y las tierras afectadas por la construcción de mega proyectos. Dilma se preocupaba especialmente por el impacto de género que esos proyectos podrían causar, y defendía los derechos de las mujeres.

En una reunión nacional del MAB en 2011, Dilma, dirigiéndose a las mujeres afectadas por las represas, dijo:

"Somos las verdaderas Marías, guerreras, luchadoras que están allí, enfrentando el desafío de la lucha diaria".

En los años siguientes, Dilma organizó grupos de base del MAB y trabajó con la comunidad para formar cooperativas agrícolas que condujeron a una mejor redistribución de los alimentos entre la comunidad. Conjuntamente, mejoraron la comercialización de la pesca y desarrollaron un proyecto de cisternas para el agua potable. También  fue defensora de la comunidad de agricultores cuyas tierras eran codiciadas por los "grileiros" (acaparadores de tierras).

El 22 de marzo de 2019, a la edad de 48 años, Dilma, su marido y su amigo fueron brutalmente asesinados. Los tres asesinatos fueron parte de una ola de violencia en la Amazonia contra el Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (traducido como 'Movimiento de los Trabajadores Sin Tierra') y lxs activistas medioambientales e indígenas.

Snippet FEA Striking against all odds (ES)

Luchar contra viento y marea: la historia de la victoria sin precedentes de la Red de Solidaridad

En enero de 2022, la Red de Solidaridad organizó una huelga con 400 trabajadorxs. ¿Su principal demanda? Aumentar los salarios. La huelga fue convocada después de meses de conversaciones fracasadas con el Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales de Georgia como parte de un conflicto laboral.

Después de semanas de protestar, negociar, hablar con la prensa, resistir represalias y soportar el frío del invierno georgiano, lxs trabajadorxs obtuvieron concesiones sin precedentes del gobierno: aumento de los salarios, prestaciones por maternidad, cobertura de los costos de transporte, el cese de despidos, la compensación por los días de huelga, y más.

La huelga no solo resultó en ganancias materiales, sino que también hizo que lxs trabajadorxs se sintieran unidxs y empoderadxs para defenderse y luchar por condiciones de trabajo dignas ahora y en el futuro. Se convirtieron en una fuente de inspiración para todxs lxs trabajadorxs del país.

Puedes leer más sobre su victoria aquí.

4. Collect and analyze your data

This section will guide you on how to ensure your research findings are representative and reliable.

In this section:

Collect your data

1. Before launch

  • First determine the best way to reach your survey population.
    For example, if you want to focus on indigenous women’s rights organizers, do you know who the key networks are? Do you have contacts there, people who can introduce you to these organizations or ways of reaching them?
  • Determine if your key population can be easily reached with an online survey, if you need to focus on paper survey distribution and collection or a mix of both. This decision is very important to ensure accessibility and inclusiveness.
  • Be prepared! Prior to advertizing, create a list of online spaces where you can promote your survey.
    If you are distributing paper versions, create a list of events, spaces and methods for distributing and collecting results.
  • Plan your timeline in advance, so you can avoid launching your survey during major holidays or long vacation periods.
  • Make it easy for your advisors and partners to advertize the survey – offer them pre-written Twitter, Facebook and email messages that they can copy and paste.

2. Launch

  • Send the link to the survey via email through your organization’s email databases.
  • Advertize on your organization’s social media. Similar to your newsletter, you can regularly advertize the survey while it is open.
  • If your organization is hosting events that reach members of your survey population, this is a good space to advertize the survey and distribute paper versions as needed.
  • Invite your advisors to promote the survey with their email lists and ask them to copy you so you are aware of their promotional messages. Remember to send them follow-up reminders if they’ve agreed to disseminate.
  • Approach funders to share your survey with their grantees. It is in their interest that their constituencies respond to a survey that will improve their own work in the field.

