Suzette Jordan
Young Feminist Activism
Organizing creatively, facing an increasing threat
Young feminist activists play a critical role in women’s rights organizations and movements worldwide by bringing up new issues that feminists face today. Their strength, creativity and adaptability are vital to the sustainability of feminist organizing.
At the same time, they face specific impediments to their activism such as limited access to funding and support, lack of capacity-building opportunities, and a significant increase of attacks on young women human rights defenders. This creates a lack of visibility that makes more difficult their inclusion and effective participation within women’s rights movements.
A multigenerational approach
AWID’s young feminist activism program was created to make sure the voices of young women are heard and reflected in feminist discourse. We want to ensure that young feminists have better access to funding, capacity-building opportunities and international processes. In addition to supporting young feminists directly, we are also working with women’s rights activists of all ages on practical models and strategies for effective multigenerational organizing.
Our Actions
We want young feminist activists to play a role in decision-making affecting their rights by:
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Fostering community and sharing information through the Young Feminist Wire. Recognizing the importance of online media for the work of young feminists, our team launched the Young Feminist Wire in May 2010 to share information, build capacity through online webinars and e-discussions, and encourage community building.
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Researching and building knowledge on young feminist activism, to increase the visibility and impact of young feminist activism within and across women’s rights movements and other key actors such as donors.
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Promoting more effective multigenerational organizing, exploring better ways to work together.
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Supporting young feminists to engage in global development processes such as those within the United Nations
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Collaboration across all of AWID’s priority areas, including the Forum, to ensure young feminists’ key contributions, perspectives, needs and activism are reflected in debates, policies and programs affecting them.
Related Content
My language is not one of the official survey languages and I am struggling to complete it, what can I do?
AWID is committed to language justice and we regret that, at this point, having the WITM survey available in more languages is not feasible. However, if you need support with translations or want to fill the survey in any other language, please reach out to us at witm@awid.org.
Laurie Carlos
Laurie Carlos was an actor, director, dancer, playwright, and poet in the United States. An extraordinary artist and visionary with powerful ways of bringing the art out in others.
“Laurie walked in the room (any room/every room) with swirling clairvoyance, artistic genius, embodied rigor, fierce realness—and a determination to be free...and to free others. A Magic Maker. A Seer. A Shape Shifter. Laurie told me once that she went inside people’s bodies to find what they needed.” - Sharon Bridgforth
She combined performance styles such as rhythmic gestures and text. Laurie mentored new actors, performers, writers and helped amplify their work through Naked Stages, a fellowship for emerging artists. She was an artistic fellow at Penumbra Theater and supported with identifying scripts to produce, with a goal of “bringing more feminine voices into the theater”. Laurie was also a member of Urban Bush Women, a renowned contemporary dance company telling stories of women of the African diaspora.
In 1976, as Lady in Blue, she made her Broadway debut in Ntozake Shange’s original and award-winning production of the poetic drama For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. Laurie’s own works include White Chocolate, The Cooking Show, and Organdy Falsetto.
“I tell the stories in the movement—the inside dances that occur spontaneously, as in life—the music and the text. If I write a line, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a line that is spoken; it can be a line that’s moved. A line from which music is created. The gesture becomes the sentence. So much of who we are as women, as people, has to do with how we gesture to one another all the time, and particularly through emotional moments. Gesture becomes a sentence or a state of fact. If I put on a script ‘four gestures,’ that doesn’t mean I’m not saying anything; that means I have opened it up for something to be said physically.” Laurie Carlos
Laurie was born and grew up in New York City, worked and lived in Twin Cities. She passed away on 29 December 2016, at the age of 67, after a battle with colon cancer.
Tributes:
“I believe that that was exactly Laurie’s intention. To save us. From mediocrity. From ego. From laziness. From half-realized art making. From being paralyzed by fear.
Laurie wanted to help us Shine fully.
In our artistry.
In our Lives.” - Sharon Bridgforth for Pillsbury House Theatre
“There’s no one that knew Laurie that wouldn’t call her a singular individual. She was her own person. She was her own person, her own artist; she put the world as she knew it on stage with real style and understanding, and she lived her art.” - Lou Bellamy, Founder of Penumbra Theater Company, for Star Tribune
Will there be pre-Forum convenings this time around?
We have been contacted by global and regional partners about some ideas for pre-Forum convenings and we will share more information about these ideas soon.
If you plan to organize a meeting before the Forum please let us know!
Many beautiful things emerged from the 2016 Black Feminisms Forum (BFF) that was organized by an Advisory Group and funded by AWID. Some of the independent organizing that arose from the BFF include Black feminist organizing in Brazil. While we won’t have another BFF this year, we remain committed to sharing some key learnings with anyone interested in continuing work around Black feminist organizing.
Snippet FEA trans and travesti people in Argentina (FR)
Seul·es 18 % des trans et travestis en Argentine ont accès à un emploi formel.
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
Naseeb Miloud Karfana
Nuestra agrupación no ha recibido financiamiento externo entre 2021 y 2023, ¿a pesar de ello, deberíamos responder la encuesta?
Sí, aún así deseamos saber de ustedes aunque no hayan recibido financiamiento en los tres, dos o cualquiera de los años comprendidos entre 2021 y 2023.
Fadila M.
Fadila M. fue una activista tribal soulaliyate de Azrú, en la región Ifrane de Marruecos. Luchó contra una forma específica de discriminación territorial dirigida a las mujeres tribales.
Como parte del Movimiento de Mujeres Soulaliyate por el Derecho a la Tierra, trabajó para reformar el marco legislativo relacionado con la administración de la propiedad comunitaria, a través de la adopción, en 2019, de tres proyectos de ley que garantizan la igualdad de mujeres y varones.
