Praise for The Everyday Feminist

“It is fitting that as the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa celebrates its tenth anniversary, that I read Latanya's book, The Everyday Feminist. It acknowledges the special place that women have in keeping the peace in our nations, communities, and homes. We are a tireless movement that will not stop until every girl is safe from violence and every woman has space to speak and be heard in matters that affect her. I consider myself an everyday feminist and I join Latanya in celebrating women everywhere that stand up against abuse and tyranny, sexism, racism, colonialism, and toxic extremism and patriarchy that diminishes the power of our light. I rejoice with the women spotlighted in this book and encourage Latanya to continue to draw attention to the activists that are so often underestimated and under‐supported. We stand together in solidarity.”

—Leyman Gbowee,
2011 Nobel Peace Laureate, founder and president of Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, Social Worker

“Everyday feminists are—and always have been—on the frontlines of driving social change, too often without due recognition or funding. In her important new book, Latanya Mapp Frett tells the stories of extraordinary ‘ordinary’ women, illuminating the manifold contributions that women activists and grassroots women's organizations make in communities across the globe. Their insights on how to build transformative movements for lasting social change make a compelling case for investment in women's organizations and feminist movements as the surest pathway to the just, equitable and inclusive world of opportunity that we want and need.”

—Dr. Natalie Kanem,
executive director of UNFPA

“In The Everyday Feminist Latanya Mapp Frett brings her decades of experience, expertise, insights, and wisdom to philanthropists, practitioners, and policy makers in service to sustainable social change and impact. Through compelling personal narratives, we get to meet the changemakers and movement builders who influence positive change in their communities every day—ensuring that their voices are informing the next generation of activists and action, which is sorely needed for a better, more just and equal world, one that supports the many, rather than the privileged few. Latanya Mapp Frett is a leader among leaders in feminist learning and practice, and in this book, in her inimitable way, she shines the light and brings ‘everyday’ feminists’ lived experience and stories for us all to see and learn from. I know I'm not alone in being enriched by the power and promise that this important book offers us and in my fervent hope that this body of work will serve to catalyze and inspire significant investment and mobilization of feminist movements that are vital for today and for our collective future. Couldn't be timelier, and grateful for such an accessible read that should be required reading for anyone who wants to make a positive difference in their communities for a better world.”

—Abby Maxman,
president and CEO of Oxfam US

“Latanya Mapp Frett has built an undeniable track record for knowing how women change the world for the better. In this book, she tells stories we all need to read and learn from. This research can guide us in better understanding the potential for technology to scale local solutions and enable the next generation of everyday feminists.”

—Maryana Iskander,
CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, Rhoades Scholar, Harry S. Truman Scholar

“The Everyday Feminist is a must‐read for anyone serious about challenging ecosystems of power and privilege. In her debut book, Latanya Mapp Frett brings to life the stories of ordinary women—everyday feminists—who are on the front lines of transformational change and yet invisible to the powers that be. These are the women and their movements getting things done—with little to no formal support from those with resources. If we want to live in a different world, then The Everyday Feminist challenges us to invest seriously in these ordinary women who deliver extraordinary results.”

—Fatema Z. Sumar,
executive director of Center for International Development at Harvard University; author, The Development Diplomat

“I must admit my deep distress regarding the multiple conflicts in the world, most of which are taking place on the African continent. I know too well the stories of women, marginalized in both the assistance as well as the recovery efforts in these countries. I am, however, encouraged to read the words in The Everyday Feminist. Latanya has chosen to shed light on what we can do well and that is to support women activists, right where they are. UN Women and a host of other allies recognize this. But the challenge does seem daunting at times and that is when we need to pick up this book. I have worked in all the sectors that should fund everyday feminists and it makes me proud to work tirelessly with Latanya and others to ensure that women are no longer relegated to the side when issues of great importance need solutions to move forward. I trust this easy‐to‐read commitment to ending gender inequality will spark new and thoughtful conversations around the world. Because everyday feminists can indeed show us the way.”

—Dr. Phumzile Mlambo‐Ngcuka,
former executive director of UN Women, former deputy president of South Africa

“Having spent the last 20 years digging deep, both personally and professionally, on decolonizing the way we think and act when it comes to international aid, I sat back and sighed ‘well done, Latanya,’ after reading her new book, The Everyday Feminist. This work is not easy. It requires all of us to dig deep and challenge our beliefs and resulting actions. I also know that by telling her story and highlighting the stories of other feminist activists, Latanya helps us understand how this work is a lifetime journey. Listen to her suggestions about how to fund women … because she knows and has been doing this for three decades. Listen to the other activists in this book and trust that what they know and do is worthy of more than just your admiration. It also deserves your unrestricted, long‐term, core support. And that means decolonizing your mind and trusting women to do the work that our communities, country, and planet need now more than ever.”

—Degan Ali,
executive director of Adeso and Somali activist

“It's wonderful to see how Latanya's stories and the everyday feminists she holds dear weave a compelling call to action for all of us—activists, national and international civil society, corporations/private businesses, governments, and philanthropy in its widest sense. Latanya encourages us to think differently, to flip the way we validate and support women, especially women of color living in some of the most difficult and uncertain settings. Her writing is clear, accessible, personal—and it makes me want to do more. Thank you, Latanya, for your ongoing courage and leadership in this space and many others.”

—Theo Sawa,
Former CEO of African Women's Development Fund; former senior program advisor on the UN

“The work of the ‘everyday feminist,’ as Latanya Mapp Frett so importantly highlights, is critical to achieving a gender equal world rooted in human rights and justice. There is no doubt that after reading these powerful stories, we will all be inspired to seek legal change and fund movements so women and girls can live their lives in communities free from violence and discrimination.”

—S. Mona Sinha,
cofounder of Raising Change; global executive director of Equality Now Chair, Women Moving Millions

The Everyday Feminist

THE KEY TO SUSTAINABLE SOCIAL IMPACT—DRIVING MOVEMENTS WE NEED NOW MORE THAN EVER

Latanya Mapp Frett

FOREWORD BY Cecile Richards

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To the everyday feminists in my life, beginning with my grandmothers, Julia Jones and Henrietta Young … to my mother, Diane Jones, and my daughter, Sahara Frett. And to my sister and besties … you are and have always been my everyday feminists. Finally, to the everyday feminists who were born male and understand the natural beauty of becoming and supporting the feminists in their lives. Thank you to my son, Bongani Magadla, and my partner, Wayne B. Norton.

Preface

It is a delight to have this opportunity to share my love of and respect for everyday feminists. I make several disclosures in this book to distinguish my thoughts with those of everyday feminists. But it only seems proper to start here with an understanding of the perspective of which my story and the intersection with everyday feminists still does not make me the representative of all such women (or men) who fall into the categories or classifications of which I write. In particular, the primary theme of my book is to encourage allies from different sectors to challenge themselves to better support everyday feminists. However, not every, and likely not most, everyday feminists will want support, directly or indirectly, from those who read this book. I hope this is clear from the history and power dynamics in our society showing that sometimes staying under the radar is a better approach for many of the organizations run by everyday feminists. And many of these incredible champions have thrived only with local resources and continue to see the best path for their liberation as encouraging those most affected by the ills of injustice to participate any way they can rather than seek funds from outsiders. And it furthers their cause to not have their issues hijacked or sensationalized because they took funding from those who care yet restrict their hands in using resources as required. My hope is that by promoting the importance of everyday feminists that I don't set them back by a potential barrage of funders seeking their audience. See Chapter 14 for others who can approach everyday feminists for you, which will maintain confidentialities and security when appropriate.

Additionally, I have chosen to change the names of some of the women I speak of in the book to maintain their privacy. I have lost touch with many of them, and I feel it is responsible not to divulge more than necessary to tell my story. Those who directly agreed to using their words are properly cited and celebrated as well.

The artwork you find in this book comes from the amazing artivists who are a part of the Global Fund for Women Artist Changemakers. They are making the gender justice revolution irresistible by using their art as a tool for new visions of the world, where equity and equality for all is a reality.

And finally, I am fortunate to have lived in more than 15 countries and spent time with colleagues and family in another 52 countries. I share the places where my story takes place, but more important than the geography are the lessons for funders that I spell out directly in chapter titles and subtitles. These insights span the geographies and the sectors. It is difficult to hone these lessons down to a specific time, country, or issue. I have tried to do this in the desire to provide examples that help articulate the challenge with each lesson.

Enjoy!

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to PeiYao Chen, who was my inspiration for this book and has helped capture the value of Global Fund for Women to many for many years. She is a true everyday feminist.

I want to particularly send vibes of gratitude to the everyday feminists highlighted in this book. You have been generous in sharing your stories and wise in advice for us all. For those whom I could not find but included you in my story, I pray you are well and protected. I have not used your real names to keep your privacy. Know that I love you still and cherish our times together. And for all those that we interviewed but did not make it in the book, I still have your notes. I'm already planning the next book.

To the staff and board at Global Fund for Women for providing me the space to put in writing what I think could be important for a much broader audience to understand about us. Shout out to Cinthia and Nicole for your help to cross the finish line.

There would be no book without the support of Lori Adelman, Maya Dusenbery, Olivia Field, Heidi Toboni, and the publishing team over at Wiley working with Brian Neil.

And if you are reading this book, it is due to generous assistance from Anne Delaney, Nita Long, and Theresa Preston Warner.

And it all came together at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center Residency Program. I am grateful for the time to focus and build community while stepping out on a ledge that seemed insurmountable before arriving in Italy.

Thanks to Cecile for the Foreword. You are always there when I need you. Forever appreciative!

Sending love and light to all the sister funds that I find myself in community with every day. You are truly deep‐down everyday feminists.

And finally, thanks to my son, Bongani, for pulling up the rear and helping me with the citations!

Foreword

In my very first job out of college back in the 1980s, I worked with garment workers on the Rio Grande border of Texas and hotel workers in New Orleans who were organizing unions in their workplaces. These women of color, who were working two, sometimes three, jobs just to support themselves and their families, came together to improve not only their own economic circumstance but that of their entire community. With no safety net to fall back on, they risked their livelihood to make the world better. They understood that if they didn't stand up together to fight, nothing would change. Witnessing their courage was probably the most profound influence of my life.

While these women would not have called themselves feminists, they were as feminist as any women I've ever worked with in the decades since. And I thought of them as I read The Everyday Feminist, a book that celebrates such grassroots women activists—or everyday feminists—and the critical role that they play in igniting and sustaining social change.

I've known Latanya Mapp Frett since I served as president of Planned Parenthood and recruited her to run our global program in 2011. I quickly saw that Latanya had an important skill that any leader needs and few have: she is a great listener. Whether it was women providing counsel to abuse survivors in a clinic in Nairobi, Kenya, or youth activists demanding access to contraceptive services in Cusco, Peru, Latanya sought out the activists on the frontlines providing care, building bridges, and changing hearts and minds. Throughout her long career—which has taken her to 15 countries—she has learned from the people doing the hard, unglamorous work of improving their communities.

In this book, she shares the inspiring stories of everyday feminists, as well as the lessons she's learned from working alongside them. These activists are the all‐too‐often unsung—and underfunded—heroines who are transforming the world, one community, one country, one movement at a time.

The everyday feminists you will meet on these pages are not famous. You've likely never heard of them or seen them on TV. They do their work, day in and day out, invisible to many of us. In some ways, they are notable precisely because they're not extraordinary.

They remind me of young women like Deja Foxx, who as a 16‐year‐old stood up in a town hall meeting in Mesa, Arizona, and challenged Republican Senator Jeff Flake on his vote to defund Planned Parenthood in 2017. “I'm a young woman; you're a middle‐aged man. I'm a person of color, and you're white. I come from a background of poverty, and I didn't always have parents to guide me through life; you come from privilege,” she said in a now‐viral video. “Why is it your right to take away my right to choose Planned Parenthood?” Or Vienna, a seventh grader who organized her middle school classmates to fight against the recent Texas abortion ban. Or so many other women and girls I've met across this country who are trying to do what they can, in their own communities, to make things better.

Everyday feminists are making a difference not only in Arizona and Texas but also in Kigali and Islamabad. And if we actually listen to them and invest in them, we'll see that they know what they're doing.

One of the most important people whom I've met in my life was the late Dr. George Tiller. An abortion doctor in Kansas who was murdered by an anti‐abortion extremist in his own church in 2009, George had many sayings, but the most memorable one was simple: “Trust women.”

As a doctor, he trusted women to know what was best for them. And as champions of social movements, we must do the same. We need to get close to the ground. We need to listen to the people who are most affected by the urgent challenges we face. And we need to trust them with the resources they require to build powerful, sustainable movements for change.

There has never been a more critical time for us to trust women to create the future that we—and generations to come—deserve. From the rollback of reproductive rights in the United States to rising authoritarianism worldwide, from widening economic inequality to the looming threat of climate crisis, it's easy to get discouraged about the state of the world right now.

But the everyday feminists working in the grassroots don't have the luxury of wringing their hands over these challenges. They are getting up each morning, rolling up their sleeves, and pushing the boulder a little bit farther uphill. And all they need is for us to give them an extra nudge.

Every day, women without two nickels to rub together do extraordinary things; just imagine what they can achieve with more funding and support. An investment in them is an investment in a better world for all of us.

—Cecile Richards

Introduction: My Story and Challenging the Feminist Funding Gap

It was 1992 and refugees were arriving in Nairobi, fleeing growing civil unrest in the neighboring countries of Rwanda and Burundi. I began studying public international law at the University of Nairobi and volunteering a couple times a week at the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) center—filing documents, finding applications, and fetching the weirdly milky tea that was brought to Kenya by the British colonialists centuries ago. When I signed up at the age of 21 to go to Nairobi as part of a law school study abroad program, I knew nothing about the history or crisis, at the time, of the former Ruanda‐Urundi territory, which had been colonized by Belgium after WWI, and later split in half during their 1962 liberation. But gradually I learned that the Hutu‐Tutsi ethnic group strife stemmed from class warfare, with the Tutsis perceived to have greater wealth and social status (as well as favoring cattle ranching over what is seen as the lower‐class farming of the Hutus). Between 1990 and 1993, government officials directed massacres of the Tutsi, killing hundreds.

While studying and working in Nairobi, I met a woman named Innocent. When I entered Innocent's braiding salon near the central business district of Nairobi for the first time, I was amazed by the diversity of her clientele. The one room, with its movable ink and dryer in the back, was crowded with men and women, mostly refugees from Rwanda and Burundi, as well as a smattering of Kenyans, Sudanese, Ugandans, and Tanzanians. Some book‐learned and some not, most spoke a plethora of languages, though often relied on the common Bantu languages. As the patrons got their hair done, they were passionately engaged in conversations about the civil wars, current and past, in their homelands. I learned how to pronounce Rwandan President Habyarimana's name before I even knew who he was because it was mentioned so often and with such force at Innocent's place.

Innocent and her “crew” at the salon were mostly Tutsi, and she was a wealth of resources for her community. She was tall, a paper bag brown like me, wore expertly braided styles, and always dressed as if she was going to a gala, with exquisite African‐designed materials in modern yet comfortable styles. Her offerings went beyond beauty styling and products to include immigration lawyers who could provide legal means to work and livelihood; cigarettes, marijuana, and more serious drugs, from medications to hallucinogens, for more traditional practice; direct counseling for women in situations of violence; and contraceptives, including condoms, the pill, and referrals for more complicated matters (this model of providing contraceptives in hair salons would come back to me when I joined Planned Parenthood two decades later).

Innocent was also a master recruiter; anyone meeting her became a member of her network. My law school friends and I soon learned that a trip to Innocent's salon was a day‐long affair. After getting your braids done, she had a host of “files” of people who were looking to apply for visas to the United States (no matter that we weren't yet lawyers) or needed documents translated to English (no matter that we couldn't read the foreign languages). On more than one occasion, she was a matchmaker of sorts in setting up blind dates from her community (because we “had to get married one day”).

And then there were Innocent's after‐hours meetings, usually filled with women only, which I was privileged to attend a couple of times. In these meetings, Innocent was joined by community elders with intelligence on what was happening back in their home country of Rwanda. They were armed with phone messages indicating what family or community member was headed to Nairobi. They knew who just arrived and what they required. At one meeting, a woman who appeared to be nearly 100 told Innocent, “Daughter, we need food for 200, housing for 35 families, schools to accommodate 75 primary age children, and jobs for 50 men. They will be here this weekend or soon after, so there is no time to spare. We don't have any money, but we will ask in church this Sunday for donations. Can you help?” Innocent's response was always a resounding “yes!” She would dole out commands to several younger women, and the organizing took place—right there in that one little salon.

Innocent was my formative teacher in understanding Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano's quote: “Many little people, in little places, doing little things, can change the world.” After returning to the United States, I thought of her every time I heard the news about Rwanda. I tried to stay in touch, but I dare say that she had way more important things to do in the following years. She was busy receiving more and more legal and illegal refugees from both Rwanda and Burundi during those years leading up to the genocide. Ultimately, in 1994, during the “100 days of slaughter,” some 800,000 people were killed in the genocide against the Tutsi people. An estimated 100,000 to 250,000 women were raped and more than 2 million people fled the country.¹

Innocent is what I call an everyday feminist.

She helped an entire community of refugees in Nairobi without any formal support. Imagine what she could have done with unrestricted, long‐term, flexible support from the international aid, philanthropic, foundation, and/or corporate community of allies.

My Hopes for You and This Book

The Everyday Feminist is a book that celebrates the work that women activist do every day, the organizations they set up to sustain their work, and the feminist movements they create and grow for maximum impact on a broad range of social issues that affect us all. These everyday feminists are the backbone of modern, transformative social movements like Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Mi Unas Menos, and so many more. But we only hear about these women and their work in very limited ways. To understand their impact is to dispel the myth that to shift power to diverse communities you must look to “heads of state” to make change happen. In fact, you need to look no further than the communities where you live, work, and value or admire from afar. Nearly all of us likely know one of these everyday feminists, whether we realize it or not. Most of us working in the social sector cheer them on one way or another, counting on them to sustain catalytic social change. Yet, their contributions to the work of social change are often overlooked, undervalued, or simply misunderstood.