3. During launch

  • Keep the survey open for a minimum of four weeks to ensure everyone has time to take it and you have time to widely advertize it.
  • Send reminders through your email databases and your partners databases asking people to participate in the survey. To avoid irritating recipients with too many emails, we recommend sending two additional reminder emails: one at  midway point while your survey is open and another a week before your survey closes.
  • As part of your outreach, remember to state that you are only collecting one response per organization. This will make cleaning your data much easier when you are preparing it for analysis.
  • Save an extra week! Halfway through the open window for survey taking, check your data set. How have you done so far? Run initial numbers to see how many groups have responded, from which locations, etc. If you see gaps, reach out to those specific populations. Also, consider extending your deadline by a week – if you do so, include this extension deadline in one of your reminder emails, informing people know there is more time to complete the survey. Many answers tend to come in during the last week of the survey or after the extended deadline.

If you also plan to collect data from applications sent to grant-making institutions, this is a good time to reach out them.

When collecting this data, consider what type of applications you would like to review. Your research framing will guide you in determining this.

Also, it may be unnecessary to see every application sent to the organization – instead, it will be more useful and efficient to review only eligible applications (regardless of whether they were funded).

You can also ask grant-making institutions to share their data with you.

See a sample letter to send to grant-making institutions

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Prepare your data for analysis

Your survey has closed and now you have all this information! Now you need to ensure your data is as accurate as possible.

Depending on your sample size and amount of completed surveys, this step can be lengthy. Tapping into a strong pool of detail-oriented staff will speed up the process and ensure greater accuracy at this stage.

Also, along with your surveys, you may have collected data from applications sent to grant-making institutions. Use these same steps to sort that data as well. Do not get discouraged if you cannot compare the two data sets! Funders collect different information from what you collected in the surveys. In your final research report and products, you can analyze and present the datasets (survey versus grant-making institution data) separately.

1. Clean your data

  • Resolve and remove duplications: If there is more than one completed survey for one organization, reach out to the organization and determine which one is the most accurate.
  • Remove ineligible responses: Go through each completed survey and remove any responses that did not properly answer the question. Replace it with “null”, thus keeping it out of your analysis.
  • Consistently format numerical data: For example, you may remove commas, decimals and dollar signs from numerical responses. Financial figures provided in different currencies may need to be converted.

2. Code open-ended responses

There are two styles of open-ended responses that require coding.

Questions with open-ended responses

For these questions, you will need to code responses in order to track trends.

Some challenges you will face with this is:

  1. People will not use the exact same words to describe similar responses
  2. Surveys with multiple language options will require translation and then coding
  3. Staff capacity to review and code each open-ended response.

If using more than one staff member to review and code, you will need to ensure consistency of coding. Thus, this is why we recommend limiting your open-ended questions and as specific as possible for open-ended questions you do ask. 

For example, if you had the open-ended question “What specific challenges did you face in fundraising this year?” and some common responses cite “lack of staff,” or “economic recession,” you will need to code each of those responses so you can analyze how many participants are responding in a similar way.

For closed-end questions

If you provided the participant with the option of elaborating on their response, you will also need to “up-code” these responses.

For several questions in the survey, you may have offered the option of selecting the category “Other” With “Other” options, it is common to offer a field in which the participant can elaborate.

You will need to “up-code” such responses by either:

  • Converting open-ended responses to the correct existing categories (this is known as “up-coding”). As a simple example, consider your survey asks participants “what is your favorite color?” and you offer the options “blue,” “green,” and “other.” There may be some participants that choose “other” and in their explanation they write “the color of the sky is my favorite color.” You would then “up-code” answers like these to the correct category, in this case, the category “blue.”
  • Creating a new category if there are several “others” that have a common theme. (This is similar to coding the first type of open-ended responses). Consider the previous example question of favorite color. Perhaps many participants chose “other” and then wrote “red” is their favorite. In this case, you would create a new category of “red” to track all responses that answered “red.”
  • Removing “others” that do not fit any existing or newly created categories.

3. Remove unecessary data

Analyze the frequency of the results

For each quantitative question, you can decide whether you should remove the top or bottom 5% or 1% to prevent outliers* from skewing your results. You can also address the skewing effect of outliers by using median average rather than the mean average. Calculate the median by sorting responses in order, and selecting the number in the middle. However, keep in mind that you may still find outlier data useful. It will give you an idea of the range and diversity of your survey participants and you may want to do case studies on the outliers.

