Reflections on the Financing for Feminist Futures Conference

For those of us working in the feminist funding sector, it’s been an incredibly tough year.

As a policy strategist at Mama Cash, an international women’s fund based in Amsterdam, I have observed how dramatic shifts in the political environment and devastating cuts to gender equality have impacted feminist civil society directly. When I started in 2022, the promising rise of feminist foreign policy and aftermath of the Generation Equality Forum seemed to reflect a growing consensus on the importance of gender equality and human rights and recognition of the critical role of feminist movements. Yet the hard-won progress of the last decades, from efforts to end gender-based violence, secure reproductive rights, advance equality for LBTQIA+ persons, is now under threat.

For many of us, particularly those working for women’s and feminist funds, who operate in such close proximity to the organisations we support, the question of how we respond to the urgency and severity of the moment has taken over almost every conversation. Yet agreement on steps forward for constructive, collection action requires time, reflection and a little more perspective. The Financing for Feminist Futures conference provided a special opportunity to build clarity on our shared vision. As feminist funders, civil society organisations, advocacy networks and multi-stakeholder alliances, we had time to take stock and identify the path forward for financing gender equality.

Patriarchy continues to update and adapt in the face of feminist successes.

What really stood out to me throughout the discussions was the need to hold multiple truths at once. In the face of extreme cuts, there is a push to think ‘beyond ODA’ by embracing newer and innovative approaches to financing, including impact investing and blended finance. Exploring these new paradigms and opportunities is critical for the future of funding feminist movements, and we have a lot to learn from feminist funds who have successfully championed gender-lens investing. Yet the urge to accept a ‘post-ODA world’ reminded me of the writer Cynthia Enloe, who explains that patriarchy continues to update and adapt in the face of feminist successes. It relies on us getting distracted, jumping too quickly on the new train at the cost of struggles that movements have worked so hard for.

We can embrace new approaches for financing without giving up on the power and potential of ODA for gender equality. The fact we have committed gender equality teams working within development institutions of the richest economies in the world, many of whom have reported increasing in funding to women’s rights organisations over the last decade, is not an accident, but the result of decades of effective collaboration between feminist activists and allies within these institutions. We must continue to work with governments, private philanthropy and multilateral institutions, refusing to take for granted multilateral frameworks on SDGs and human rights, which remain imperfect but effective tools for holding governments accountable on their international commitments and obligations in a time of great political upheaval.

This also applies to our thinking on risk and impact. Yes, we need to do more to challenge colonial and patriarchal conceptions of risk and impact that inherently distrust feminist movements and demand rigid quantitative data that doesn’t capture the transformative nature of social change. At the same time, feminist funds hold decades worth of quantitative and qualitative data from our grant-making, demonstrating the aggregate impact of feminist movements in securing wins across global health, sexual and reproductive rights, ending violence and climate action. We can and should seek to demonstrate our impact and document it in ways that are accessible in reaching the audiences we need to convince.

Spaces like F4FF remind me that as individuals and institutions we each play different roles in the system and have access to different spaces. As feminist funds and movements, we know that a win for one of us is a win for us all: recognising this and working together is the most effective kind of disruption we can do.

We can leverage networks such as the Alliance for Feminist Movements and Prospera, who are critical for consolidating our individual efforts through intel-sharing and coordination on advocacy, research and evidence. We are used to being in conversation with eachother that we sometimes forget the importance of explaining and educating donors on the existing feminist funding infrastructure, and how our organisations compliment and support one another.

There was only so much we could cover in the three days. Looking forward, the backlash against gender equality requires us to take risks and be prepared  to test things out, fail, adapt and learn. So much of this strategising should be done with our friends and allies who have long worked in restrictive contexts with limited resources.

For many, the situation we are currently facing is nothing new. Creating our own playbook requires bringing funders on the journey with us, working with allies within institutions and learning how to code switch to shift public opinion and galvanise political support. The Conference provided us with the space to build a collective vision to finance feminist futures – now it’s time to deliver.

Leah Moss is the senior policy strategist, Mama Cash.