The fact is women's organizations, and their feminist and grassroots movements, receive less than 1% of funding from the global philanthropic community, and that is cut in half for women and girls of color in the US² and Black feminist social movements (see Figure I.1). According to the Association for Women's Rights in Development, women's rights organizations receive only 0.13% of official development assistance and 0.4% of all gender‐related aid (focused on gender equality and women's empowerment). And foundations only allocate 0.42% of their grants toward women's rights. The percentage rises to roughly 4% for gender issues generally but does not directly or indirectly go to women's organizations and their feminist movements. These numbers are so shockingly low that they are hard to comprehend or accept.³

The reasons for this feminist funding gap are many, but none make sense. For instance, we tend to trust our resources to those whom we know. This might explain why more than 51% of aid to the global south by global north countries is given to someone in the origin country of the aid.⁴ The challenge is that often those we know the best are not the closest to the issues that require significant activism. Especially if we are major funders or people of influence. We explore more of these reasons in Chapter 3 of this book.

Figure I.1 Where is the money for feminist organizing?

Investing in everyday feminists you don't know but trust to do what comes naturally to solve pressing social issues is like diversifying your portfolio to minimize the risk that the world we live in might implode from social challenges and injustices. And the return is much higher than most of our financial investments, with global studies showing a median return of $8 in social impact for every dollar spent on programming for women and girls.⁵

I have lived and worked in more than 15 countries in four continents and partnered with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), United Nations (UN) agencies, governments, foundations and so many more to advance gender justice and social equality around the world. Today I serve as president and CEO of the Global Fund of Women; sit on the boards of Oxfam, Management Sciences for Health, and others; and serve on various committees and high‐level international commissions. From my unique vantage point over the decades, I know the value of the everyday feminist because I have spoken to them, helped set strategy on their issues, and watched up close the long‐term impact they have made for their communities and nations.

In addition to Innocent, in this book you will meet many other everyday feminists whom you may have never heard of—like M. Adams formerly at Freedom Inc. in Madison, Wisconsin, and Miriam Miranda, fighting for Afro‐Colombian rights—as well as some you might already know, such as Loretta Ross, a pioneer of the reproductive rights movement, and Tarana Burke, the highly acclaimed founder of Me Too. I honor these women and their work through how they've crossed and influenced my own story, highlighting places I have lived around the world and the everyday feminists who have taught me what I know to be true today and the culmination of my life's work: We must support women's organizations and the movements they lead if we want to heal our world.

This book is for anyone who is committed to gender equality. There are many of us who understand the value of gender equity and value the work that women do every day, everywhere you find them, to make our lives better. I am especially hoping my colleagues in the private sector working for for‐profit socially responsible businesses and environmental, social, and governance (ESG)–minded corporations can read this book and find inspiration to do more directly, or indirectly, with everyday feminists. For my colleagues in government and public multilateral organizations, particularly those working on community‐based programs, global or domestic, having been in your shoes and in partnership with you now, I hope this book can help make your case for allocating a greater portion of your portfolios to everyday feminists, their orgs, and movements. For those who are with me in philanthropy, foundations big and small, as well as individuals supporting this work, I hope that we can partner better to find and reach everyday feminists and center them in new and exciting ways. And to the everyday feminists who might read this book, thank you! I hope you can see yourselves in the pages of this book, along with so many other phenomenal women, and know that I don't speak for you. I understand that you probably don't even want our support, because it is complicated, comes with many strings attached, and slow. I hear you … and hope this book can change some of that for you … for all of us.

In this book, I invite the reader to explore not only the monumental impact of the everyday feminist but also the opportunities to champion and support them in their drive to usher in the most profound social impact we've seen in modern history. I will go into detail in the coming chapters how and why these women are the key to transformative social change yet continue to struggle for support and resources. You will hear from them directly, including their impact stories and how you can step up and show up for everyday feminists—anywhere they are making a difference.

Last, I feel this conversation has never been timelier. In just the last several years the world has faced a global pandemic that exacerbated health and safety inequities; experienced the deadliest natural disasters in history, many due to the climate crisis; and growing inequality affecting both social and economic development—we need these everyday feminists.

Now gather in close and let's get to know some the most amazing change agents you'll ever meet … and the wisdom they have generously shared with us.

Notes

1. “Rwanda Genocide of 1994,” Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/event/Rwanda-genocide-of-1994.

2. Erin Howe and Somjen Frazer, “Pocket Change: How Women and Girls of Color Do More with Less,” The Ms. Foundation for Women (June 2020). https://forwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Pocket-Change-Report.pdf.

3. Tenzin Dolker, “Where Is the Money for Feminist Organizing?” The Association for Women's Rights in Development (2021). https://www.awid.org/sites/default/files/2022–01/AWID_Research_WITM_Brief_ENG.pdf.

4. Tara R. Gingerich and Marc J. Cohen, “Turning the Humanitarian System on Its Head,” Oxfam Research Reports (July 2015).

5. United Nations Population Fund (2022). Investing in three transformative results: Realizing powerful returns, New York. chrome‐extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub‐pdf/Realizing%20powerful%20returns_EN_FINAL.pdf

PART I
The Underappreciated, Under-Resourced But Overachieving Everyday Feminist

“Libre y Salvaje,” Merlina Anunnaki, Illustrator, Bolivia Pride Cohort, Artist Changemaker, 2021

1
What Is an Everyday Feminist and Why Do They Matter for Social Impact?

A mother‐daughter duo came into the legal clinic in Zwelihle township, close to Hermanus in the Western Cape of South Africa, a community of more than 100,000 people. Both were stunningly gorgeous. The 11‐year‐old daughter, Nomani, wore a school uniform, and her mother donned a hot pink head wrap that accentuated her strong facial features. As we sat in the legal clinic, housed among the rows of aluminum shacks with the beautiful Indian Ocean in the distance, Nomani told me her story.

The previous year, she'd been caught for the second, maybe third, time having a cigarette with her friends on her school campus. They were all reprimanded and punished with four to eight flogs with a paddle or type of whip. After arguing unsuccessfully for a different “sentence,” Nomani received her whipping with courage and trepidation. She had been through this before and tried to be strong. However, it was painful and, as she turned in the middle of her head teacher's flogging, she was hit on other parts of her body, including her face. A year later, the scar on her left cheek was a reminder of the violence she'd endured in a school setting.

I'd arrived in South Africa three months earlier in 1994 to do a legal externship with the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), an organization that aspires toward a fully democratic, equal society. The negotiations to end apartheid were in full swing as the country prepared for its first democratic elections. With goals to promote justice using the Constitution, build respect for the rule of law, and contribute to socioeconomic transformation within South Africa and beyond, the LRC hosted the largest number of legal aid clinics in the country. I had jumped at the opportunity to escape my law school classes at the University of Maryland. The unnecessary competition, the excessive reading, memorization, judgment—all in the name of churning out legal robots for the system. There were some great moments—including moot court, editing the journal for international law, the Cardin clinic offering support for death row inmates in Maryland, and the public international law program in Nairobi. But each day my classes on tort, property, criminal, and civil law made me question my desire to be an attorney.

My brother kept me going. He was in prison doing a 20‐year bid for felony robbery. And he wasn't alone. Ironically, many male members of my family were in prison when I was in law school. Statistically, I suppose having a brother and six cousins doing time while I was studying law should be an anomaly. But my family's circumstances were normal for most Black girls growing up in Philly during the construction of the American prison industry after a war on drugs across political ideologies. The difference was this Black girl landed in law school and competed for opportunities that eventually took her to the coveted motherland.

I had been eager to visit South Africa since my undergrad days when I'd joined the fight to get my university to divest from the apartheid‐era country. It became a rallying call for me and my peers in the Black Student Union. We felt ashamed learning about the apartheid system only in the late 1980s, some 40 years after its formal inception, considering its blatant modern‐day resemblance to the system of slavery and Jim Crow that my people endured in the United States. These feelings of empathy quickly turned our disappointment to anger. We made demands of the school's administration: “Divest NOW!” We absorbed as much news as possible about the struggle in South Africa. Fellow students—both Black and White—were readily accepted into the fold as they told their horrid stories of the system that legally separated races while relegating Indigenous Africans to the bottom of the social and economic ladder—often violently.

Upon landing in South Africa, I quickly fell in love with the country and the work. In those early days, I predicted I would stay in the country for the rest of my life. It represented possibilities that didn't seem attainable in my own country. I could appreciate the importance of having your own land, being among a majority population, and knowing where you are from—all things sadly taken from millions of Blacks in the diaspora. LRC deployed me to work in Hermanus, where I saw whales up close and personally for the first time. I worked with the township administration on drafting their new municipal codes. As apartheid was ending and a new government coming in, the former townships were to become proper and independent government structures. It was by far the most exciting and fulfilling work I had ever done. In addition, I worked at the legal aid clinics, fielding reports from women experiencing domestic abuse, sexual harassment, divorce, land theft, and many other atrocities.

After Nomani's whipping, her mother knew that things must change. Corporal punishment of children in schools was a vestige of the brutal apartheid rules that were ripe for change in a newly post‐apartheid South Africa. Since the incident, the mother had been talking to a few of her neighbors while at the market, the braiding salon, and after church. She and some of the parents of children in similar circumstances decided to go to the legal clinic to seek guidance. Nomani's mom was initially sent back to the school, where the head teacher, while sympathetic, assured the mothers that this was the best for the children because “to spare the rod was to spoil the child.” Anyway, she was told, this was the school's policy and fully legal in South Africa. Nomani's mother told me, “Well, maybe it is time to change the law.”

Nomani's mother had come back to the legal clinic after receiving no satisfaction at the school, bringing other students with their parents to record their stories. She didn't know that, in fact, LRC was collecting these cases around the country and planned to take some emblematic ones to the lower court. I was re‐interviewing Nomani because her case was one that would be tried at the lower court. Meanwhile, Nomani's mother continued to mobilize those who were hurt at the hands of the schools, encouraging others to complain.

Nomani's case—along with many others—ultimately went all the way to the country's Supreme Court in 1994. The case was only partially successful, but child whipping as a criminal sentence was eradicated and condemned in schools. In 2019, South Africa passed legislation to end corporal punishment in all forms.

I call Nomani's mother an everyday feminist.

She lives thousands of miles away from most of you reading this book. The issue of corporal punishment in schools, while maybe not on your radar, still exists in 64 countries around the world; in roughly half of those, beatings—whipping, flogging, caning—are still lawful under state, traditional, and/or religious law as a sentence for crimes committed by juveniles.¹ Regularly affecting both girls and boys, everyday feminists in those countries know this. They live this.

Today, almost 30 years later, women like Nomani's mother are still being underestimated and underappreciated while serving as the most effective changemakers we have among us. If the resources had been readily available, I am sure that Nomani's mother would have started an organization of her own. But how would she have found the capacity with such limited tools and support as were then at her disposal? Maybe we in the social change sector should have been looking for her to support her in making social change.

Maybe then Nomani's mom could have mobilized thousands more parents who found corporal punishment degrading. Maybe she could have mobilized these agitators to raise awareness on the issue and, just maybe, it would not have taken 25 years to change things in her country.

And for those who think this is an isolated event, I urge you to look closer. Q Mda, a young South African everyday feminist and member of the Global Fund for Women's Adolescent Girl Council, is fighting for gender justice, nationally and internationally. She says, “I've had to use my own voice to fight back at systems of oppression and discrimination and create systems and solutions capturing each and everyone's experiences, each and everyone's inequalities. We don't need to be spoken for—we need to be spoken with. But are we seeing enough women in legislation? Are we seeing enough women in parliament? Are we seeing enough women in peace talks? No! Philanthropy must look at its top‐down approach to supporting people like me and realize that it is not very progressive.”

And Kenyan Rachael Mwikali, another everyday feminist, thinks about peace and security all the time. She is the activist who stood on stage at the Stockholm Gender Forum in 2018, raised her fist, and got the auditorium to chant “Power to the Women.” This everyday feminist, born and raised in the informal settlement of Mathare Nairobi, heads up the Coalition for Grassroots Human Rights Defenders Kenya. She says,

I saw a statistic that said 98% of girls between the ages of 10 and 19 in Kenya getting HIV transmission was a result of gender‐based violence. Yet, we still must beg for investment in girls' education. I mean, they can't see the intersections. A few months ago, we went on the street with other comrades to protest the Ministry of Education because they were criminalizing queer children. They're saying, if you're in a school and you're suspected to be a lesbian, you'll be taken off during school. Instead of discriminating against girls in school, let's invest in them. Let's support them. Let's start letting girls organize their own activist work themselves, giving them resources to control without forcing them.

In the United States, there is Rosie Lopez Torres, an everyday feminist who founded Burn Pits 360 after her husband, who served in Iraq, was exposed to toxic chemicals, and later diagnosed with brain and lung cancer. Rosie has worked for more than 15 years to organize US veterans affected by environmental health exposures and their families to lobby state and national laws to protect those returning home by getting them adequate health services. She says, “We are organizing and mobilizing together with the sick and dying in the halls of Congress, urging them to pay attention to those veterans that protect American lives during their service and now putting bullets in their heads because of the illnesses they contracted in the military. What exactly is an acceptable amount of death? We are going to sit in district offices and mobilize for the benefits owed to soldiers exposed to toxins during combat. Veterans are not trained to give up, they are trained to fight.”²

I have been working for social causes and social change in some form throughout the whole of my adult life. Today—after decades serving in boardrooms such as Oxfam, Management Sciences for Health, and executive suites advising those at the United Nations, the US government, and Planned Parenthood, funding and helping set policy, as well as observing, listening to, and working elbow‐to‐elbow alongside women like Nomani's mom, Q Mda, Rachael Mwikali, and Rosie Lopez Torres—here's what I have become thoroughly convinced of: If we in what is considered economically developed countries and positions of privilege are truly serious about the social impact goals of our civic and nonprofit sectors, about our personal and institutional giving, and about the aims of our NGOs and our businesses' ESG‐minded efforts, then we can no longer afford to underestimate, underappreciate, and underfund what has historically been our most crucial lever for sustainable, transformative social change: everyday feminist women. The modern, everyday feminist working as a change agent within social movements—whether launching, growing, or maintaining them—has proven to be a critical maximizer for success. Possibly the most critical.

And that's true not just for traditional women's and gender issues but also for causes that span the social spectrum.

Resourcing the everyday feminist and the movements they champion is today's most neglected but powerful pathway to real, sustainable social change—locally and across the globe, especially for communities with the greatest need. Although these everyday feminists are pivotal movement builders and key to sustaining momentum on a social issue, they are precisely the people who tend to not get noticed or supported. There are myriad reasons why. From being more difficult for funders to find than the easier landing spots of big, well‐established, traditional nonprofits to not fitting the mold of people typically entrusted with grants, the everyday feminist is perennially overachieving yet under‐supported.

If you're reading this book, I suspect that you may care about gender equality or may be worried about women's rights being stalled or regressed—whether you're a woman, a minority gender, or a man. (In my work I encounter plenty of men who are authentically concerned about these issues and working for change.) Or you may be passionate about fighting racism, ageism, mass poverty, the refugee or climate crisis, or a whole slew of other social justice issues. And I know some readers may be part of government funding arms or family foundations and other institutions with assets earmarked for achieving systemic change across a range of needs. Or you may be from the for‐profit sector; I am often asked to speak to corporations who these days have investors and stakeholders pushing them to act in the ESG space—or who sincerely want to know how they should be showing up in their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. I want to show all of you through the stories, concepts, and evidence presented in these pages why you should be supporting feminist organizations and be funding in a feminist manner.

It's time we close the feminist funding gap, be bold in our choices of whom and how we support, and listen to the lessons of extraordinary women around the world who have so much to offer those of us who care about transformational social change. To start, let's get clear on who I mean when I say, “an everyday feminist.”

Who Are Everyday Feminists?

Everyday feminists represent their communities in struggles for justice, equality, and transformational social change using their voice and other personal resources to drive social change in response to an environment of discord or harm. They are relatable and perfectly imperfect in a way that makes them human. They are not the once‐in‐a‐generation, lightning‐in‐a‐bottle charismatic leader. Rather, they are mostly ordinary women with extraordinary passion and commitment working toward lasting transformational change. They are the ones who show up, push forward, and who get the hard stuff done.

Everyday feminists tend to begin their activism early in life, ready to do the work for sustainable social impact. When they begin their activism, they often do not have an organization supporting them, but soon build one, whether formal or informal. They are often Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. They come from more marginalized communities living on a lower socioeconomic scale in their context and center these communities in their work. Their education varies but they usually are not from the more affluent schools. And although they may not usually enjoy a high degree of political clout, they are usually politically astute. They have deep personal experience with the issues they are trying to address and live these issues every day. As a result, they typically intrinsically understand the interconnectedness of social problems and take an intersectional approach. They may not see their issues as global or even envision a large public response, yet they think big and deliver unexpected results for their communities. They may even be men in certain circumstances. And they have a knack for bringing the right people to the table to ensure action.

Here are a few common characteristics of everyday feminists so that you can identify and trust them and their work:

Focus on equality—usually rejecting superiority systems, structures, and outcomes

Inclusive—with a strong distaste and distrust for judgmental processes and people

Respectful—and in most cases encouraging of individual choices

Fighter—an unyielding focus on dismantling bias and systemic injustice, especially in the law

Ungendered—recognizes the variety of discriminations against women but champions marginalized men and other genders as well

Bold—confident and willing to take risks for what is right, including calling out opposition to their cause

Authentic—comes to the work unapologetic about who they are and what they've done

Collaborative—prefers working together in partnership

Curious—seeking multiple approaches and solutions to address a problem

Empathetic—shares the feelings of others

Caring—for themselves, their families, communities, and the collective

Generous—not just with resources but with sharing power as well

Transparent—usually comfortable sharing thoughts and feelings

Accountable—accepts responsibility and eager to justify actions

Intersectional—works on multiple issues of importance at once

Interdependent—depends on others and easily delegates

Intergenerational—focused on multiple generations

These qualities form change agents who move the needle on our most pressing issues and are the key to sustainable social impact.

Must This Woman Identify as a Feminist?