Según las leyes consuetudinarias vigentes, las mujeres no tenían derecho a beneficiarse de la tierra, en especial aquellas que eran solteras, viudas o divorciadas. En Marruecos, los derechos a las tierras colectivas eran transmitidos tradicionalmente entre los varones de la familia mayores de 16 años. Desde 2007, Fadila M. ha sido parte del movimiento de mujeres, la primera movilización nacional de base por los derechos a la tierra. Una de sus conquistas ha sido que, en 2012, las mujeres soulaliyate pudieron registrarse por primera vez en las listas de beneficiarixs, y recibir compensaciones relacionadas con la cesión de tierras. El movimiento también logró la enmienda del dahir (decreto del Rey de Marruecos) de 1919, para garantizar el derecho a la igualdad de las mujeres.
Fadila M. falleció el 27 de septiembre de 2018. Las circunstancias de su muerte no son claras. Participó en una marcha de protesta relacionada con el tema de las tierras colectivas y, si bien las autoridades informaron que su muerte fue accidental y que tuvo un paro cardíaco camino al hospital, la sección local de la Asociación de Derechos Humanos de Marruecos (AMDH) señaló que Fadila fue sofocada por un miembro de la fuerza policial utilizando una bandera marroquí. Su familia solicitó una investigación, pero los resultados de la autopsia no fueron dados a conocer.
Más información sobre el Movimiento de Mujeres Soulaliyate por el Derecho a la Tierra (en inglés)
Nota: Como no ninguna fotografía/imagen de Fadila M. disponible, la obra de arte (en lugar de un retrato) pretende representar por lo que luchó y trabajó: la tierra y los derechos a vivir y tener acceso a esa tierra y lo que crece en ella.
Where and when will the next AWID Forum take place?
The 14th AWID International Forum will take place 20-23 September 2021 in Taipei, Taiwan.
Snippet FEA Trans and Travesti people (EN)
THE TRANS EMPLOYMENT QUOTA
sanctioned by law is not being respected by companies and employers
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
We also recommend referring to our “Ready to Go?” Worksheet to assess your own progress.
Jelena Santic
Vous demandez le nom du groupe, de l’organisation et/ou du mouvement qui répond aux questions de l’enquête, et ses coordonnées – pour quelle raison?
Nous demandons ces données pour faciliter l’examen des réponses, éviter les doublons et pouvoir vous contacter si votre groupe n’a pas pu terminer le questionnaire et/ou vous répondre si vous avez des doutes ou des questions. Des informations sur la manière dont nous utilisons les informations personnelles collectées lors de notre travail sont disponibles ici.
Rosa Candida Mayorga Muñoz
Rosa Candida Mayorga Muñoz était une travailleuse sociale, leader syndicale et défenseure des droits humains du Guatemala. On la surnommait affectueusement Rosita.
Dans les années 1980, Rosa devient la première femme à siéger au comité exécutif du syndicat de l’Institut d’électrification nationale (STINDE), syndicat qu’elle avait rejoint en premier lieu pour défendre les droits des femmes au travail. Cela signifiait, à ses yeux, de lutter pour l’égalité des chances dans une entreprise où de nombreuses femmes affrontaient un système discriminatoire et violent mis en place par la direction de l’entreprise. Rosa avait également subi du harcèlement sexuel sur son lieu de travail, tant de la part de collègues que de responsables. Elle n’entendait cependant pas rester silencieuse.
Rosa a continué à se battre et fait partie des efforts pour façonner la lutte afin qu’elle prenne la forme du « Pacte collectif pour les conditions de travail du INDE-STINDE ». Ce pacte était le premier du genre et le premier au Guatemala à caractériser le concept de harcèlement (sexuel). Il fait désormais référence dans la loi guatémaltèque pour les questions de travail, et sert d’encouragement aux autres syndicats.
« Elle n’avait d’autres outils pour se battre que ses propres idéaux... Elle a été intimidée à plusieurs reprises, harcelée pour abandonner la lutte, mais son courage a fait naître l’espoir chez les syndicalistes de la base. Rosita a créé une image de respect non seulement au sein de son syndicat mais également face aux autorités de l’institution et au sein du mouvement des femmes. Elle a été reconnue comme une pionnière du mouvement des femmes du syndicat, dans un espace qui avait davantage été dominé par les hommes. » - Maritza Velasquez, ATRAHDOM
Rosa est décédée le 4 avril 2018, elle avait 77 ans.
Snippet FEA Brisa Escobar Quote (ES)
“Mis sueños y objetivos siempre han sido los mismos que los de Lohana Berkins: que la cooperativa siga de pie y no cierre. Seguir dándole este lugar a nuestras compañeras travesti, darles trabajo y un lugar de apoyo”
Brisa Escobar,
presidenta de la Cooperativa
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
2. Launch
3. During launch- Prepare your data for analysis
1. Clean your data
2. Code open-ended responses
3. Remove unecessary data
4. Make it safe- Create your topline report
- Analyze your data
1. Statistical programs
2. Suggested points for analysis
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.
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:
- People will not use the exact same words to describe similar responses
- Surveys with multiple language options will require translation and then coding
- 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?
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.
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
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Smaller samples (under 150 responses) may be done in-house using an Excel spreadsheet.
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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.
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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.
Previous step
Next step
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
Next step
Ready to Go? Worksheet
Carmela Elisarraraz Mendez
When will survey results be available?
We will analyze the survey responses, derive insights and trends, and present the results during the 15th AWID International Forum in Bangkok, and online, in December 2024. Register to attend the Forum here!