* An outlier is a data point that is much bigger or much smaller than the majority of data points. For example, imagine you live in a middle-class neighborhood with one billionaire. You decide that you want to learn what the range of income is for middle-class families in your neighborhood. In order to do so, you must remove the billionaire income from your dataset, as it is an outlier. Otherwise, your mean middle-class income will seem much higher than it really is.

Remove the entire survey for participants who do not fit your target population. Generally you can recognize this by the organizations’ names or through their responses to qualitative questions.

4. Make it safe

To ensure confidentiality of the information shared by respondents, at this stage you can replace organization names with a new set of ID numbers and save the coding, matching names with IDs in a separate file.

With your team, determine how the coding file and data should be stored and protected.

For example, will all data be stored on a password-protected computer or server that only the research team can access?

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Create your topline report

A topline report will list every question that was asked in your survey, with the response percentages listed under each question. This presents the collective results of all individual responses. 

Tips:

  • Consistency is important: the same rules should be applied to every outlier when determining if it should stay or be removed from the dataset.
  • For all open (“other”) responses that are up-coded, ensure the coding matches. Appoint a dedicated point person to randomly check codes for consistency and reliability and recode if necessary.
  • If possible, try to ensure that you can work at least in a team of two, so that there is always someone to check your work.

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Analyze your data

Now that your data is clean and sorted, what does it all mean? This is the fun part where you begin to analyze for trends.

Are there prominent types of funders (government versus corporate)? Are there regions that receive more funding? Your data will reveal some interesting information.

1. Statistical programs

  • Smaller samples (under 150 responses) may be done in-house using an Excel spreadsheet.

  • Larger samples (above 150 responses) may be done in-house using Excel if your analysis will be limited to tallying overall responses, simple averages or other simple analysis.

  • If you plan to do more advanced analysis, such as multivariate analysis, then we recommend using statistical software such as SPSS, Stata or R.
    NOTE: SPSS and Stata are expensive whereas R is free.
    All three types of software require staff knowledge and are not easy to learn quickly.

Try searching for interns or temporary staff from local universities. Many students must learn statistical analysis as part of their coursework and may have free access to SPSS or Stata software through their university. They may also be knowledgeable in R, which is free to download and use.

2. Suggested points for analysis

  • Analysis of collective budget sizes
  • Analysis of budget sizes by region or type of organization
  • Most common funders
  • Total amount of all funding reported
  • Total percentages of type of funding (corporate, government, etc)
  • Most funded issues/populations
  • Changes over time in any of these results.

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Previous step

3. Design your survey

Next step

5. Conduct interviews


Estimated time:

• 2 - 3 months

People needed:

• 1 or more research person(s)
• Translator(s), if offering survey in multiple languages
• 1 or more person(s) to assist with publicizing survey to target population
• 1 or more data analysis person(s)

Resources needed:

• List of desired advisors: organizations, donors, and activists
• Optional: an incentive prize to persuade people to complete your survey
• Optional: an incentive for your advisors

Resources available:

Survey platforms:

Survey Monkey
Survey Gizmo (Converts to SPSS for analysis very easily)

Examples:
2011 WITM Global Survey
Sample of WITM Global Survey
Sample letter to grantmakers requesting access to databases

Visualising Information for Advocacy:
Cleaning Data Tools
Tools to present your data in compelling ways
Tutorial: Gentle Introduction to Cleaning Data

 


Previous step

3. Design your survey

Next step

5. Conduct interviews


Ready to Go? Worksheet

Download the toolkit in PDF

Reason to join 5

Expande tus fronteras. Lxs afiliadxs de AWID representan de forma creciente una intersección diversa y vibrante de feministas que trabajan, entre otras cosas, en temáticas asociadas a la tierra, los derechos de lxs trabajadorxs, los derechos sexuales y la autonomía corporal. Al afiliarte, puedes conectar tus luchas con las de otros movimientos.