They may or may not call themselves a feminist, as that word evokes different meanings for different cultures. It doesn't matter. You don't have to identify as a feminist to be an everyday feminist. If a person has the characteristics listed previously, they are indeed the subject of this book. My grandmother once told me when I was in middle school doing a report on the equal rights amendment in the United States that she was no “feminist.” She explained that they were white, educated, rich women who could afford to worry about just their gender. Even then, I knew that my grandmother, with her fifth‐grade education, did more for her beloved community than almost all of those I read about in my schoolbooks. I am confident that my generation and those following consciously accept the growing idea of a global feminist solidarity and, correspondingly, a global nature to this phenomenon of the everyday feminist. This global connection cuts across borders and enables us to recognize and support the actions of feminist movements that feel and operate like those we most value in our own communities. It is difficult to say you support reproductive justice in the United States without supporting and sharing resources to similar movements in Latin America, Africa, and so on. Later in this book, we'll hear from everyday feminist Loretta Ross about her connection to global movements focused on intersectional issues affecting black bodies in patriarchal societies worldwide. Also worth mentioning are the everyday feminists who started their movements in their communities and then expanded them to others because they met other everyday feminists who championed their ideas for transformative social change in a different community or country. These include Sakena Yacouba from Afghanistan; Tarana Burke of Me Too; Kavita Ramdas, former head of the Global Fund for Women; and so many more.

Does This Woman Identify as a Leader?

These everyday feminists may not even consider themselves leaders. I worked for everyday feminist Elaine Jones at the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund during law school. I remember her saying that she wasn't a civil rights leader when someone called her that. At first, I was surprised, as I would have followed her anywhere. She certainly had all the characteristics for an everyday feminist. I realized later that she didn't need to belong to the club of “leaders.” She was happy doing the groundbreaking work that continues to underpin racial equity issues in the United States.

So everyday feminists don't necessarily see themselves as leaders per se—they are not after titles and status. They are less likely to say they're the ones making the social change happen but rather might say they're bringing together the groups of people who will make change happen—calling out and calling in those who are preventing change or looking for solutions from various parties and communities. If there's a march, they aren't necessarily the ones speaking at the podium—they are more likely to be those organizing the march and then keeping the movement going afterward. If there's a policy or law to be changed, they aren't necessarily the person sitting at the boardroom table or congressional committee making the big decision—they are the ones who are making the decision‐makers take notice.

But whether identifying as feminists or leaders or something else, one thing I know for sure is that everyday feminists are natural movement builders.

Why These Everyday Feminists Matter for Social Impact

While working with the UN from 1996 to 2002, I would often use this popular adage, “If you give a woman resources, she will use it to lift herself and her family out of poverty. If you give her a few more resources, she will then lift her community out of poverty. And with just a few more resources, she would seek to lift her entire country out of poverty.” Hence, the world would be better off with more stable and prosperous countries. There is a reflection of this in Figure 1.1. We'll come back to this concept in more detail in Part III.

Figure 1.1 The feminist logic model by the Women's Funding Network.

Instead of running through the litany of evidence you can find in the “Resources” at the end of this book, in the following sections I introduce you to the impact of some notable social movements that have strongly affected my journey and have been influenced by the everyday feminists within them. None are specifically movements for women, highlighting that feminist movements are only recently named such. The success of everyday feminists coming together is profound yet often overlooked in history books. We'll spend more time dissecting more classic feminist movements in Chapter 2. For now, here's a sampling that is personally meaningful and provides a good introduction to the everyday feminist driving change through movements.

Anti‐Apartheid Movement

After nearly 50 years of an unjust system, the anti‐apartheid movement succeeded against the institutionalized segregation in South Africa that ensured the domination of the minority white population in the political, economic, and social spheres of the country. The anti‐apartheid movement is considered one of the most successful social and feminist movements because of the impact and involvement of everyday feminists. Throughout the movement, women served in leadership roles, organized significant strategies in the movement, and mobilized across the world to highlight the struggle. Winnie Mandela, Mariam Makeba, and other high‐profile women were but the tip of the iceberg. Pioneers included Ida Mntwana, Annie Silinga, Rahima Moosa, Helen Suzman, and the list goes on. To this day, the strategies used in the movement are studied by activists. In particular, the global movement to divest from South Africa stands out among the many protest and boycott efforts. It was certainly popular among universities around the world, where students and academics pressured their administrations through mass demonstrations to pull their investments out of South Africa. Anti‐apartheid was the first movement I participated in as an activist in my own community. It prepared me well for a life of activism.

Nation of Islam—Black Nationalist Movement and the Feminist Contribution

The Nation of Islam dates itself to 1930 and touts historical figures such as Elijah Poole Muhammad, Malcolm X, the boxer and activist Muhammad Ali, and Louis Farrakhan. Its mission is to uplift Black Americans and remove the systemic and toxic consequences of bondage on its communities. Through a religious lens, it speaks to the social, economic, cultural, and political realities that Africans stolen from their homeland have endured in the Americas and the broader diaspora. The movement is sometimes criticized as being antisemitic, separatist, and patriarchal in its attempt to meet its goals. However, Una Yvette Taylor, in her analysis of the movement, speaks to its feminist leadership, without which the movement would have never survived. She speaks to the infamous Sis Clara Muhammad, who forced her husband, Elijah, to go to the mosque and hear the message of Fard.³ Sis Clara focused on developing the Muslim Girl Training program for women in the Nation. She indeed embarked on a structure of empowerment for women and girls who came through the doors. The women were the backbone of the movement even if not the face. We have heard countless stories of women in the mosque who embraced and yet outperformed the message of domesticity as it was described by foes of the movement. Dawn‐Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim lay out this history of empowered women that goes far beyond Betty Shabazz and Khadijah Farrakhan in their book, Women of the Nation. From the inside, this was the first feminist movement I ever experienced. As a child, I saw women who were absolutely queens. They held responsibilities in the movement that I still reflect on to this day. The women prepared meals as well as major speeches to the community. The women educated children while also running businesses. But it was what they did for other women that made it feminist in my eyes and certainly had the greatest impact on me. I learned that I was not less than a white person, and I certainly was no less than any other. I am confident that the feminist women behind its sustained action are the reason for the Nation of Islam's success.

The Black Panther Party—Elaine Brown

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was a movement originated in 1966 by cofounders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. It was invested in resisting government oppression and police brutality and focused on self‐determination and community‐based solutions under the auspice of “power to the people.” Its membership grew ferociously from its first chapter in Oakland to more than 2,000 members by 1968, clustered in more than 30 chapters in cities across the country and eventually the world.⁴ The civil rights movement's methodical disobedience provided a stark contrast for the BPP's controversially militant, sometimes confrontational, revolutionary agenda. It lands high on my list of feminist movements and, although it was in decline when I first arrived in the Bay Area of California in 1990, its legacy was nonetheless still a powerful force in the communities there. And with no intention to diminish the greatness of the male leadership in the movement, it was the feminist following that made up most of the movement and steered the organization. Elaine Brown became its leader from 1974 to 1984 alongside feminist leaders of the movement's communications, community schooling, feeding programs, and community health clinics, as well as soldiers trained for the revolution. The movement formed coalitions with the other feminist movements, and many of its chapters took on the issue of gender discrimination to combat harassment and abuse within the movement itself. Learning about BPP and its efforts certainly opened my eyes to the power of feminist leadership in any social movement.

Critical Race Theory—Kimberlee Crenshaw

I pause here to think about critical race theory (CRT) as a movement—a feminist movement. It is an organized effort drawn from the civil rights legacy including cross‐disciplinary scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race, society, and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream US liberal approaches to racial justice. Its most recent champions include Kimberlee Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, Cheryl Harris, Mari Matsuda, and so many other fierce feminists of color. It is a movement to document the understanding that systemic racism exists at the very foundation of the United States and continues to shape lives, to the detriment of Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and other people of color—and to the benefit of white people. This movement is taking off and popular today somewhat because the opposition to it is organized and strategic with specific focus on not using the theory in schools to provide children an anti‐racist education. As it is becoming a more prominent conversation on the political agenda, it is imperative to understand that many children, myself included, were taught slavery but not the countries and dynasties of Africa before colonialism. We were victims of whitewashing history and its historical figures. Because of CRT, these and other important conversations are now on the table for intellectual discovery. My children benefit from this movement, and I am encouraged by the feminist women who are driving the agenda.

Student Loan Debt Movement—Senator Elizabeth Warren

There is growing collective action to eliminate and/or forgive debt that US students and families incur while in school. The average US student graduates college with a debt of $28k. For law students like myself it is approximately $145k, and a whopping $201k for medical students. There are a few programs that will help you draw down this debt, including working in the public or nonprofit sectors. But loan forgiveness, even in these sectors, is scarce and unevenly applied. The COVID pandemic has brought these issues to the forefront. National organizations like the NAACP have provided evidence showing that educational debt is also a racial equity issue that systemically keeps people of color far behind economically than their white peers. This, along with the rising costs of a university education, will continue to disadvantage many students. Elizabeth Warren, 1 of only 24 women in the 100‐person US Senate, is an everyday feminist, lawyer, and professor and has been working on social safety net issues her entire life. Her involvement in the student loan forgiveness movement helped it emerge and push back against widespread discontent, keeping the issue alive in political circles. Beyond the financial toll these loans can take on borrowers, getting out of student debt can be a hard and confusing process. And that doesn't even take into consideration the emotional toll that student loans can have. From depression to a delay of life events such as buying a house or starting a family, student loan debt is a struggle. But with $1.4 trillion in outstanding student loan debt, it's a problem that's not going away any time soon. In 2022, the Biden‐Harris administration’s Student Debt Relief Plan allows by executive order the forgiveness of student loans up to $20k and even this is being challenged in court. Although Elizabeth Warren neither seeks nor gets credit for starting this movement and tirelessly beating the drum for its implementation, many of us who were there in her early days on the Hill know that she is certainly the everyday feminist on duty. And there are more to come.

There are many more examples of impact from popular feminist movements than those just described, but these have been highly salient in my life. It also seems important now to juxtapose these examples of impact from everyday feminists against a popular movement that would have benefited from having everyday feminists drive its work.

Just Say No Movement

Although this doesn't necessarily make my list of feminist movements, it was shepherded by the First Lady in the United States at that time, Nancy Reagan. In the early 1980s, a cheap, highly addictive form of cocaine known as crack was first developed. The popularity of crack led to an increase in the number of Americans who became addicted to cocaine. By 1987, crack was reportedly available in all but four states in the United States. Emergency room visits for cocaine‐related incidents increased fourfold between 1984 and 1987.⁵ The crack epidemic particularly devastated African American communities—crime and incarceration rates among this population soared during the 1980s. When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he vowed to crack down on substance abuse and reprioritize the War on Drugs, and his wife championed the cause, using a phrase in response to a question on what to do if drugs are offered. The movement started in the early 1980s and continued for more than a decade. Nancy Reagan traveled the country to endorse the campaign, appearing on television news programs, talk shows, and public service announcements. The first lady also visited drug rehabilitation centers to promote the movement. I suspect the decline of the movement had a lot to do with not meeting the core characteristics of a movement. Members of the Black and Latinx communities had a difficult time getting behind such a simplistic response to a complicated set of factors leading to drug use and abuse. The corresponding impact on families of users and sellers that fast‐tracked African Americans through the criminal justice system may have also reduced popularity of the movement. I certainly learned that movements cannot start in a government office and expect to sustain the community organizing and mobilizing necessary for a feminist movement's success.

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Woman

I am providing these impact examples because we are living in an urgent moment. We are experiencing significant rollbacks of accomplishments that everyday feminist have fought long and hard to achieve because of partisan politics using outdated tools—racism, sexism, fundamentalism, and other patriarchal riffs—to hold power. And the lure of an unequal, capitalist agenda under a growing climate crisis is not helping. Those who know me well sometimes roll their eyes when I see these battles as a sign that the opposition knows we, the everyday feminists, are winning. We are changing hearts and minds and holding the beacon of justice at a time when generational tolerance for discrimination, poverty, and overall inequality is losing its favor.

It does, however, mean that we need to step up our game and support these “women of the hour” in bold ways. We can't let our own unconscious biases distract us from the prize. We must find everyday feminists and support them with adequate resources … and do it now. The urgency to address society's most difficult social issues has emerged at a time when the world is facing extreme challenges. Our health, our economies, our schools, and our social fabric are all at stake.

And probably most important is our ability to ensure the survival of our planet. António Guterres, Secretary‐General of the United Nations, said at a meeting in Germany in July 2022 that “half of humanity is in the danger zone [today], from floods, droughts, extreme storms, and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction. We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands.”⁶ So let's meet this moment together by supporting everyday feminists to do what they do best.

And to my fellow everyday feminists out there: you're not alone. We see you. And, in these pages, I hope you meet others like you and that their stories and words give you the energy you need to unleash your power and save our world.

So why should we take notice of and invest in these everyday feminists? The answer lies in understanding how social change happens and specifically how feminist movements work to deepen the impacts of such change, as we'll explore next.

Notes

1. E. T. Gershoff, “School Corporal Punishment in Global Perspective: Prevalence, Outcomes, and Efforts at Intervention,” Psychology, Health & Medicine 22, sup 1 (2017): 224–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2016.1271955.

2. Brandon Schaff, “Burn Pits 360 Co‐Founder Calls out U.S. Senators That Voted Against Veterans' Benefits Bill,” Channel 3 News (July 18, 2022).

3. Ula Y. Taylor, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

4. G. Albert Duncan, “Black Panther Party,” Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved August 25, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party.

5. “Just Say No,” History.com (May 31, 2017). https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/just-say-no.

6. Fiona Harvey, “Humanity Faces ‘Collective Suicide’ over Climate Crisis, Warns UN Chief,” The Guardian (July 18, 2022).

2
Leading Social Movements for Sustainable Impact

As I await the endless clearances to enter the Peace Corps/UN Volunteer program, I am inducted into the Georgia state bar for lawyers, I end my consulting jobs in Africa, and I get a call from a friend asking if I am interested in a consultancy with the MS Foundation. The timing is perfect. They want me to coordinate and join a group of Black American activists to a women's conference in China. In speaking with the program director there, it is the opportunity of a lifetime. I like her, the organization, and its founder, Gloria Steinem. Plus, I've never been to Asia, so I'm in. It is impossible to know the implications this split‐second decision would have on my life. It only hits me later that having a specific delegation of African American women is groundbreaking, one of many innovations that the MS Foundation is known for, then and now.

The Fourth World Conference on Women held in 1995 and the accompanying NGO gathering introduced me to the concept of the everyday feminist and the connected work they do around the world. I am motionless listening to the speeches and waiting for Hilary Clinton. I am marginally aware of the political opposition in my own country to her appearance at the conference. My instinct is that Americans are uncomfortable with a strong first lady. I don't get the impression that she cares. I like her. And when she utters the overall conference theme in her remarks, women's rights are human rights, it was the first time that I understand the impact of social movements around the world. I share this because, if we aim to address sustainable social impact, we have to start by talking about social movements. It overshadows the social issues that most of us must address in our lives on any given day. It seems increased access to information that cuts across geography, ideology, and more has helped us see our human condition with all its blessings and imperfections wherever we may be in the world—in color. It also highlights the dependencies and connectedness we have to others whom we have never met. The scale of the need, the poverty, the lack of housing, the disparate access to education, the health‐ and immune‐compromised, the climate crisis, the children and elders, and more push us toward this state. The question of how to transform a system under pressure—suffering pandemics, war, drought, gas emissions, and so many other afflictions—is one that is best answered through social movements.

A social movement, as I use the term, is a group of people and organizations with a shared purpose that create change together. See the infographic from Global Fund for Women developed in 2015 (Figure 2.1) that explains what these movements are made of, why they are important, and how we can power them.

Continuing a trend for social movements over the last few hundred years, today's movements increasingly demand more benefits, more space, and more resources to launch and maintain. Life has gotten progressively complex, and there are more places where social change agents need to be active and more groups who should be partnered with; for example, modern movements need people who are savvy with social media platforms, who can work multi‐nationally or with more lobbyists, and other tools not available just 50 or even 20 years ago. Such demands may paradoxically strengthen a system that helped to create racial, class, and other inequalities. And yet the beauty of these movements is that they ensure the most vulnerable are included at the table, while continuing to nurture the seeds of a more just, fruitful world.

Figure 2.1 What is a movement?

Source: Infographic courtesy Global Fund for Women (2015). https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/latest/article/infographic-what-is-a-movement.

So, then what is a feminist movement? It's worth taking a moment to give a comparative definition. Traditionally and often still today, many define feminist movements as a social movement for radical reforms on women's issues created by gender injustice, such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment, and sexual violence.

In discussing the everyday feminist, I am fluid with these terms because everyday feminists work on movements that are about gender injustices, as well as other intersectional injustices including race, caste, sex, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, weight, physical appearance, and so on. And a premise you will find over and over again in this book is that if an everyday feminist is leading this movement work, or even driving the emergence, growth, and maintenance of a social movement, I will use the term feminist movement. It is unrealistic to assume everyday feminists have the luxury to split hairs in terms of definitions. Thus, I have also tried to simplify the language in solidarity.

Hence, if the people behind a social movement adhere to the list of characteristics for everyday feminists given in Chapter 1—“if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck”—well then, I say that's a feminist movement. Even if the issue being addressed is not gender focused. This is true in both mindset and practical approach. As I've said, everyday feminists live these social problems personally or regularly see them up close. They see how interconnected the issues are and understand need for intersectional solutions. They don't limit their passions and advocacy strictly to gender justice. Instead, they mobilize social movements for issues across a span of needs.

Still, many don't understand the nature of a social movement and why they are ideal tools for the everyday feminist.

Insights into a Social Movement

As a feminist fund that supports gender justice movements, Global Fund for Women (GFW) has been exploring what strong, healthy movements look like, and how funders can better support movements to become stronger and more sustainable. Based on an in‐depth review of social movement literature, research data, and reporting, the GFW team mapped different stages in the life cycle of a social movement, identified key characteristics shared by strong movements, and developed tools that help social movements assess their strengths and challenges and analyze the relationships among movement members.¹ One of these tools is the movement capacity assessment tool (MCAT), which we'll explore in more detail in later sections. The GFW's movement life cycle map and tools can not only help social movements assess themselves but also help funders and government bilateral and multilateral funding arms to recognize the support that movements have determined they need. It can help socially conscious for‐profit businesses as well determine at which phase they are most suited to provide support. And it can help the everyday feminist and their organizations to determine the state for the movement and follow‐up actions to develop priorities and strengthen the strategic next steps.

The Life Cycle of Social Movements

Social movements emerge when people are discontent or angry at the injustice they experience—or that which is experienced by those they're advocating for, such as in the case of other species or the planet—and a small number of individuals begin to raise consciousness about the injustice and help to develop the simmering sense of discontent among the public. During this first stage of a movement's life cycle, called the emerging stage, many of those engaged in the work are not aware of or connected to each other. Their issues are not understood by the wider public. It is usually at this stage that activists do not have the bandwidth to look for funding. It is imperative that we develop tools to help find these activists in this phase and offer support.

