The Netherlands partner with local women’s rights organisations and feminist movements for gender transformative change

Challenge

Women’s rights organisations (WROs) and feminist movements are critical actors in the protection and advancement of gender equality and women’s empowerment, and ultimately in achieving the goals of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development that leaves no one behind. However, they often lack the resources required to carry out their work. While overall financing for gender equality has increased in recent years, financing to these organisations remains irregular and limited. Barriers such as lack of access to technology and training, administrative burdens, and remote locations inhibit financial resources from getting into the hands of local WROs. Additionally, managing small grants to several local organisations is labour intensive for development co-operation partners, yet new efforts to support WROs are emerging.

Approach

The Netherlands recognised the need for alternative financing mechanisms for gender equality and introduced its SDG5 fund with a budget of almost EUR 500 million over five years (2021-2025). This Fund includes several financing mechanisms for gender equality, including the Leading from the South (LFS) programme and the Power of Women grant instrument, both of which are dedicated to funding WROs and feminist movements.

Leading from the South is a feminist funding alliance, led by four women’s funds in the Global South, that resources and supports feminist and women’s rights organisations, networks and movements that are working towards gender transformative change and the advancement of human rights. LFS has focused on empowering women, girls and transgender persons as agents of change and supports women’s rights’ activism and lobbying efforts. The first phase of LFS (LFS I) ran from 2017-2020 with a budget of EUR 42 million and was aligned with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) Dutch Policy on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality and the Policy Framework “Dialogue and Dissent”. LFS focuses on three objectives:

• preventing and eliminating sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls

• elevating women’s leadership and participation in (political) decision-making

• strengthening women’s economic empowerment and improving the economic climate for women.

Results

The LFS programme successfully provided direct support to 290 organisations in the Global South. An end of term evaluation of the LFS programme, highlighted the following results:

• By shifting decision-making power to WROs in the Global South, the LFS programme has enabled them to become more involved in decision making, transforming unfair policies and practices into ones that rebalance power relations and create pathways for change. This was demonstrated in the case of the Mukkuvar fisherwomen in India (page 45 of the evaluation report).

• The programme reached and empowered women often overlooked by the mainstream development community due to barriers such as remote locations, disability, lack of skills, technology, or resources.

• The LFS model facilitated better support to smaller grassroots WROs through capacity building, assisting with regulatory limitations and collaboration with larger feminist networks.

• Over 86% of LFS I grantees noted significant changes or shifts within their organisational capacity due to LFS funding.

• The increased capacity and visibility of some supported WROs enabled their contribution to climate and gender policy discussions at the Conference of Parties (COP25 and 26).

• The LFS programme, and particularly the significant work of the four women’s funds, has helped to fundamentally shift perceptions regarding the capacity of WROs and southern-led women’s funds to receive and manage large grants.

The programme was renewed for a second phase (LSF II) of five years (2021-2025) with a budget of EUR 80 million. The four women’s funds have already selected nearly 300 grantees and have started to work with them.