Financing Feminist Futures
The 12 Calls to Action for Resourcing Gender Equality is a bold initiative to mobilize substantially more and better-quality resources for gender equality efforts generally and specifically for feminist movements and women’s rights organizations in the Global South. Walking the Talk brought together feminist activists, researchers, funders, and analysts from around the world, to articulate the 12 Calls to Action (formerly known as the Common Ask Framework) that can be used for strategic and collective advocacy.
Within five years, we call on governments providing ODA to:
CALL 1
Invest at least 20% of bilateral assistance in initiatives that have gender equality as the principal objective.
CALL 2
Ensure at least 20% of humanitarian climate allocations have gender equality as a principal objective.
CALL 3
Channel at least 10% of gender equality principal investments identified in point 1 and 2 to women’s rights organizations, networks and funds.
CALL 4
Use influence in multilateral spaces to meet existing gender equality funding targets, set new ones where needed, and ensure transparent reporting on investments in women’s rights organizations.
CALL 5
Improve the quality of funding to feminist organizations: long-term, flexible and accessible.
CALL 6
Strengthen systems for tracking gender equality ODA by improving consistency, quality, and timeliness, and by including new actors in reporting.
CALL 7
We call on multilateral organizations to set ambitious targets for gender equality principal objective funding, invest in women’s rights organizations, and report transparently on progress.
CALL 8
We call on philanthropic organizations to collaborate with other donors to achieve USD 1.5B in annual funding for women’s rights organizations, networks, funds and feminist movements.
CALL 9
Recommendations to all: Commit with urgency, integrity and effectiveness to reform global financial systems so that they prioritize sustainability, equity, and peace for people and the planet.
CALL 10
Recommendations to all: Develop and test new and innovative financing mechanisms for feminist movements.
CALL 11
Governments and other funders report publicly and regularly on investments in feminist movements and all key actors collaborate on a comprehensive global report every three years to ensure accountability.
CALL 12
Governments and philanthropic entities track funding that supports anti-rights agendas and implement strategies to restrict resources to organizations undermining women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights.
The headlines are alarming. Women rights organizations and women/LGBTIQ+ human rights defenders face multiple threats: funding cuts, physical threats, closing civic space, crackdown on rights, restrictions on operations and receiving money from outside the country, rising authoritarianism and so on.
Collective support for these brave activists is not only needed but possible. To strengthen advocacy, the Walking the Talk consortium coordinated a collective effort to identify a set of recommendations aimed at global north governments providing ODA, multilateral organizations, philanthropy and civil society. The 12 Calls to Action for Resourcing Gender Equality build on analysis of past and current funding flows and relationships, previous recommendations, and global discussions.
The 12 Calls to Action are a tool to support follow-up to the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, discussions on the future of official development assistance, and mobilizing resources to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (in particular, Goal 5).
Together we are stronger
We invite everyone to use (one or more of) the 12 Calls to Action for Resourcing Gender Equality in their advocacy. This is an opportunity to build momentum, amplify all voices, and unlock resources for just feminist futures.