Social movements enter a taking‐off stage because of thousands of people across a country taking spontaneous actions and forming new protest groups. It is usually triggered by an event, followed by mass demonstrations. The discontent and anger previously limited to a specific group of people now become overt in the emerging stage, understood by the public, and spreads rapidly—it becomes the issue everyone is talking about. Individuals participating in actions become aware of each other and start to form relationships. During this taking‐off stage, movements become more organized, and leadership and strategies emerge. The leaders are getting the attention of the power holders, the media, and influencers. During take‐off, movements tend to have a loose structure that promotes flexibility, creativity, independence, and participatory democracy. Movements at this stage are more desirable to funders, and there is a tendency for funders to offer very restrictive, short‐term, small grants to fuel the movement. It is imperative that we think about investing in these relationships and movements from the beginning not as short term but long term, with adequate funds to drive unrestricted growth.

But, after some time, the early movement's loose structures tend to cause excessive inefficiency, participant burnout, and informal hierarchies. Movements can no longer rely only on mass rallies or inspirational leaders. To sustain, movements need to start developing more structure and engage professional staff to carry out key functions. During the formalization stage, higher levels of organizations and coalition‐based strategies emerge. Not all social movements progress to the next stage.

At any stage, movements can decline due to repression, co‐optation, success, and failure.

To show what this these four stages can look like in a real‐life example, consider the Liberia peace movement, starting in the late 1980s when Leymah Gbowee, an everyday feminist, was just a teenager.² In the emerging stage, fighting started again in this war‐torn country, and Gbowee says she was tired of living in fear and started mobilizing people to protest. The spark for the taking‐off stage was when systemic rapes, brutality, and other atrocities became widespread in the country, prompting Gbowee to organize thousands of women to stage pray‐ins and nonviolent protests demanding reconciliation and the resuscitation of high‐level peace talks. The formalization stage came when the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace was created with an interreligious coalition of organizations and champions. Gbowee would go on to win the Nobel Peace prize and the world would see the first female president elected in Africa as the movement began its decline.

These four life cycle stages are universal regardless of the social issue being tackled. Knowing what stage a movement is in can help you understand how best to support it and manage your short‐term and long‐term expectations. To develop our knowledge even further, we should familiarize ourselves with another Global Fund for Women tool for evaluating social movements: movement capacity.

The Five Dimensions of Movement Capacity

Movement capacity refers to the ability of a set of loosely organized and interconnected individuals and organizations to cultivate and mobilize large numbers of the population in continued actions to challenge the status quo, building and sustaining public pressure toward their vision of the future. Movement capacity includes five distinct dimensions: a broad and sustained grassroots base; strong leadership; shared vision and narratives; the infrastructure to support collective planning, action, and reflection; and an ability to care for the well‐being and safety of members.³ The following describes each of these dimensions in the context of everyday feminists. They highlight not only what everyday feminists and other members of the movement do but also how they do it.

Broad and Sustained Grassroots Base   The grassroots base focuses on the actions members of the movement take to cultivate, mobilize, and sustain engagement of those most affected by the issues, as well as building a larger base of constituents that includes those not directly affected. By building and sustaining grassroots people power, the movement gains the attention of power holders including the reaction of opposition.

Everyday feminists working toward impact:

Organizing: building peoples' understanding of their issues as shared among them (versus their problem or failure alone) and strengthening the capacity of people to self‐organize and demand change from power holders

Building constituencies: framing messages to generate support from a broader audience who may not be directly affected but can become engaged as sympathetic or solidarity supporters

Mobilizing: creating opportunities to bring significant numbers of people into action so that they cannot be ignored

To help understand this dimension in practice, consider Fondo Semillas, the women's fund in Mexico. It mobilized 52 organizations and individuals in an attempt to assess the capacity of the LGBTTIQ+ movement in the country. It determined the primary strength of the movement is its grassroots base. Since 2015, legislation, in a number of Mexican states, focused on expanding human rights and sexual protection under the law. These efforts were led by local champions and grassroots organizations that determined the success desired for each state and nationally. It's continued success is based on it being initiated and led by a local partner.

Strong Leadership   Leadership in social movements is often distributed among different people or organizations, shifting over time or for specific actions, and based loosely on consensus processes given that most social movements do not have formal recruitment processes for specific roles.

Everyday feminists working toward impact:

Accountability: actively soliciting the needs and priorities of the base and integrating those into the movement's agenda and actions; without these efforts, leadership can become isolated from the base, which is critical to successful actions

Transition: supporting the emergence of new leaders and other members to take on leadership roles without creating fractions or dissipating into smaller subgroups

Enterprising: recognizing and reacting to opportunities as they arise, as well as creating opportunities and further enacting them

To help understand this dimension in practice, consider the Coalition to End Violence Against Women (COVAW) in Kenya. This movement focuses on eliminating female genital mutilation. It determined strong leadership was a major challenge for success. In response, the organization's current strategy prioritizes addressing the prevailing low levels of occupation of key leadership and decision‐making positions by women across different sectors and levels. COVAW aims to put the leadership agenda at the center of national dialogue and priorities and seeks to change views on women's leadership, catalyze access to opportunities, and mentor and position women and girls as key leaders at community, national, and international levels.

Shared Vision and Narratives   Social movements have broad visions of the world they are trying to create. Through its vision, a social movement creates an identity that individuals and organizations choose to identify with. Along with the vision and identity, members of the movement develop narrative(s) about what the movement is for, who belongs within that movement, and also what kinds of action movements will or won't take.

This vision and these narratives about the vision shape the action of strong movements, which contributes to member engagement and legitimacy (both internally and externally).

Everyday feminists working toward impact:

Shared vision: co‐creating with members a shared vision for the future

Narrative: using the vision to develop communications and campaigns to engage greater participation and support from the general public

Alignment: ensuring day‐to‐day actions taken by movement actors are consistent with the movement's vision and narrative

To help understand this dimension in practice, consider Peru and a few other Latin American countries. They have been challenged by the changing landscape among older feminist actors and organizations, and the emerging tactics and philosophies of a newer generation. These challenges caused riffs in the feminist movement that may have set back some national and local agendas. There has been considerable work since the early 2010s to bring these organizations and individuals back to the table to re‐create their shared vision and develop intergenerational, interconnected, and interdependent narratives for the movement work. In Peru, this is being done alongside the agenda to end violence against women and girls.

Infrastructure to Support Collective Planning, Action, and Reflection   Many scholars describe social movements as loosely organized networks with fluid boundaries, composed of individuals and organizations who support action. Although a social movement is not an organization, a coalition, or a campaign, all of these form building blocks or sub‐components of social movements at different points in time. For example, organizations engaged in social movement activities may provide the coordination infrastructure (communications, resources, transportation, etc.) for actions. Coalitions may offer respective and diverse strengths including connections critical to getting the attention of power holders. However spontaneous or random an action may seem, social movements build on the ongoing work of individuals and organizations building relationships and creating the foundation for large‐scale action.

Everyday feminists working toward impact:

Planning: developing a joint strategy for collective action to advance the movement's vision and using decision‐making processes that align with the movement's vision; although there may be disagreement, the processes enable members to address tension without causing ruptures

Implementation: bringing plans to life, including communicating widely and coordinating movement actors and movement action logistics

Reflection: supporting collective reflection of successes and challenges with an outlook toward greater learning and continued action

To help understand this dimension in practice, consider the women's movement in Ukraine. They recognized some years ago the need to resource and support the infrastructure of the more than 79 organizations working together toward a shared vision of gender equality. We see now the utility of such action as the war with Russia is taxing their abilities to deliver its mission to their communities. It is precisely this infrastructure that has enabled the Ukraine Women's Fund and partners to provide support to thousands of individuals affected by the conflict.

Ability to Care for the Well‐Being and Safety of Members   People participate in social movements even with great risks to their own personal health and physical safety. Yet, for a social movement to sustain for the long haul, it is important to support movement members' safety, security, and well‐being.

Everyday feminists working toward impact:

Preparedness: collectively assessing the range of physical and digital security risks and developing plans to address these within their selves and respective organizations, as well as for the movement as a whole

Response: developing support networks that can immediately respond to safety and security risks

Self‐care: providing opportunities and resources for members of the movement to take care of their mental, emotional, and physical health so that they can build and rebuild the energies for continued work

To help understand this dimension in practice, consider a more complex example. Audre Lorde, the well‐known African American writer, stated that “caring for myself is not self‐indulgence. It is self‐preservation. And that is an act of political warfare.”⁴ This is the rallying call for what has become the wellness (otherwise known as the self‐care or collective care) movement. Experts point to various feminist movements that have included significant self‐care agendas, but it is only in the last few years that this movement has emerged. The COVID pandemic and its endless campaigns—good or bad—see to have inspired the feminist wellness movement to take off globally. It is almost in direct contrast to the “wonder woman” model, where we literally kill ourselves making sure every facet of our lives (and everyone else's) is perfect. This movement is driving a narrative that encourages taking care of our whole selves, including and maybe most important, our own needs. As the popularity, growth, and recognition of feminist movements increase, so does the popularity of the feminist wellness movement. The paradigm is shifting to one where, yes, we can save the world, but only if we take care of our spiritual, physical, emotional, and psychosocial needs as well.

As we continue to drive change through community and civil participation, we are also insisting on more time from our employers so we can take care of our children's needs. We are working from home more to eliminate the time suck of commutes. We are participating in therapeutic activities like yoga and meditation to keep our minds and bodies healthy. It was in 1995 that these ideas were first planted in my head at the UN Conference on Women in Beijing. I trust this movement toward our own wellness will be a part of all feminist movement members in this generation and all those to come.

It seems bizarre the necessity to reinforce that feminist wellness requires a movement. However, so much is being asked of women, particularly feminist activists. Their roles in the home are still undervalued, and their role in the work environment is still underpaid. So there is no reason to believe that anyone is going to value the care of the everyday feminist if she doesn't value it herself. In terms of movement capacity, wellness and safety are fundamental. Support for this is critical and almost requires that in order to authentically resource any feminist movement, there has to be assurances that wellness is a critical part of the work. Partners and allies to any movement must ensure that a feminist organization is at the table to participate and to take care of themselves. And there must be assurances that these everyday feminists are taking on the activism of wellness as they take on the social movements that we care about.

Each chapter in Part II will describe at which stage a featured movement is in its life cycle and how the everyday feminist and their movements build movement capacity along the five dimensions to create impact. As a preview, see Table 2.1.

Table 2.1 Overview and key features for the everyday feminists and their movements

| Movement's Stage in Its Life Cycle * | Grassroots Base | Leadership | Vision and Narrative | Collaboration and Coordination | Safety and Security
Tarana Burke and the Me Too Movement | Formalization | c02g001 |  |  |  | c02g001
Rifiloe Harris and Men Engage Movement | Emerging | c02g001 |  |  | c02g001 |
M. Adams and BLM Movement | Popular | c02g001 |  |  |  | c02g001
Hewan Areaya and the Menstrual Health Movement | Popular |  | c02g001 |  |  |
Miriam Miranda and Indigenous Rights Movement | Popular | c02g001 |  | c02g001 |  |
Lesyle Obiora and Women's Political Empowerment Movement | Formalization |  | c02g001 |  |  |
Purity Kagwiria and Girls Education Movement | Formalization |  | c02g001 |  |  | c02g001
Loretta Ross and Reproductive Justice Movement | Popular |  |  | c02g001 |  |

* Based on the time period captured in this book

Creating Sustainable Impact Is to Change Hearts and Minds

There is an enormous amount of research that supports the premise that social movements are the surest way to change minds and hearts as well as policies and laws.⁵ This is change at the systemic level and at the most personal, human level. I have lived through several of these movements and know they can change everything in a single night. After one tragic incident or after a series of them, there is nothing like a group of angry yet thoughtful people taking to the streets, the internet, or even their church or school to change a perceived injustice.

Now add a woman leader to that mix. I always laugh at the adage, “A woman scorned …” I think it should say that a woman treated unfairly in general, not just in a relationship—“Watch out!” I have been a spectator, participant, and enabler in enough social movements involving women, torn and tired, grieving yet hopeful, while passionate and brave. The characteristics of their drive are all similar. It starts with a spark—usually some horrendous event. They try to make sense of it. They fail. They tell a few others who tell a few others. And together they create a perfect storm: an environment for change.

And as explained, not all these movements will last long. But for that moment, for that woman, standing up is the only option save withering away in pain. That moment is meaningful for those whose communities have suffered from decades, even centuries, of abuse under systems and structures built to make them and their children fail.

I am hopeful that those looking at the secret sauce behind lasting social impact will credit feminist movements—particularly those led by women of color in the communities where change is most needed and addressing gender justice but also a wide range of other causes—and will see the value of the everyday feminist as the crucial ingredient for change. It doesn't require a PhD thesis to trace the history of how change happens. But it does require long‐term, trust‐based, flexible, and innovative support to empower and amplify these women's successes.

There's No One Right Way to Define Success

The question that often comes next is “what makes a movement ‘successful?’” Gia Nardini, an amazing young scholar, and writer on social movements, offers one answer: social movements succeed when individuals and groups at the grassroots level are cultivated, nurtured, and connected—both to the movement's cause and through relationships between the movement's members.⁶ It is not hard to find other answers. For example, the ALIGN report outlines the ways in which women‐led social movements contribute to transforming patriarchal norms. To bring about change, activists primarily occupy public space, lobby governments, create alliances, and appeal to international regimes to pursue legal or policy change through the use an array of tactics.⁷ And Alison Brysk, in her essay on sexual politics and human rights, suggests that civil society movements have shifted hearts and minds by contesting private wrongs and demanding state accountability for the protection of all citizens, eliciting broad commitment through persuasion and social pressure.⁸

I am convinced, however, this question absolutely should be answered by the movement participants themselves. The social, cultural, sometimes religious, and even political nature of feminist movements dictates that success is determined by the nature of what the movement sets out to do. There is not a checklist. It is not my or your job to determine such. But I do think that there are some movements where success is generally understood. There has been enough time in retrospect to deliver an opinion. The movement participants themselves have opined.

In finding those successful movements, I am somewhat surprised by the distinction others often make between what they call social movements versus feminist movements—the latter viewed as that narrowly defined classification I presented previously in this chapter that focuses solely on serving women and gender justice. As I said, I view feminist movements more broadly and as a subset of social movements—not a separate and distinct class. But these differing definitions complicate the data collection—or lack thereof—and correspondingly make it harder to identify and assess successful feminist movements. You can find a great deal of histories and data on social movements generally, which tout the successes of a multitude of movements such as the US civil rights movement, the animal rights movement, and the gay rights movement. The list of successful social movements is significantly reduced when delineated for women's rights and gender justice. There is the suffrage movement and a good deal of a broad category of “women's movements” across countries and regions. And there are several abortion movements, including the “green wave” in Argentina. Overall, though, the list is small. Which is ironic, because I am confident that most movements were started with or by a woman, as mentioned in Chapter 1.

Similarly, my personal list of successful everyday feminists and their movements that have touched my life is also, by definition, limited. Nonetheless, they are powerful. And I will speak to the everyday feminists, like me, who changed everything by showing up. And those who support them can revel in this success, too, as they were in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

Notes

1. Global Fund for Women's movement capacity assessment tool helps social movements assess their strengths, needs, and priorities (https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/mcat ). Global Fund for Women's movement mapping tool helps social movements analyze their network of relationships, identify key actors and their roles.

2. Abigail E. Disney, Gini Reticker, Roco Films Educational, Fork Films, and Wide Angle Thirteen/WNET, dirs., Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008). Fork Films.

3. After multiple rounds of pilot studies, Global Fund for Women incorporated findings and lessons from diverse social movements around the globe and refined the framework of movement capacity. In the latest update in 2021, they consolidated the previous version's seven dimensions of movement capacity into five dimensions.

4. Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: Essays (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1988).

5. A. G. Dessie, Envisioning Gender Justice in Our Hearts and Minds: A Promising Tool, Researchgate.Net (January 2015). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/alemnew-dessie/publication/293012084_envisioning_gender_justice:in_our_hearts_and_minds_a_promising_tool_for_change/links/5ea9e623a6fdcc70509af6a4/envisioning-gender-justice-in-our-hearts-and-minds-a-promising-tool-for-change.pdf.

6. Gia Nardini, Tracy Rank‐Christman, Melissa G. Bublitz, Samantha N. N. Cross, and Laura A. Peracchio, “Together We Rise: How Social Movements Succeed,” Society for Consumer Psychology 31, no. 1 (October 20, 2020): 112–145. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1201.

7. D. Jiménez Thomas Rodriguez, C. Harper, and R. George, “Mobilising for Change: How Women's Social Movements Are Transforming Gender Norms,” ALIGN Report (2021). https://www.alignplatform.org/resources/report-mobilising-for-change.

8. Alison Brysk, “Conclusion: From Rights to Realities,” in Globalization and Human Rights, Alison Brysk, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 242–256. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pnh0f.17.

3
How We're Failing to Fund Our Most Powerful Change Agents—Everyday Feminists

The speaker, a middle‐aged Black woman named Portia Scott, was running as a Republican against Democrat John Lewis to represent Georgia's 5th Congressional District. She was the first Black female politician whom I had ever met. She not only graduated from Howard University (which made me later apply to that school) but also American University in Washington, DC. Listening to her campaign speech about what she can do for her district in Atlanta, I was stunned by her charm, her smile, and, perhaps most of all, that she saw me: afterwards, she walked over and asked if I wanted to volunteer with her campaign. Of course, in a sea of white faces at Riverwood High School in 1986, it may have been hard to not see me—an almost 17‐year‐old high school senior who decided to listen in on a community event while waiting for her mother, who was late to pick up her daughter from debate team try‐outs.

My family had moved to Atlanta from Philly before my senior year, and due to my advanced math, science, and language skills, district administrators said I had to attend a school on the other side of town from where we lived. The public schools in College Park, a predominantly Black neighborhood, did not offer the AP Trig, Physics, and Latin courses I was taking at Girl's High in Philly. So, I had to be bussed to Sandy Springs, a very different part of Atlanta. I was one of just a handful of Black seniors in my high school's student body of approximately 1,500 compared to almost half the population of my public magnet high school in Philadelphia, identical in size.

