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| All panel members together for the 'Stepping Up, Standing By and Speaking Out for Women's Rights Movements' CSW69 Side Event. |
Yesterday at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, Mama Cash co-hosted the ‘Stepping Up, Standing By and Speaking Out for Women’s Rights Movements’ event, alongside Equality Fund, Alliance for Feminist Movements, Gender Funders CoLab, and the governments of the United Kingdom, France, Mexico, and Canada.
Jess Tomlin of the Equality Fund, co-moderator with Mama Cash's co-Executive Director Happy Mwende Kinyili, introduced the panel, "We are here celebrating 30 years of incredible action and what I hope we come away with today is a reminder of the multiplicity of actors and actions that were mobilized 30 years ago across so many spheres."
Mama Cash co-Executive Director Saranel Benjamin opened the discussion with a presentation of the impact study Mama Cash commissioned for our 40th anniversary. Some key takeaways:
● Women’s movements have grown stronger, and more coordinated, providing a foundation for progress.
● Change and impact lies in both the moments of success, and the moments of challenges.
● Often when we talk about measurements of impact, we focus on big numbers, isolated moments and speed of change. But having sustained impact takes time and it needs funding that allows for that time.
● If we want to see impact in the language of scale and sustainability we do need to fund long-term, and flexibly, and we have to fund in movement building ways. Our results over 40 years are testament and proof of that.
Mama Cash partner Pratima Gurung spoke on behalf of the National Indigenous Disabled Women’s Association Nepal with the bold reminder, “It is time to amplify our collective voices. Nothing about us without us.”
Happy Mwende Kinyili then invoked António Guterres’ remarks in the opening ceremony that “the poison of patriarchy is back.” They asked us to consider, “While we celebrate the Beijing platform of action, let’s not forget that feminists were organising and changing the world long before 1995.” Now, they say, “We are working together as feminist civil society, women’s funds, governments and philanthropy to unlock critical resources.”
Baroness Harriet Harman, the new UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls, launched the United Kingdom FCDO’s (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office) signature initiative, a collaborative effort to support women's rights organisations. Harman said, “Today we can celebrate the lives that have been changed and the lives that have been saved. And today we can resolve to make further progress and be unequivocal that we will not let any of those rights be rolled back. We did not fight so hard for those rights to be rolled back… Look at what courageous women’s groups can achieve.”
Baroness Harman pointed out that, thanks to the determination of the women’s movement, the UK now has women members of parliament (MPs) as 40% of parliament. “These movements have seen backlash before. They know the scale of the problem and won’t be daunted. But they are historically underfunded - with less than 1% of gender equality aid going to women’s rights organisations… We need to think more innovatively and more long term to sustain funding for women’s rights organisations. FCDO is launching an initiative to support women’s rights organisations, in collaboration with philanthropy, other governments and civil society organisations… Nobody is doing women and girls a favour here - it is a basic human right.”
Marie Soulié, Head of the Mission for Feminist Foreign Policy and Education in France, shared the newly published strategy on feminist foreign policy and emphasized the importance of engaging in long term dialogue with feminist civil society.
Ambassador Alicia Buenrostro, Deputy Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations, affirmed the role of a vibrant women’s movement as part of their Feminist Foreign Policy and underscored the value of collaborating with feminist movements, including through the Alliance for Feminist Movements.
As the final speaker on the panel, Barbara Curran, Director General, Social and Economic Development from Canada, asked to take a photo of the audience to share the excitement, energy, and hope of having all these movers and shakers in one room. She then summed up the moment by saying, “Don’t panic, organize.”
In closing, Jess Tomlin reminded us:
The reason the rollback is so strong is because the agitation is so powerful. The rollback is so strong because we progressed so successfully.
And our co-Executive Director, Happy, offered an inspiring note, “Hope is a discipline… That which is within us is so much more powerful than what we are confronting in the world.”
Written by Mama Cash
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