Reflections on day 1, Loeky Droesen

My first day at AWID has come to an end. It started with the plenary as described by Joni below and then we all scattered across the convention center. It is a huge place with a lovely view over the golden horn.

Everywhere in the building, you saw participants studying the two pink booklets that contain the forum schedule and the forum guide. Every AWID day has 5 time slots and in each time slot you can pick from at least 12 to 15 options. A difficult task as many panels are interesting. But one has to make a choice. Below a few of the eye opening or thought provoking comments I heard.

During a panel on feminist economics. "If micro finance programs enable women to stay in the roles they have in society, if it helps them to stay in the homes and take care of the children, is this real empowerment or entrenching of gender in-equality?"

"Tip for all. When you examine a proposed government policy, check if it will lessen or increase women's unpaid care? These hidden costs to women are rarely noted" 

During two panels on funding for women's rights a few global trends were outlined. (By the way, I am a fan of the ongoing AWID research on "where is the money for women's human rights, http://www.awid.org/Our-Initiatives/Where-is-the-Money-for-Women-s-Rights. The new report will be publish soon)

-If compared to the overall development/aid budgets, the money allocated to women's rights is a small fraction of the total number.

-Donors are in love with the idea of efficient funding. This is often translated into meaning measurable funding. One panelist called it the medicalisation of funding. Donors expect to be shown that work leads to result in the way they would measure the efficiency of a drug on the market. This trend is hard to match to the, not so easy to measure, work of movement for social change, among which the struggle for women's rights and equality.

-Donors are increasingly funding programmes with prescribed activities and provide little core- or even multi annual funding.This decreases the sustainability and the flexibility of the work of women's rights organisations. Most organisations surveyed by AWID would not survive for more then a few months without ongoing funds coming in.

-It is harder for women's rights organisations to work on the topics they feel are crucial and to set their own priorities as donor focus and monitoring and evaluation requirements lead to harmonisation and NGOistation of the women's rights movement.

So what can we do to address these trends

-Do solid research and publish the data. This will lead to discussion about the choices made, also within the government or donor.

-Challenge the strong current focus on results based approach to funding.

-Educate yourself on alternative sources of income generation

-Support those on the inside of government and donors (such as the gender experts) to help them shift the agenda

-Think politically about these issues and join forces to lobby for change.

Looking at the points above, I realised Wo=men is actually doing much of this already. : )

Loeky Droesen, Consultant Rights for Change and member of Wo=men