My mother had been pulled to Atlanta by hopes that there would be more opportunities there. After all, Black people were in power in the city and could help other Black folks climb up out of the bucket. And for my mother and many others—especially Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) everyday feminists—it did indeed deliver. My mother worked hard to climb the ladder at the City's Department of Corrections to become acting chief before she retired in 2017. On her confirmation of appointment, some council members remarked, “How could the former maintenance person be the mayor's pick for this role?” The mayor, Shirley Franklin, also a BIPOC woman, could easily see the value of an everyday feminist in a leadership role.

But the place that modern Black professionals like my mom felt held immense opportunities also held painful memories for those just a generation before. Growing up, my grandmothers had nothing good to say about the South. My Nana, a jolly woman in all respects, despite her circumstances, always turned glassy eyed and her jaw stiffened when she talked about growing up in Georgia. She told me as a little girl of nine or ten, “When I was your age, they hung that man from the tree right in front of our house, for nothing, and they wouldn't let Daddy take him down. I hated going outside.” Stories like that lingered in me as I moved around Atlanta, anticipating leaving as stealthily as I had arrived.

The Saturday after meeting Portia Scott, I went to her small office ready to help her campaign in any way I could. I didn't know anything about this woman or her politics. I just knew she chose me. And judging by the number of volunteers in that office, she chose a lot of people. Her family members and friends doled out tasks to all of us, and I was on the crew that would hang up flyers asking people to vote for her.

Scott was an editor, an advocate, a mother, a daughter, and a Republican. Her family owned a newspaper, the Atlanta Daily World, and she spoke of owning a media outlet as a source of power for Black people and other marginalized communities. Her father had been a card‐carrying Republican all her life, so she said her party affiliation was in her blood, though she was not particularly partisan. She believed the Republican party had room for Blacks in the South and rejected the idea that Blacks should place all their eggs in one basket. She was an excellent representative for her political party. Maybe more than they deserved.

As expected, she didn't win the election, but working on the campaign was a powerful experience for me. Here was an educated woman, a member of the community, from Atlanta, from a historically black college or university (HBCU), and inserted in almost every civic matter important to her city. From the pages of her newspaper to the halls of politics, she strove to be a voice for her community. On campaign stops, I saw her engage in hard, honest conversations about the conditions of Black people and how we could amass political power. She said that we should never accept the crumbs we were given and should strive to have more.

Contributions to Scott's campaign were hard won and meager and negligible compared to her male counterparts. This gap in funding stands true even today for all political parties in the United States. An NPR 2018 analysis finds that Democratic men have a substantial fundraising advantage over Democratic women,¹ averaging a gender gap of approximately half a million dollars. And although we see some rays of hope as we watch everyday feminist Stacey Abrams out‐fundraise her white male incumbent opponent in the Georgia state governor's election, the problem of resourcing everyday feminists persists.

Globally, ACE, the Electoral Knowledge Network, finds that female candidates often need to raise funds for running their campaigns, with little or no support from political parties, both in the process of winning the nomination and in the electoral campaign. In some countries, political parties have adopted voluntary measures to level the field for women candidates, such as reducing or waiving nomination fees, fundraising initiatives, in‐kind contributions and subsidies covering travel costs, campaign materials, or childcare expenses.²

Who Is Getting the Money

In 2021, most charitable dollars went to religion (27%), education (14%), human services (13%), grantmaking foundations—who redistribute funds to other grantees (13%) and public society benefit—generally benefiting the population of a specific geography (11%). But when you add a gender lens to this, we see that only a very small percentage gets to women and their causes.³ The Women's Philanthropy Institute report, “The Women & Girls Index (WGI) 2020: Measuring Giving to Women's and Girls' Causes,” found that only 1.6% of overall charitable giving goes to women and girl‐focused groups—even though these groups represent 3.4% of all charitable organizations in the United States. Furthermore, the amount of total giving for women and girls, $7.1 billion, is barely half of the amount given to the next smallest area of giving, at $12 billion for animals and the environment.⁴

This is not to say there aren't at least some encouraging signs. As I explained in Chapter 2, I define feminist movements more broadly than others who delineate them strictly as those movements addressing women's and girls' issues. But funding data for this larger set is very difficult to isolate. A research study that was the focus of a 2017 book by experts in next generation philanthropy found that the giving habits of the next generation of major donors in the United States when segmented by causes were generally similar to their parents' generation—with a couple notable exceptions: younger rising donors were privately giving to civil rights and advocacy causes 32% more than their predecessors, and to environment and animal‐related causes 36% more.⁵ I know from my own field experience and GFW research that these categories are among those where everyday feminists tend to be active (as we'll explore in Part II). However, even if more feminist movements dealing with social issues other than gender justice are beginning to see increased funding, that doesn't ameliorate the clear and vast under‐resourcing of organizations and movements focused on women and girls—which is measurable and documented.

Globally, the picture is improving but not much better. Political realities in the ten countries with the highest official development assistance show that still, only a small percentage of its development assistance is focused specifically on gender equality.

Figure 3.1 Official development assistance to women's organizations. SASKIA BRECHENMACHER, NIKHITA SALGAME. “How the U.S. Gender Equality Funding Increase Can Actually Be Effective”. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MARCH 22, 2022 COMMENTARY. https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/03/22/how‐u.s.‐gender‐equality‐funding‐increase‐can‐actually‐be‐effective‐pub‐86686

In 2018, Canada came in at the highest with its groundbreaking $300 million equality fund for women's rights organizations. The United States is among the lowest Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, coming in at about 2%. Another portion of funding goes to programs that have a gender component as a secondary objective.⁶ In short, 80% of development assistance in Canada and 98% in the United States were going to other issue areas for which women's rights organizations get a negligible amount.

As we've been discussing in this book, because everyday feminists and their movements are the most powerful resource for transformative social change on our world's most threatening issues, we are missing the proverbial boat by focusing our dollars on others, including multilateral institutions, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), or private contractors. Let's look at these actors separately.

Multilateral institutions are organizations formed by three or more countries that work together on issues of common interest and global priority. These organizations can fund various projects using monies from multiple governments. During my time at the UN, I often did valuable work that you will hear about in Part II of this book. In fact, I was responsible for maintaining gender portfolios in several countries as well as the East and Southern Africa region. I was responsible for allocating funding for UNICEF strategies, and I know not one dollar went directly to a women's rights organization. In these roles, UN funding went directly to government agencies from which very little if any reached everyday feminists and their local organizations. It was used for training governments and local organizations, complementing governmental budgets to ensure gender equality efforts, supporting research and reports, and only in rare circumstances (mostly in the humanitarian crises) did some portion of it get regranted to local organizations. Although this is slowly changing since my time at the UN, it is worth asking the question: is the UN even well suited to directly fund everyday feminists and their local organizations? Maybe its sweet spot instead is leveraging its power to encourage local governments to partner with and fund local organizations.

INGOs are organizations that are independent of government involvement and extend the concept of an NGO to an international scope. I worked for seven years with Planned Parenthood Global and sit on the board of both Oxfam International (as well as its US affiliate) and Management Sciences for Health. These international organizations do an excellent job of deploying tools and capacity to local governments and national organizations in specific areas. The work they do is essential and allows for a great deal of best practices, new technologies, and urgent supplies (i.e., the COVID vaccines) to reach remote and marginalized communities around the world. The relationships they have with these governments, regional and national organizations, and even multilaterals enable shared knowledge and practice. However, because of this focus on issue‐based capacity and short‐term delivery of resources, they are not best suited for building the long‐term relationships with everyday feminists and their organizations that are needed for supporting them through the inevitable ups and downs, ebbs and flows. It doesn't mean they don't try, but it is a far less sustainable or effective endeavor.

Private contractors (for‐profit organizations) comprise the category that presents a conundrum for most of us in feminist work, because the private sector gets a large share of resources for gender programs, much larger than women's rights organizations. In Ion Ilasco's report⁷ on USAID's 2021 allocation to the private sector it shows a rising allocation to for‐profit organizations, with US‐based Chemonics International as the largest recipient across program areas. Of the roughly $1.6 billion this business received from USAID in total, there is very little data to show its direct allocation to gender equality work. Although Chemonics International prides itself on gender impact, it seems fair to say that most of this work is integrated into its overall programs with little accountability on work that supports everyday feminists, their organizations, and feminist movements. Without such information, it is difficult to ascertain cost‐benefit analysis that would satisfy the corporate culture. This is then coupled with the difficulty for most everyday feminists who have to explain to their communities why they are working directly with for‐profits because the relationships between corporations and communities reek of past exploitation and abuse. It is indeed a balancing act. I speak more on these areas and provide possible ways to partner better in the conclusion of this book. For now, the reality remains that despite the global uptick in gender equality spending, feminist and women‐led organizations and movements still often find themselves starved for resources.

Why Aren't Everyday Feminists Getting Funded?

Much of the funding required to further important social and feminist causes sits in capitals of the ten major OECD countries—including the United States, where the bulk of philanthropic dollars exist. The United States enjoys tax benefits to giving that some say have produced a culture of documented philanthropy paralleled to none. Of course, the history of giving back to one's communities is not unique to these countries and is certainly the framework on which everyday feminists operate. Nonetheless, it is worth examining why the funds for women's issues and gender equality going to everyday feminists, their organizations, and movements are so limited. Here are a few reasons that we in the women's fund world hear often.

We Can't Find Them

It's true. We fund whom we know. Those who are familiar to us. And the degrees of separation from those of us with power and privilege to the everyday feminist is often numerous. Everyday feminists are just that—everyday. They are not the celebrities or people who tend to be spotlighted by the media. They may not yet have fancy profiles up online, nor the infrastructure to have a well‐developed communications arm savvy to how those with financial largess identify potential grantees. They likely don't have the time or capacity to be constantly finding funders and applying for grants the traditional way. And funders typically don't know them.

Sitting in Silicon Valley, you might have never heard of Lucia Maria Xavier de Castro, the Brazilian social worker and human rights activist. She is an everyday feminist who has dedicated her life to protecting human rights and eradicating patriarchal racism and all forms of discrimination. She is the founder and coordinator of CRIOLA, a Black women's organization in Rio de Janeiro. And you may never have heard of Daniele Duarte, an Afro‐Brazilian lesbian activist who works to guarantee human rights for all, also with CRIOLA. Even after the brutal assassination of Marielle Franco, the Brazilian politician, sociologist, feminist, socialist, and human rights activist in 2018, many had not heard about her critical work of centering Black women in the favelas and other marginalized groups in Rio de Janeiro. With all the chatter in the media, some didn't seek to center the lives, legacies, and leadership of Black women and gender‐expansive people who are at the margins until more recently. And most who give funding don't know that these women are carrying on that work in Brazil with a number of other everyday feminists such as Sueli Carneiro, Lélia Gonzalez, Beatriz Nascimento, Luiza Bairros, Djamila Ribeiro, and Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos. Yet, what we do know is that now more than ever, our solidarity must be intentional and deeply connected to the values of equality, freedom, and liberation. We must find these everyday feminists and not wait for them to find us in our comfortable seats of privilege in the global north. I look at ways to do this in the Conclusion.

Straight Up Racism

In 2020, Echoing Green, an incubator for social innovation leadership, and Bridgespan, leading social impact consultants, collaborated to research the depth of racial inequities in philanthropic funding.⁸ Based on what we see in our work as intermediaries in the sector, two of the biggest factors holding back philanthropy's efforts to help advance social change are rooted in race:

Understanding the role of race in the problems philanthropists are trying to solve

The significance of race when it comes to how philanthropists identify leaders and find solutions

In my experience, the same rational applies to Black everyday feminists in Africa, the Caribbean, and other parts of the diaspora. Therefore we have to honor and center the power of these women in order to strengthen and acknowledge Black everyday feminists in the African diaspora. They are doing God's work and should be funded because of their connections to communities that have been enslaved, colonized, policed, and abused for centuries.

“They Don't Have Any Power to Change Things”

Thirty years into this work, it makes me shake my head when I hear this because it is wrong on so many fronts. Here is how I see it:

“No political clout or decision‐making power.” Everyday feminists have community clout, which in democratic societies mean they vote for the politicians that govern. And in all societies, everyday feminists can mobilize and organize communities that can make the lives of politicians and the lobbies that support them very difficult. Although there may be a broad array of decisions being made for or about women in patriarchal societies, the decisions that everyday feminists make are much more centered on the needs of their families, communities, and local populations requiring special protection.

“Not educated.” What these everyday feminists may lack in book knowledge, they more than make up for in historical and cultural knowledge. I talk about this a little in Part II. And, quite frankly, everyday feminists' value for education means that they are often at the helm of changing systems of education to provide access, especially to the most marginalized populations. It's also worth pointing out that support for these everyday feminists is an opportunity to expand their own educational endeavors as well.

“Lack experience.” I hear this a lot as a reason for the hesitancy to support the younger or even emerging organizations that everyday feminist lead (compared to the big, traditional, well‐known nonprofits that get most of our philanthropic resources today). “Well, they have never run anything before.” Quite to the contrary, these women have been running programs, processes, campaigns, and events in their communities for most of their lives. As we think about founders anywhere, everyday feminists are natural leaders and, like their peers, can find the right partners to meet the needs of their organizations.

“They Don't Deliver.”

Again, this is false. The point of this book and so many other reports and programs is to highlight what everyday feminists and their movements deliver in social impact. The “Resource” section will highlight these important interventions. There is a huge difference between asking an everyday feminist to get a law passed or deliver widgets (a number of products or services) within a specified time frame versus actual impact and transformational change. The latter requires long‐term trusted relationships, flexible resources, and a shift of power and privilege that puts them in the driver's seat.

Misconceptions and False Narratives About Feminist Organizations

There are some who think that if a social problem is worth the hard effort and resources of solving—such as substandard education and health care, economic inequalities, and domestic violence—“why not solve it for everyone?” Why take a gender‐focused approach at all? It's the idea that feminist work is somehow uniquely, foundationally exclusionary and divisive. This is a false perception. Viewing certain social issues through a gender lens is not exclusionary but rather enables us to center women and other marginalized genders who would otherwise be last to get resources. However, that doesn't mean everyday feminists and their organizations exclude men and boys who suffer from negative social issues (for example, see how Tarana Burke of the Me Too movement speaks to this in Part II). There are also some social problems that simply are rooted in gender and factors relating to biological sex. In fact, a gender lens is critical to identifying solutions for marginalized groups of any gender. We will talk more about this in Chapter 6 describing my time in Lesotho.

Donors who want to further social change are shifting these mindsets and stepping up funding and support for feminist movements and organizations by at least $6 billion by 2026, according to a report published by the Bridgespan Group in May of 2022. “The solution is in movements—organizations, networks, and leaders that are actually doing this work within communities, led by people who have faced multiple systems of oppression,” says Nidhi Sahni, head of US advisory at Bridgespan and a coauthor of the report. “Because they are cutting across systems, they aren't being resourced at the level they need to be.”⁹

I agree.

But the real evidence can be found in the everyday feminists who show up in this work of real, lasting change, time and time again. Next, in Part II, we'll meet some of these unsung heroines—ones who have touched my life, and others who inspire me from afar—enabling us to glean the wisdom and lessons they have to offer through their stories, art, acts, and words.

Notes

1. Peter Overby, “There's a $500,000 Gender Gap When It Comes to Campaign Fundraising,” NPR (September 26, 2018). https://www.npr.org/2018/09/26/651185105/theres-a-500–000-gender-gap-when-it-comes-to-campaign-fundraising.

2. “Facts and Figures: Women's Leadership and Political Participation,” UN Women (September 2022). https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-figures.

3. “Charitable Giving Statistics,” NPTrust (July 7, 2022). https://www.nptrust.org/philanthropic-resources/charitable-giving-statistics/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20largest%20source,%2Dsociety%20benefit%20(11%25).

4. The Women's Philanthropy Institute, “The Women & Girls Index (WGI) 2020: Measuring Giving to Women's and Girls' Causes” (2020). https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/institutes/womens-philanthropy-institute/research/wgi20.html#:~:text=Measuring%20giving%20to%20women's%20and,has%20changed%20in%20recent%20years.

5. Sharna Goldseker and Michael Moody, Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors Are Revolutionizing Giving (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2017), 46–47.

6. Tessa Skidmore, The Women & Girls Index: Measuring Giving to Women's and Girls' Causes (Vol. 1) (Bloomington: University of Indiana, 2021).

7. Ion Ilasco, “Overview of a Decade of International Aid‐Flows to Afghanistan,” Development Aid. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://www.developmentaid.org/news-stream/post/106384/international-aid-flows-to-afghanistan.

8. Cheryl Dorsey and Jeff Bradach, “Racial Equity and Philanthropy,” Bridgespan (May 4, 2020). https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/library/philanthropy/disparities-nonprofit-funding-for-leaders-of-color#:~:text=This%20research%2C%20from%20Echoing%20Green,racial%20inequities%20in%20philanthropic%20funding.

9. Dorsey and Bradach, “Racial Equity and Philanthropy.”

PART II
The Everyday Feminist in Action

“100 Years” | Qańtar Samal. International Women's Day 2020. Kazakhstan

4
Stay in the Game Even When You Win

Spotlight: Tarana Burke and the MeToo Movement

Issue: Gender‐Based Violence

At the house of a family friend in Atlantic City, my mother enjoyed an outing with smart and successful people. She asked the host of the event about his path in life and the many books in his home. He in turn told her about the time he'd spent with Malcolm X. He praised her and how she was raising her three young children. “You are so smart,” he said. “You are a unicorn, and your husband is very lucky.”

On the way back home to Philadelphia that night, my father didn't feel lucky. He felt like his wife had been flirting to get compliments. She denied it and screamed his name as he pushed her from the moving vehicle on Highway 295, while her children silently cried in the back seat. Her kids were relieved later that night when she came through the door. But he beat her again and again, that night, and for many years to come.

My mother's family had arrived in Philly from the segregated South after her proud father, a decorated WWII vet, was chased from his only home in Georgia. He would walk the streets in his uniform, like many of his white compatriots did, after serving more than two years of combat in Europe and Asia. He should have been celebrated on his return home, but—unlike his white fellow servicemen—his actions were not looked on kindly. He abruptly had to move north, where he heard he could find a factory job to put food on the table and escape the threats of violence from white bigots, some of whom he grew up with and played with as children. When he died at 42, his wife pressed on, insistent that her children would have more than the fifth‐grade education she'd received in a one room shack in Cartersville, Georgia.

My mother, the youngest of the seven, was politely asked to leave her high school when she was evidently with child. The administrators said, “There is a program for Black children like you that will help you get your GED when your baby is born. You don't have to worry about school anymore. You will be a mother now.” She was devastated. She loved school. She was class president, played drums in the school band, was a medaled swimmer, and her grades were impeccable. Imagine, with these credentials, if only she had been born and schooled on the east side of the city.

The father of her unborn child lived in a neighborhood farther north. He belonged to the gang that she liked the best. They protected their girlfriends and gave them nice things and drove them around in fancy cars. He could sing and she would often find him on corners harmonizing with the rest of the gang. They had been together since she was 16 years old. When she got pregnant, they decided he should enlist in the US Marines to provide for their budding family. Shortly after joining, he was disabled in combat, ending his military career. He joined the Nation of Islam and together my parents opened a dry cleaner on Broad St. (As a child I thought we were like the Jeffersons on TV.) They had a retail clothing business, a beer distributorship, and a slew of other dealings that kept them flush in cash but at odds with the police, who didn't much like the Black Muslims.

But from the beginning of their relationship, my father was an abuser. Everyone in the neighborhood knew him to be tenacious and called him a “fighter.” But that combativeness manifested differently inside our family. My mother was an easy target for his pain and disempowerment in a racist society that targeted him. Eventually, the sunglasses and Muslim garb could no longer cover her bruises. And the excuses to her family and friends were growing worrisome. In the closet with me, her youngest, where she would sneak a cigarette every so often, I asked, “Why don't you leave him? He beats you and he beats us.” She didn't have an answer.

She tried to leave. Once, twice, and again and again. He found her each time—at her sister's house in Jersey, at the shelter, at her mother's.

At the Nation of Islam, she became friends with other survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, who encouraged her to apply for social services to afford living separate from her abuser. She asked at the relevant government agencies about getting an education but was told that those programs were not available to her because she had dependent children. She fought back, enlisting the help of local officials to allow her—and other women in her circumstances—entry into educational programs to teach victims of domestic violence new skills. She was able to finish high school and certify in electronics.

She finally left my father for good when I was ten years old. The fifth time was the charm.

Along the way, my mother met other women like her—strong Black women in situations that seemed insurmountable. There was Cathy, who provided her a hiding place from her abuser, helped when it was needed, but never made it out of her own hell, with abuse spiraling into drug use and eventual death. Jane, who, delirious from several days of nonstop abuse, set her marital bed on fire, maiming her husband, and served 17 years in prison, leaving the care of her resentful children to their grandmother. And Mary, who traded her abusive husband for a pimp after learning she had an STD that would prevent her from ever having children. But most women that my mother knew in the community were like Theresa, a good mom, abused by a partner who was married to someone else, who eventually asked for help and climbed out of her situation by taking jobs where she could find them.

My mother's example taught her children early on that positive change is always possible. It requires making a different choice as well as persistent effort and commitment. And—like the Nation of Islam women who were a constant supportive presence throughout those years, actively helping and showing the path forward—change is most sustainable when supported by local, national, and global communities that are in this work for the long haul.

My mother is an everyday feminist.

Stay in the Game for Meaningful, Sustainable Change

Here is the first major lesson that listening to and observing everyday feminists in action across the globe for more than three decades has taught me: stay in the game.

If you want real, sustainable social change, don't quit. Don't give up if you're in the trenches. Don't take a scattershot or butterfly approach if you're providing resources. Don't declare victory too early. And don't underestimate the power of the constant water that wears away the stone. This is especially important for those providing funding. From foundations to environmental, social, and governance (ESG)‐minded corporations to individual private donors, being authentic and impactful in your social change ambitions requires making a long‐term commitment to a movement and sticking by it through its ups and downs. These highs and lows are natural and inevitable. Stay the course.

Staying in the game is a hallmark of the everyday feminist. As we touched on in Chapter 1, everyday feminists work lifelong in their pursuit of justice. Being an agent of change is part of who they are—and they seldom leave this work. They don't see their roles as stepping stones to other career opportunities. When you partner with their movements, your investment in these women has long‐term benefits.

Everyday feminists also tend to view social problems from an intersectional perspective, having lived experience with the interrelatedness of a multitude of social issues (for example, the years of domestic violence my mother suffered, the limited educational and economic pathways for mothers with dependents, the racial profiling my father endured, the institutional shame and denial associated with teen pregnancy, and more). Everyday feminists don't often put problems or, more important, problem‐solving into discrete boxes. Intuiting the interconnectedness of the challenges they are facing, they more instinctively accept that this is expansive, lifetime work. Correspondingly, it demands patient and continual resourcing.

An extensive, decades‐spanning commitment—from everyday feminists mobilizing grassroots movements to the funders supporting them from boardrooms or with hands‐on applications of their time and skills—is necessary to bring about sustainable success that improves our lives and world. This is especially true for those injustices that are so pervasive and entrenched—culturally, economically, religiously, and politically—that they seem intractable,¹ for example, the issue of sexual and gender‐based violence. Although my first experience with this kind of aggression came through my mother, I later learned that her story was unfortunately far too common.

Sexual and Gender‐Based Violence

In 1978, right before my mother escaped her personal situation of domestic violence, the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence were formed to raise awareness of these two forms of violence against women. The next year, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women was developed, specifically calling out violence as a core component of inequality. It was becoming clear that intersectional issues affecting gender equality were coming to the fore and sexual and gender‐based violence (SGBV) was bubbling up ahead of some others.

Sexual and gender‐based violence (SGBV) is aggression directed at an individual based on his or her biological sex or gender identity. It includes physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse, threats, coercion, and economic or educational deprivation, whether occurring in public or private life. Women are disproportionately harmed by gender‐based violence: one in three women have experienced physical or sexualized violence in their lifetime.² One in three. That is not including emotional, financial, or verbal abuse. Despite being so prevalent, gender‐based violence is largely underreported because of stigma and lack of access to resources and support systems.³

SGBV can affect anyone regardless of their geographical location, socioeconomic background, race, religion, sexuality, or gender identity. Although women and girls are the most at risk and the most affected by gender‐based violence, boys, men, and sexual and gender minorities also experience it as well. SGBV can have serious physical, mental, economic, and social repercussions. For example, sexualized violence can lead to unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and STI transmission, as well as isolation and depression. It can also prevent survivors from achieving economic prosperity because of stigma or physical and psychological trauma caused by the violence.⁴

SGBV became my first focus of professional work as a human rights officer at the United Nations in 1996. And although it was initially difficult to get governments to focus on violence against women as a policy issue, international human rights treaties soon began to include SGBV language—which would later see itself into criminal justice codes, local and national commissions and task forces, and ultimately laws that strengthened community response to crimes of domestic violence and sexual assault, strengthened federal penalties for repeat sex offenders, and strengthened legislative protection of victims, among many other provisions. This global trend to legally address the issue was a big and necessary win. But counterintuitively wins like these also can be slippery spots to movements and their funders.

Passing a Law Is Not Enough

There's a second piece to this stay‐in‐the‐game wisdom that I've learned from everyday feminists and their movements: passing laws or changing policy on a social problem isn't good enough; you've got to keep at this work, even after you get a win.

Most feminist‐supported organizations are going after transformation change, so it's too limiting to say we just want to pass this or that law. Such short‐sighted goals, tempting as they may be, lead to declaring victory too soon and then seeing funding cut while laws go unenforced and social and environmental injustices persist.

We've seen this again and again. One of many examples is child marriage. According to periodic reviews of countries that signed the CEDAW international treaty on gender equality, all but six have laws in place that provide a minimum age for marriage.⁵ Nonetheless, in more than 117 of these countries, including the United States, there are loopholes allowing children under 18 to marry.⁶ These unions are often underreported, and there is often enduring opposition to these laws in religious and cultural communities worldwide.

Everyday feminist Rakshanda Naz, a Pakistani human rights activist, says, “We've learned that having the law is not enough. We need better mechanisms to count and report violations of the law. We know which communities are still practicing child marriage and we get cases and examples all the time, despite laws put in place to especially protect young girls.”

Rakshanda continues to do this work because she knows well that staying in the game even when there is a law passed is crucial to transformative social change. Without these everyday feminists leading the way, maintaining focus on the long‐term issues, you risk important movements collapsing once a law is passed, while injustices continue.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Tarana Burke and the Me Too Movement

When I started working with Planned Parenthood in 2011, I heard about a movement called Me Too, founded in 2006, incidentally the same year Twitter came into being. It was launched by Tarana Burke, an American activist from the Bronx, who worked for years in Philadelphia with the Art Sanctuary using the power of Black art to transform individuals, create and build community, and foster cultural understanding. Me Too supports survivors of sexual violence, particularly young women of color from low‐wealth communities, to find pathways to healing. The movement's vision from the beginning has been to address both the dearth of resources for survivors of sexual violence and to build a robust community of advocates and allies.

In October 2017, following the high‐profile media coverage of the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, an American actress asked women who had been sexually harassed or violated to indicate “me too” on Twitter, catapulting the movement into the lead topic in global awareness. The #MeToo hashtag went viral and survivors across the world came forward about their experiences with sexual assault. From #米兔 (translated as “rice bunny,” pronounced as mi tu) in China to #Sex4Grades in Kenya to #uykularinkacsin (“may you lose sleep”) in Turkey, stories of “me too” swept the globe, transcending national borders, race, and creed.

Although Me Too had this moment of tremendous worldwide attention, it doesn't follow that the movement has served its purpose and we can now move on to the next socially conscious social media trend. Awareness alone does not equal changed hearts and minds or healed bodies and souls. Rather, the Me Too movement and the everyday feminists who sustain it offer us an inspiring example of why we need to stay in the game, even after such progress that culminated in laws being passed in California and other states.

According to Global Fund for Women's Movement capacity assessment, Me Too is a movement in the formalization stage, as explained in Chapter 2. It has met the characteristics of a movement that has touched a collection of actors to both gain power and change actions formerly acceptable in our societies. It is sustained by the many women who have personally told their stories in service to the movement. The power of the movement is its continued home in our digital universe.

I believe Me Too will be talked about for centuries in the ways that we talk about the suffrage movement, the gay rights movement, and other monumental social movements that changed the script. A marker of its success was how it awoke billions to the utter pervasiveness of sexual violence against women and minority genders. The sheer number of voices across the planet telling their stories of sexualized assault was, for a few weeks in October, an inescapable and undeniable phenomenon. Since then, the Me Too movement has been written about many times.

Although there is still a long way to go to end violence against women, the line has been drawn. Victory is on the horizon. No longer is beating your wife or using sex as a tool to intimidate, bribe, demean, control, and/or punish women going to be tolerated. I see the finish line in my lifetime.

Let's explore more of Tarana's story and leadership.

In Her Words: Tarana Burke

Me Too's founder, Tarana Burke, is a heroine for many of us in the survivor movement, committed to protecting those experiencing gender‐based violence in their homes, workplace, schools, and streets. Tarana has changed lives around the world in more ways than she could ever know. And she's still at it.

Who Is This Everyday Feminist?   I've been an organizer since I was a teenager around issues of racial injustice and economic injustice. Organizing around issues of injustice was sort of my passion. I was a survivor, obviously. But I was not doing work around survivor justice at that age. And as I grew up in the [racial and economic injustice] movement, it became more and more clear to me that there was a void in this work, because I encountered other survivors, particularly young people, who were not being served in our community. There were no services. There was not even a conversation about the people—particularly young people, like me—who are survivors. It was a big part of our life. It was a big part of our reality. And it was a big part of what was happening in the community. But there was no response to it in the community. And it just felt like a void, a gap—and it needed a response. What I had been taught by the elders who trained me to organize is that community issues needed a community response. And so, [the Me Too movement] became my community response—although I had no idea [at the time] what I was doing.

What Is Her Movement Work?   Me Too is a movement for people who follow a particular ideology around survivor justice. First, we center Black women and girls, although not to the exclusion of anybody else. And we tend to Black women and girls and marginalized folks. That must be at the core of your ideology. And the reason why that's important is because we strongly believe that if you don't start centering the most marginalized, then they'll be left out, or they'll get the last of the resources. So that's number one.

Number two, we also center healing. And we see healing as action. So, people who claim to be a part of Me Too, as a movement, but who don't have healing work in their body of services, are not—from our estimation—a part of Me Too.

I think that grassroots organizing plays a larger role [in sustainable social impact] than it is given credit for. I come from grassroots organizing tradition. And I was thrust into the national spotlight. I think that what happens often is that, because the conversation is so hyper‐focused on the national spotlight or the national organizations, people don't have a way to quantify what's happening on the ground. You have these big national organizations that suck up all the air in the room, but the people who are doing the hand holding, walking into the hospitals, going into the street, into the homes—they are grassroots organizations.

Black Women's Blueprint, an organization in Brooklyn, literally had a van that was driving through communities, supporting survivors. They took a van, raised money, and drove through the community doing community education, doing workshops, supporting survivors. You will never hear about that on the national stage. Before people knew who I was, I was doing workshops in church basements, in afterschool programs. You will never hear about that. There are hundreds of small struggling [organizations]—mostly led by women of color, people of color, queer people—in communities around the country, that can't afford to have a hotline.

There's a woman in South Africa [who] literally takes her own money, her own vehicle, her own home and opens it up to survivors of sexual violence, where it is dangerous to actually be a survivor of sexual violence. It's the large organizations that come along and get tons of resources and overshadow—but the work to get justice for survivors is not going to happen in a 501(c)(3). And I say that as a person who runs a 501(c)(3).

What Impact Is She Making?   We are trying to reframe this question a bit: as opposed to what changes Me Too has made, what has this movement made possible? And the reason why is because if we don't reframe that, people will look back at this moment and will want to tick off a bunch of what they define as victories from the mainstream media. This was passed … and this policy was changed … and this person went to jail … and this person lost their job. Those are how we have traditionally framed wins. And that's fine. But I think that one of the reasons why movement feels so cyclical is because we're trapped in this cycle of wins and losses. But when you reframe it around What has this moment made possible? … It made it possible for millions and millions of people to tell their story. It elevated the possibility for healing scores of people, generations of people who thought they would go to their grave holding this trauma. There have been lots of laws that have been changed, lots of local and statewide policy changes—there's a federal legislation that's pending. There are some tangible things like that we should point to. But there's also this other thing that happened—this possibility that has been unleashed—that I think we can't ignore.

There have been a slew of movies and TV shows and podcasts that have come out, which have allowed us to tell a different story and help the public understand that this is not a movement about taking down men—this is about survivors speaking out. That's actually been moderately successful in helping people understand that this is the movement about survivors.

It's an uphill battle. When anything Me Too comes out, you still have the groans and moans and the eye rolling. “Oh, here come the feminazis. ‘We're gonna cancel everybody.’” But then you have a fair amount of people who are like, “No, this is something that has to be said. This is about protecting vulnerable people.” There's still enough pushback. That makes me feel hopeful.

What Keeps You in the Game?   I think my activism is guided by the constant gaps that I see in the resources and in the community. And this is guided by what I see survivors saying they need [and] what I personally need. Joanne Smith, who is the founder of Girls for Gender Equity, an organization I used to work for, says, “We come to the work because we are the work.” And so, I'm not just a leader in the movement—I am part of the movement. I do this work because I need this work. And so I am guided by what I need, and I'm guided by what other survivors say they need. And I'm guided by the constant need that is always in front of us.

I'm trying to figure out how to grow this movement. I think that it's important that we don't fall into a trap of thinking that this moment that we're in right now is the pinnacle of this movement. We have had movements that are identified by highs and lows, and ebbs and flows. The movement—not the Me Too movement, but the movement to end sexual violence—is very, very long. It has a long, long, long, long, LONG history. Centuries long. So, in that long and varied history, there have been really high highs and really low lows. I think we're at a high high in this moment. And a big part of the work right now is to take as much advantage of the high high that we can. So when the next low comes, we're prepared to use the momentum from this high that we have right now to sustain us during the quiet setting.

Our biggest hope is for survivors to understand that healing is possible; to find community, first and foremost, and through that to understand that they're not alone. Healing is possible. There are so many avenues to healing resources that most people didn't understand were available. We are really, really, really interested in post‐traumatic growth. That is our goal for survivors. It can be personal growth, it can be community growth, it can be political growth, but we want people to move past the point of trauma and explore all possibilities for growth that exist after the trauma.

It's our responsibility to take care of each other. After the pandemic, I think we're clear that it's just not possible for us to live in a world where we don't take care of each other. And I think there's so much that we survivors of trauma—particularly survivors of sexual violence—must teach the world about survival. And there's so much the world must learn from us. I also want us to know that we are not the sum of what happened to us—we are a power base. You're looking at a group of people who have been dragged to hell and back and survived. You're looking at a group of people who life tried to take out, and didn't, and are thriving in a lot of different ways. And there are a lot of them who don't even think or know or understand how much they are surviving. I really think there're a lot of lessons to be learned from survivors as we move forward.

The ability to live free from violence is a basic human right. Tarana Burke has stayed in the game and steadily worked for this right for others, even after she became a well‐known name when the #MeToo hashtag went viral. As the Me Too movement today no longer relies on mass local organizing to achieve its purpose, it has expanded its geographic reach. Tarana has visited many countries where the hashtag had gone viral. As Me Too has grown, many countries have asked to connect with the movement's efforts in the United States. Their requests have sparked the vision of a global community that centers survivor leadership through deep, cross‐country relationship building and practice sharing.

But there has also been a backlash against the Me Too movement, fueled by patriarchy and resistance to disrupting the status quo. As a Black woman in the United States, Tarana Burke has not received the kind of tangible support for her organization—including funding—necessary to scale up, sustain, and boost the movement's impact for the long term.⁷ Unlike other organizations focused on SGBV, such as CARE, some of Tarana's funders didn't stay in the game because they saw the international social media trend as a win.

This is a persistent problem. As we showed in Chapter 3, too often, movements like Me Too in the United States and globally—especially those led by Black and Brown women—continue to be under‐resourced, lacking access to core, flexible, multiyear funding and structural connections to each other. But as the global spike in domestic violence during COVID‐19‐related lockdowns reaffirms, ending SGBV continues to be an urgent human rights issue that transcends national and cultural boundaries.

By providing funding and other resources (see the Conclusion to learn how), corporations, organizations, governments, and individuals can support Me Too in becoming a well‐resourced global movement that can continue its work to end SGBV and make healing and actionable support systems available to all survivors.

Notes

1. Cheryl Dorsey and Jeff Bradach, “Racial Equity and Philanthropy,” Bridgespan (May 4, 2020). https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/library/philanthropy/disparities-nonprofit-funding-for-leaders-of-color#:~:text=This%20research%2C%20from%20Echoing%20Green,racial%20inequities%20in%20philanthropic%20funding.

2. “Devastatingly Pervasive: 1 in 3 Women Globally Experience Violence,” World Health Organization (2021). https://www.who.int/news/item/09–03–2021-devastatingly-pervasive-1-in-3-women-globally-experience-violence.

3. T. Palermo, J. Bleck, and A. Peterman, “Tip of the Iceberg: Reporting and Gender‐Based Violence in Developing Countries, American Journal of Epidemiology 179, no. 5 (2014): 602–612. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwt295.

4. “Effects of Sexual Violence,” RAINN. Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://www.rainn.org/effects-sexual-violence.

5. M. Arthur, A. Earle, A. Raub, I. Vincent, E. Atabay, I. Latz, G. Kranz, A. Nandi, and J. Heymann, “Child Marriage Laws Around the World: Minimum Marriage Age, Legal Exceptions, and Gender Disparities,” Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 39, no. 1 (2017): 51–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/1554477X.2017.1375786.

6. Arthur et al., “Child Marriage Laws Around the World.”

7. Dorsey and Bradach, “Racial Equity and Philanthropy.”

5
If It Walks and Talks Like a Feminist Leader, Follow

Spotlight: M. Adams and the BLM Movement

Issue: Racial Justice

I am what is often referred to now as a first‐generation college graduate. But my parents always emphasized education. My mom graced the halls of colleges and continues to aspire toward that elusive higher learning that slipped through her fingers as a teenage mother and wife. My father was offered a scholarship to college but thought he needed to have an income so instead became a Marine. They both talked about college as an honorable path, one that required hard work.

When time came to look for a college, I knew I wanted to go somewhere in DC. It seemed fitting that I should be near the halls of power if I was going to change things. I chose the University of Maryland because their financial aid package offered more scholarships, grants, loans, and work study. In college, I spent my time like most of my peers. I dabbled in the Greek ecosystem as a Kappa sweetheart but couldn't justify asking my parents to financially support these activities formally. I joined the Black Student Union and worked to divest the university from South Africa.

But mostly, I worked. I had an administrative work study within the university; I worked to “tutor” or take classes and exams for student athletes (which was completely legal back then); I catered for the alumni association and loved the traditional alumnae crab feasts and homecoming events; I worked for the local supermarket; I was a regular guinea pig for research departments from providing lung samples and participating in a “skipping” study. I pretty much took any and every job I came across.

I was impatient to finish undergrad and go to law school. I'd known I wanted to be a lawyer since I was five, and these forays into political science and African American studies felt like a necessary stepping stone, the requisite appetizer before the meal. During my junior year in college, I learned about the Woodrow Wilson fellowship in public policy and international affairs. It offered to pay for graduate school for those that attended a selected policy institute at a university away from your home school and finish an internship in public policy. It wasn't law school, but it was free.

As a successful applicant, I chose to attend the policy institute at Cal. Berkeley was another world, nothing like home. I loved it. I learned about the Black Panther Party from children of Panthers who were my age. I hung out in places frequented by the likes of rappers and entertainers whom I only vaguely paid attention to: Too Short, Hammer, En Vogue, and even once Tupac. At the institute, I was able to live with students of all ethnicities. Academically, it was enthralling. I came away convinced that legislative and judicial change was necessary, so I knew I had to go back and get both my law and master's degrees.

For my qualifying internship, I worked at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which was then led by civil rights attorney and activist Elaine Jones. She joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1970 and in 1993 became the organization's first female director‐counsel and president.

While working with Elaine, I was assigned a few cases of interest, but the work that really spoke to me was on the “motor voter” legislation. It was a simple concept: when someone went to get their driver's license, they would be able to check a box to register to vote. The change would save all voters time and would increase access to voting for those who might miss voter registration deadlines for many reasons.

But our colleagues on the other side of the aisle were not as convinced. Primarily Republican lawmakers insisted that this bill would open our voter registries up to voter fraud, allowing illegal immigrants and those who had committed felonies on the voter rolls. It didn't matter that these cases would be cross‐checked before issuing the voter registration card.

We met with staffers in the offices of those opposing the bill to get intel on their arguments against motor voting to help inform our strategy to get the bill in committee. And Elaine taught me the importance of being a person, not an advocate, in these meetings. She taught me little tricks to get staffers to speak to me. To my surprise, it worked to ask folks to join me for coffee or lunch. It worked to go late in the day and ask if I could walk and talk to people as they left for the day. Elaine suggested that taking notes while talking to a staffer would lose their attention. So, after our conversations, I would walk over to the Library of Congress and pull out my notebook to capture everything. I adopted Elaine's more human approach, looking them in the eyes, making remarks about the weather, laughing out loud when they said something funny. These were natural reactions, not faked to elicit support. When we got to the topic at hand, there was sometimes stiffness or nastiness, but the conversations always ended the way they started, with some gesture of respect.

Elaine showed me the art of policy making and I saw then how it complimented my lifelong dream to become a lawyer.

Elaine is an everyday feminist.

Follow the Feminist Even If She Doesn't Go By That Name

This leads me to the second major lesson that listening to and observing everyday feminists in action across the globe for more than three decades taught me: feminist leadership is crucial for impact.

In Chapter 1, we discussed the likelihood that many of the everyday feminists highlighted in this book do not label themselves as a feminist or even a leader. Years after my brief time working with Elaine Jones, she told Julian Bond, a popular civil rights leader, that she doesn't even consider herself a leader. After winning voting, education discrimination, and death row cases that improved the lives of all people, particularly Black people and other people of color in the United States, she says, “The whole idea of leaders means looking to one or two or three people who can lead a segmented community. Even when our communities are more fragmented. I don't think it's going to get us anywhere. We've got to develop leadership in everyone.”

Everyday feminists may not call themselves feminists, despite doing feminist work. And if they do now, they, like me, may not have really considered that a part of their core identity growing up. There are several reasons the label feminist may not resonate with some everyday feminists. For example, in many parts of Africa and Asia, a lot of women have considered feminism a Western concept that continued to perpetuate patriarchy, colonialism, and inequities that did not serve their communities that were seeking transformative change.

Today, there are so many versions of feminism that depend greatly on where you come from in the world, the identities you claim, and even the language you speak. Currently, there is a growing body of feminists that have branded their own feminist evolution that is bolder and considers their own histories and realities. This is what an everyday feminist does: creates her own narrative and definitions. Aminetoue Mint El Moctar, a Mauritanian women's rights activist and politician, whom I would call an everyday feminist, describes it this way in her discussion with the African Women's Development Fund: “African feminism is a conception, a political awareness, a strategy and a code of ethics that militates for women's rights.”

I encourage funders not to get bogged down with terminology and instead seek out and support everyday feminists, whatever they call themselves.

We didn't get traction on the federal motor voter bill while I was in DC that summer. With quite a few years behind me at this point and staring down the barrel of numerous and ugly attempts by politicians to disenfranchise communities of color, I see why this bill was a problem for many Republicans. It would allow communities, including and especially everyday feminists, a vehicle to exercise their right to vote for more politicians focused on equality and justice. But I later watched with glee as state by state introduced some aspects of the bill. And eventually, the National Voter Registration Act was passed in 1993. That was another lesson I learned from the feminist leadership of Elaine Jones: sometimes it takes decades of work before achieving success—and this is especially true in the long struggle for racial justice.

The Long Fight for Racial Justice

Throughout the history of the United States, racial justice movements have continually emerged and declined, most often in response to egregious events, laws or lack thereof to address the racial discrimination endemic in the society, or key awareness raising moments in current affairs.

According to GFW's MCAT, the civil rights movement of the 1960s progressed through all of the movement stages: emerging, taking off, formalization, and decline. Organizations like the NAACP, also involved in the broader racial justice movement, are in the formalization stage (see Chapter 2) and have become synonymous with its key roles, particularly in US society. These include the abolition of segregation and discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation. And yet, despite many decades of progress, we have not yet achieved racial equity—in the United States or globally.

The struggle goes on.

We are currently living through the next wave of the racial justice movement in the United States. In 2020, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer ignited the world's biggest protests for racial justice in a generation. Long‐simmering anger over the deaths of African Americans in police custody brought an international reckoning with systemic racism. This current racial justice movement fits within the broader history of the US civil rights movement, yet its efforts differ from past initiatives in terms of ending racism, full stop. The focus is on the equal importance of all human rights for African Americans together with other marginalized groups, nationally and globally.

Ultimately, I believe that the process of truth and reconciliation is the pathway to racial justice. Brain Stevens at the Equal Justice Institute points out that in countries such as Rwanda and South Africa, where significant racial trauma took place, akin to the North American slave trade, there had to be a moment of recognition of the atrocities and opportunities for story telling on both sides.¹ Unfortunately, this prescription for the broader racial justice movement is often discouraged by opponents through both explicit and institutionalized resistance.

A Racial Reckoning for Feminist Movements

The current moment of racial reckoning has prompted important conversation and reflection about racism within feminist and other social justice movements. It was clear that organizations that considered themselves feminist by design had to come to terms with their own histories of racism and more recent biased treatment of women of color within their ranks. In Chapter 10, I talk about Planned Parenthood as an organization that has had to rationalize its white feminism with the work it does with and for people of color. There were shake‐ups in colleague organizations, such as Women Deliver and the International Women's Health Coalition. Even the Women's Funds themselves had to tackle the important idea that even feminists can be racist and further agendas of discrimination based on color, origin, and immigration status.

Intersectional feminist movements must address racial injustice whenever they find it—including in their own ranks. Everyday feminists understand that anti‐Blackness, Asian hate, Muslim fear, and other manifestations of racial bigotry must be tackled head on. Its tolerance is a slippery slope for those who desire justice at any level. Funders who support social movements but ignore problematic racial dynamics ingrained therein risk further entrenching racial prejudice and diminishing years of work by marginalized communities of color.²

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: M. Adams and the Black Lives Matter Movement

The Black‐centered political will and movement building project known as Black Lives Matter (BLM) emerged in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's murderer, George Zimmerman. Developed throughout 2013 and 2014 to propel the conversation about state‐sanctioned violence against Black communities, it gained global popularity after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

According to GFW MCAT, it is now a popular movement and includes a member‐led global network of more than 40 chapters. These chapters build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. As organizers who work with everyday people, BLM members see and understand significant gaps in movement spaces and recognize the need to center the leadership of women and queer and trans people. Though initially focused on state‐sanctioned violence against Black men, it has expanded to highlight the egregious ways in which Black women, specifically Black trans women, are often violated.

Many of the everyday feminists who lead BLM chapters and movements around the world probably don't look like the leaders of color whom we were used to seeing in the civil rights movements. And they don't necessarily call themselves feminists. But they are doing important feminist work, nonetheless.

Next, let's explore more of M's story and leadership.

In Their Words: M. Adams

M. Adams is an example of why it is so important to fund these feminists close to the work that they do. M. Adams is a community organizer, the leader of a local BLM chapter in Madison, Wisconsin, and former co‐executive director of Freedom, Inc. I met M. Adams when I joined Global Fund for Women, where they were featured in the Fundamental Film series, and I later interviewed M. Adams about how they was keeping up during the COVID pandemic.

Who Is This Everyday Feminist?   I was born and raised in Milwaukee 53206 to a single Black mother and survived many forms of institutional and state‐based violence. I intimately know the terror patriarchal violence causes inside relationships, homes, and families. My father was incarcerated for most of my life, and my community was an extreme target of police violence.

These experiences led me to develop a radical Black queer feminist abolitionist politic that disrupts the relationship [among] identity, power, and oppression. As a queer Black gender‐nonconforming person, I am committed to building the world my family deserves. My lived experiences allow me to apply movement science to lead grassroots campaigns that target violence and win real change in people's lives.

Being Black is important to me. It's a big part of me and how I move through and interact with the world. Being Black and not African American is political. It's about identifying with other people of African descent all over the world. I feel greater kinship with—greater identity with—a Black person in Jamaica than I do with a white person at the capitol.

What Is Their Movement Work?   I have led several campaigns, including taking over housing in order to implement the human right to housing for Black queer families with the Take Back the Land Movement; organizing with Southeast Asian elders to win community gardens; stopping the construction of a new jail; working to defund police; organizing community accountability responses to harm; and winning the removal of cops from Madison public schools.

I have had to do more leadership outside of the organization. I'm taking the lead on doing the coalition work outside of the organization to think about the movement, not just the organization. So I'm really leaning into and putting more time within the Movement 4 Black Lives, in which I'm one of the leadership team members.

What Impact Is They Making?   Success comes from action grounded in one's community. We never yield our work. We never stop. We don't take a break. We don't shut the door. In fact, we bust through more doors, through the wall, and figure out a way to work for folks in other ways. We also build coalitions to expand and meet and move into what's needed at a point in time. One of the things we did during the pandemic was to understand our work as central right away; we are frontline workers. We called hundreds of our people and asked them, “How are you? What's going on? What can help you be well?” And we do our best to connect people to services.

Grassroots organizing plays a big role in my work. At Freedom Inc. our motto is our community is our campaign. Because we are not issue based—we are people based. We are community based. So, we are fighting every issue that is impacting our community. If you were to ask 20 people what we did, they would probably say 20 different things. For example, during the filming of the docuseries, “Fundamental,”³ there was hyper‐criminalization of Black youth in [Madison, Wisconsin]. And so over that year and a half, our young folks have been showing up at the School Board meetings to demonstrate that they do not want police in schools, under the BLM movement.

What Is the Importance of Feminist Leadership?   People look at Freedom Inc. as solely a political organization, meaning all we do is resist the state, all we do is go out and rally. It's true that we do that. We are proud to be women, queer, and trans people who can stand up to authority. But we do that in service to our actual lives being better. So, one of the projects at Freedom Inc. is a community garden. We got that garden because we were thinking about health, healing, wholeness, and wellness. We asked the elders, Southeast Asian elders, “What does health, healing, and wholeness look like to you?” And they answered, “We are master gardeners. We want to be able to grow our own food.” And then there was a community organizing campaign; the city didn't just give that to us. We fought hard, and we won.

The strengthening of mutual aid work has really been an opportunity for us to engage with the recipients. We really want to strengthen our mutual aid organizing work with survivors. And we're also trying to experiment. We've always done bail fund work, but we've never had as much money as we have now, so what that means is we've been able to get more people out of jail than we have before, and that's a different organizing space. But the backlash from those opposing these types of programs was hard. So, you know, us really having a strong politic around survivorship for women put us at a different place with the work. This moment of having a popular movement has accelerated us and bumped us into a different category. I'm taking a lot of risks. I have purposely put my name on other things that I've never done before. Someone told me that there's not as much room as you think between mastery and stagnation. And so, I'm really having to learn about other parts of me. The stakes are much higher, and I'm in a different position. I'm taking risks, I'm trying to listen a lot more, and I'm aiming to be bold enough to try.

It really doesn't matter which community is seeking justice, it is important that support is directed to everyday feminist leaders closest to the movement work. Although the BLM movement owes its genesis to the communities that stood up around America, there are local chapters both nationally and internationally that demanded justice for lives taken too early. It is important to find the BLM leadership closest to the community or geography you care the most. This is not a suggestion to not fund others doing this work. It is a recommendation to support those movements you care about in the communities closest to the problem to be solved through the everyday feminist leaders who are already doing this work, particularly women of color.

There seems to be endless opportunities from personal to collective movement building to help support the work. This is a long game and not for the weak at heart. One would really want to see the end of racism and believe that it will make the world better for all of us to adequately reinforce these efforts. It is my humble opinion that supporting racial justice organizations led by feminist women of color is the best bang for your buck. It is indeed the intimate understanding of intersectional injustices that an everyday feminist can bring to a movement in order to root out multiple systemic and structured impediments to racial equity. I also humbly suggest that many everyday feminists have had to jump so many hurdles to achieve her level of leadership that she is now prepared to do the unthinkable under multiple circumstances and do it well.

Notes

1. “True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality,” YouTube.com (2021). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZPl4CFEUc.

2. Cheryl Dorsey, Jeff Bradach, and Peter Kim, “The Problem with ‘Color‐Blind’ Philanthropy,” Harvard Business Review (September 17, 2021). https://hbr.org/2020/06/the-problem-with-color-blind-philanthropy.

3. “Fundamental.” Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://fundamental-film.com/rising-power/.

6
Feminists Work for Men and Boys, Too

Spotlight: Refiloe Harris and Men Engage Movement

Issue: Herd Boys

When I met Puleng (known as Pula), during an official visit to Mafeteng, Lesotho, she was wrapped in a traditional Basotho blanket. I'd been in the landlocked South African country for several months, but I was still getting used to the cold mountainous weather. In her early 30s, she looked young for her age, despite the sorrow she'd already endured. It had been four years since she had lost her only son at age 12, while he was out herding cattle.

The custom of sending boys to take care of cattle has long roots among the Basotho people, the ethnic group that makes up over 99% of the population of Lesotho. It is considered a huge responsibility and a path to becoming a man that was revered by families both rich and poor. Thousands of young boys—from the startling age of 7 until about 17—are put into the fields and hills to ensure that the family cattle are fed and cared for. According to a 2021 UNICEF report, about 22% of children in Lesotho between ages 5 and 17 are engaged in some form of child labor.¹ These are mostly boys working to herd their families' livestock.

Most “herd boys” are sent out on their first herding trip when they turn five or six. These escapades typically last three or so months at a time, depending on where there is available grass. The boys were sent with very little incidentals, making the task extremely difficult. They are often malnourished, as food is not always easy to find. The weather is harsh in the winter months with appropriate lodging unavailable, especially with herds of cattle sometimes numbering more than 20 cows. Being a herd boy means delaying the initiation of school. Depending on the availability of another brother to take over these duties, a herd boy might not enter a formal academic setting until about 12 years old and would often have to return to herding at 16 years old. Younger boys are often victims of violence—robbed, raped, and taken as servants to older boys to herd their cows as well.²

Pula's son had been herding for just a couple of years when he was robbed of his blankets and other essentials and died of hypothermia before he could return home to get replenished. They found the cattle he was caring for before they found her son.

I'd come to Lesotho to spend two years working for the United Nations Volunteer program, which was administered by the Peace Corps for US volunteers. I had finished law and public policy school and passed the bar when I discovered I was not cut out for the Baltimore City public defender's office.

Everyone I knew considered my choice to do the Peace Corps somewhat strange; most of my law school peers were deciding what firm, NGO, or government department to work at. And when I landed in Maseru to do my in‐country training at the University of Lesotho, I, too, began to feel like this may have been a huge mistake. I was the only Black volunteer in a group of about 30. It was a lonely feeling to be in a country full of people that looked like me but among a group of Americans that I couldn't be more different from.

After weeks of cultural and language training, we were required to stay in a village with a family to put our learned skills into practice. At the final ceremony, each volunteer was paired with their hosts and went on their way after a great deal of applause and celebration from the community. When my name was called, I stepped forward and everyone went silent in confusion. Having assumed I was a local trainer, my host family seemed disappointed to realize that I was their volunteer, and they would not be getting a “real” white American. The long quiet walk to the village home was excruciating.

Ultimately, my host family grew to love me as much as I did them. And, in hindsight, I probably learned more during that week than most of my colleagues. Despite my beginner language skills, the people in the village would give me no breaks, speaking in fast Sesotho until I caught up. I was expected to do all the things my fellow Basotho age mates (most married with children already) had to do: wake early, use remaining water from the day before to wash, get more water from the well to cook breakfast, do chores around the house, go to the market, meet with neighbors, cook dinner, eat with the family, and discuss my day.

After my training was complete, I got my assignment: as the first “child protection officer” in the UNICEF office in Maseru, my job was to help the country implement its commitments under international treaties it signed—specifically, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Among my first assignments was assessing how gender roles in the country affected children. Our goal was to figure out what categories of children in the country needed special protection. Typically, the children most in need were young girls experiencing gender‐based violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, domestic servitude, and so on.

But in Lesotho, it was different. After my assessment, I discovered that the children most in harm's way were the herd boys, like Pula's son.

Her son's death had turned Pula into a change agent and advocate. She opened a school for herd boys in the pasture areas, which also served as a place of refuge. She provided meals, a warm place to sleep, and a practical education in skills, such as reading a map, to make their jobs easier. She would scour prisons looking for boys who committed crimes during their tenure herding the family cows, reuniting them with their families, in addition to providing care and support throughout the process. And she was a fierce advocate with both her own government and international agencies like the UN.

At first, it was difficult for the UNICEF regional gender office to see that boys required special protection in an African country. But armed with the information and stories that Pula collected and catalogued, we showed a pattern of gender discrimination that segregated boys. Of course, there were various cultural practices that harmed girls as well, as Pula could personally speak to. But the story of herd boys was often romanticized by the broader community, making the deadly truth harder to recognize.

When I asked her what more the UN could do to support her work, Pula said we needed to expose the harms herd boys experienced to the broader community within the country and the region. So, I developed a communications campaign including an animated book series geared toward school‐aged children that documented the ills of herding and other human rights violations that children experienced in the country. We also supported her in asking the government to intervene by enforcing compulsory education laws in the rural areas of the country. There was huge resistance to changing the practice; many people claimed it was more than a cultural tradition, but an economic necessity that could decimate families if upended.

I stayed on to work with UNICEF and Pula even after finishing my volunteer assignment. Pula continued with her crusade as the country went into a crisis after a failed election in 1998. Claiming the ruling party corrupted the voting process, the opposition party bombed the government and some commercial buildings downtown. I was evacuated to Bloemfontein, where I stayed and worked with restrictions on reentering Lesotho. Shortly thereafter, I received an assignment from UNICEF HQ to go to Ethiopia.

I learned a great deal from Pula about the courage it takes to challenge cultural practices that have been around seemingly forever, as well as the importance of following the lead of someone from within the community affected to bring about change. Herding is still a common practice in the rural areas of Lesotho, but there has been increasing policy advancements to ensure herd boys' safety and education.

Pula is an everyday feminist.

Men's Issues Are Feminist Issues, Too

Pula's work on behalf of the herd boys taught me the third major lesson I learned while listening to and observing everyday feminists in action across the globe for more than three decades . . . men and boys matter, too.

Historically, gender equality has been defined as mainly about “women's issues.” Certainly, women's oppression within patriarchal societies has made women a driving force behind struggles for gender equality. But gender (in)equality affects both women and men. Gendered norms, pressures, and expectations affect the daily lives of men and boys, too—often to their detriment. I learned early on in my career that a good analysis of gender equality in a country or region would identify some issues that disproportionately affect men and boys—such as the plight of herd boys in Lesotho—in addition to those that affect women and girls.

For example, men are more likely to smoke and drink too much, take unhealthy risks, and engage in violence, which may contribute to their lower life expectancy compared to women.³ When it comes to their mental health, men are less likely to seek professional help or talk about their problems with friends or family. In the United States, they are nearly four times more likely than women to commit suicide.⁴ Although many men increasingly want to be more involved in parenting their children, many workplaces don't offer men extended parental leave or flexible hours, making it difficult to balance work and family responsibilities.⁵

In my experience, including men and boys in feminist work comes naturally to everyday feminists. They recognize that work on gender equality is interconnected and ultimately benefits all genders. Deeply attuned to the needs of their communities, they don't approach an issue with preconceptions about who should be centered. Rather, they seek to serve the most marginalized.

Funders, by contrast, tend to view programs for “men's issues” and “women's issues” separately. Throughout my career, it has been a perennial question: should we mainstream an awareness of gender inequality across the sectors and siloes, or should we have programs specifically for women? In my opinion, we should do both—and more. And we should resist the impulse to separate and box the intersectional work of everyday feminists.

Challenging Toxic Masculinity and Engaging Men as Allies

Not only do everyday feminists recognize that gender equality brings benefits to both women and men, but also they recognize that engaging men is critical to achieving feminist wins.

For example, toxic masculinity is a term often used to describe the negative aspects of exaggerated masculine traits. It refers to the idea that many cultural norms of “manliness” perpetuate domination of women, homophobia, and aggression. Toxic masculinity has negative effects on men—for example, by discouraging them from expressing vulnerability—and harms women by contributing to sexual and gender‐based violence.

In recent years, feminist movements have increasingly recognized that men can be important allies in making progress toward gender equality. Global networks have formed to support this work. For example, MenEngage is an alliance of more than 600 organizations in 30 countries whose mission is to dismantle patriarchal systems by transforming rigid, harmful norms around “being a man.” HeforShe, which was formed as part of the United Nations, is a global solidarity movement made up of more than 2 million men and people of all genders that stand in solidarity for gender equality.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Refiloe Harris and MenEngage Movement

In 2014, I served together on a board with Gary Barker, who coordinates the global MenEngage network and their work on issues spanning from reproductive rights and GBV to education and land rights. I told him about my time in Lesotho and he introduced me to Refiloe Harris, the everyday feminist leading She Hive, an NGO in Lesotho that formed in 2012, more than 15 years after I left the country. She speaks eloquently to the need to educate and include boys and men in feminist movement work.

According to GFW MCAT, the movement to engage men and boys as allies for gender equality is an emerging movement. There are probably thousands of local organizations focused on men's role in gender injustice. These organizations often form as a response to cultural and religious opposition to accountability for men in the public or private spheres. In slight contrast, there are networks of men's and boys' organizations, like MenEngage, that specifically focus on activities for men, while primarily looking to protect women and increase support toward gender equality goals. These movements that pop up often decline as they morph into strategic activities with and for more traditionally led feminist local and global NGOs.

To learn more about Lesotho and its feminist approach to social justice movements, I suggest looking at the film, produced by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese in 2019, This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection. In addition to its emphasis on the power of an everyday feminist, its depiction of the beauty and spirit of Lesotho and the Basotho people is unparalleled. In the mountains of Lesotho, an 80‐year‐old widow, and everyday feminist, winds up her affairs and plans for her burial. But when her village is threatened with resettlement due to the construction of a reservoir, she finds a new will to live and ignites a spirit of resistance within her community.

Next, let's explore Refiloe Harris's story and leadership.

In Her Words: Refiloe Harris

Refiloe has been an activist for almost a decade providing practical hands‐on experience in operations work with national and international organizations including NGOs with a special interest in women and children's rights advocacy. She is from the capital city of Maseru, Lesotho, and studied tourism in college.

Who Is This Everyday Feminist?   My life hasn't been easy. My father, on the days when he and my mother would fight, would tell me I couldn't come home. It was confusing as a child to be expelled from your home. At school, other students would tell me that they saw my mother being chased and beaten. This affected me a lot. I was aware that my father beat her but I never thought he would do something like that in the street where everyone could see. As the eldest child, I always felt responsible to do something. I was still a student in tertiary school and my mother at that time was no longer employed when my father stopped giving her money to support us. I reached a conclusion that I would share my school stipend that I received from the government so the family could survive, and we could pay school fees for my younger siblings.

When I secured a part‐time job while studying in Bloemfontein, I asked my mother to move out and away from my father so I could have peace of mind. I couldn't study thinking she was being harassed and violated. I was soon offered a permanent position with my employer. I had to make the painful decision to stop studying and take the job to meet the needs of my family. My siblings were still in primary school and needed maintenance. So I left school. It hurt me so much to think that I would not get my degree. This is what motivates me to do this work, to help people in similar situations in my country.

What Is Her Movement Work?   A Hive in my culture refers to women meeting not just to gossip but rather share their experiences and encourage others to talk. That's how She Hive was born. My mother was going through domestic violence at that time and thought I should engage with other women to form a support group. We realized that there is no way you can say you're fighting domestic violence if your focus is just on women and [we] decided to engage men because they are the perpetrators. Some of them are perpetrators, not because they are that way—they're not. It's just because of our culture and our norms. A boy is raised as someone that must be strong and has to force things. Engaging them in this fight of ending violence against women and girls was a strategy for us. It's like a primary prevention initiative to say, “Why not bring on board the perpetrator?”

Everyone is contributing to the sustainable development goals [SDGs]. In Lesotho, the government ministries are trying to do what they call gender retrofit. They realize that we cannot deny the fact that there's a lot of gender inequality in our ministries. And so, they're trying to engage men with adjusted behavioral transformation. There is one activity that we host where we have soccer matches. But the twist is the soccer team must comprise male and female [players].

And we encourage men to give women opportunities. We say if the goal is scored by a female, it will be two points, while if it's by a male, it's one point. Then afterwards, we have discussions around that. Because if you do that, obviously they're going to create opportunities for the female counterparts to score because it's more points. So, we bring this to conversations in the office to say, “Why don't you do the same in your office?” Create an opportunity for a female [because] male people already have [more] opportunities.

Engaging men has opened my eyes, as well as opened doors. In the MenEngage network, we have everyone. Most of the time when one hears MenEngage, they think it will be only male‐dominated associations and organizations. No. It's everyone. We even engage religious traditionalist [organizations] because we realize that they also are part of this movement. There are people that still very much believe in a traditional way of doing things. And if you want to win the fight of engaging everyone [who] is a male, you need to engage all these different bodies.

If you engage even people that don't conform to Western ways of doing things, you have a traditional healer [who] embraces the idea of “No, I don't tolerate GBV” because you have taken them for some training. So, we now have priests [who] are part of [the movement]. We are happy to know that they are passing on this message to the males [in their churches].

What Impact Is She Making?   We are not yet there—the success stage—but we are working toward it. We have little successes in our movements. Our initial mandate was just women and girls. But we now have males [who] are part of the movement. We have circles of males [who] meet monthly to have the same conversations that women have and in a new way they advise each other. We have been invited to a lot of NGOs, even international NGOs, where we go and talk about this transformational behavioral change. People are starting to embrace the moment to engage men.

We have started seeing a lot of growth in this movement with COVID‐19. Couples stayed in house and most people started realizing that I didn't know my other half better because most are in distant marriages. A lot of GBV skyrocketed high and now the recent gender statistics indicate violence is up with incidents in 86% of homes. The Commonwealth did a study that showed that in Lesotho the economic cost of GBV is very high. We had a lot of people now wanting to be a part of this movement, the Minister of Gender in Lesotho included. It just formed what they call the gender probation unit, which they invited She Hive to be a part of.

We invite male members for monthly circles like we do with females, and now we recently started having what we call monthly circles, where we invite both. The idea of the circle is, when you come here, you can bring along just one person. We also invite some of our clients [who] come here for counseling or intervention—obviously, most of them are related to a male [who] is violating their rights. We also have a project that we do with the tech industry, which is male dominated. We have another project that we do that deals with police brutality. And so, it is through all these little complements where we draw people to come and be part of the MenEngage movement.

What Is Required for Feminists Working for and with Men and Boys?   I think there is still a lot of capacity building that needs to be done. There are only a few men that understand what feminism is. Feminism is misconceptualized as a female [who] doesn't like men, so we still have a lot to teach that “no, you can be a male and still be a feminist.”

Men and women do work together and, like in any other movement or any other organization, sometimes you experience a bit of clashes during the work. Most of the clashes—it's male dominance and a lot of egos. But I think generally everyone [who] is part of the group or part of the MenEngage network is someone [who] wants to take part in the fight. Everyone in that group is someone [who] understands that they're in there to fight violence against women and girls.

As funders, we must dismiss the notion that gender equality is important only for one gender, or that everyday feminists work on issues that only affect women. In fact, the intersectional nature of feminist work means that the issues they work on affect everyone.

To practice intersectional organizing and funding across issues and populations, the work to include men and boys is essential to challenging gender injustice. Typically, everyday feminists support male issues as well as male‐led organizations within their movements. And there is growing recognition that male‐led and focused organizations, assuming they are allies on gender equality efforts, must do the same. If there is no apparent connection between feminist groups and male‐led groups, then our job is to help find one. In GFW's approach and experience, you don't have to look hard. Feminist movements tend to have male allies to get the work done. Depending on the topic, they may have alliances with more formal labor unions, mosques or churches, community‐based structures, and even governments. The former list may very well still operate within the context of patriarchal norms, but some have committed to change that will support both women and men. This commitment to change is essential to allowing everyday feminist space to center those who identify as women and are often the most marginalized. And in the case of countries where gender injustice includes abuse of men or boys, supporting everyday feminists ensures that inequality directed toward them is identified and centered.

Notes

1. Frederik Leenknecht, Lati Lerotholi, Trine Petersen, et al., “2021 MICS‐EAGLE Lesotho Education Fact Sheets,” UNICEF (September 2021). https://data.unicef.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Lesotho_MICS_EAGLE_Fact-Sheets.pdf.

2. Julia Preece and Mapheleba Lekhetho, “The Challenge of Relevant and Accessible Education Provision for Herd Boys in Lesotho,” The Burden of Educational Exclusion (2010): 35–50. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789460912849_004.

3. David Ludden, “Why Do Young Men Engage in Risky Behaviors?” Psychology Today (March 23, 2020). https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/202003/why-do-young-men-engage-in-risky-behaviors.

4. American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, “Suicide Statistics,” American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (June 14, 2022). https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/.

5. G. Livingston and K. Parker, “8 Facts About American Dads,” Pew Research Center (June 12, 2019). https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/fathers-day-facts/.

7
The Closer You Are to Impact Matters

Spotlight: Hewan Areaya and the Menstrual Health Movement

Issue: Street Children

On a cold morning in Addis Ababa, I met Tsegaye. She was among a dozen or so children who had gathered, in a government school, to receive the breakfast offered by UNICEF and answer my questions about their experiences living on the streets of Ethiopia's capital.

An incredibly slim young woman, she was almost 16 but had the demeanor of someone much older. She spoke very low with her legs crossed, her skirt brushing the ground, and her back hunched over as if she was reading something on her lap. Through my translator, she told me that she slept in the walkway leading to the entry of the church grounds last night, but she was not sure where she'd sleep tonight. Her home was in Oromia, the largest region in Ethiopia, with a population of 37 million. She said she was working in Addis Ababa to send money back to her parents. She livened a bit as she continued: “I am the oldest of seven and it is important that I contribute to their care.” I asked how she makes money. She shut down. “Do you beg?” “Yes,” she says. “Do you sell things?” “Sometimes.” “Do you work for someone?” She loudly and proudly answered, “No!”

As the child protection officer in the UNICEF country office, I developed an ambitious work plan that cut across the various sectors to address issues that affected the most marginalized children and women in the country. As the timeless border struggle between Ethiopia and Eritrea escalated into a full‐fledged war, I committed to working with the peacekeeping troops deployed by the Secretariat with headquarters based in Asmara to provide human rights training on the protection of civilian populations. I was also tasked with training police, judges, and correctional staff on the human rights of women and children in the country's legal system. And, finally, I worked with the regional office's child labor program to provide and advocate for services to children working on the streets of Addis Ababa.

The idea to focus on street children had come from my Ethiopian colleague and boss Desta. Within the UN system, it is rare to have staff members from the local country supervise international officers. I considered myself lucky to have a senior Ethiopian woman run the office of child protection, as well as an amazing Ethiopian staff working with and for me. Desta previously founded civil society organizations that provide direct services to feed children, find them homes, ensure their schools are adequate; the list goes on.

So she was naturally the first person I consulted when, as part of the regional child labor project, I was tasked with finding children who were subjected to work conditions that violated standards set by the International Labour Organization, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and other international treaties. She said she was most concerned about the well‐being of the children and teens increasingly coming from their villages to beg on the streets of Addis. Where were they sleeping? They were often arrested for stealing food, thrown into jail with the general adult population with no concern that, as children, they needed special treatment.

I ran this by the regional lead on child labor. Can we do what Desta is asking? The ILO didn't classify street children as laborers. But we both wondered why not? We went to the streets for a first round of interviews of the children to document their circumstances. We found that, like Tsegaye, close to 80% were sent to Addis with the blessings of their parents to “make money” to help support the household, though I'm sure the parents were not aware of the difficult circumstances their young teens experienced.¹

Roughly 20–25% of children working on the streets were girls like Tsegaye. There were rumors of prostitution among working children, but it was hard to confirm. In our interview, Tsegaye was not keen on answering any questions on the subject. At the end of the conversation, as I did with all the children, I offered her services. I let her know there were shelters where she could stay, go to school, and receive funds to go back to her parents. As a part of UNICEF's program, we also offered her a stipend to take back to her village. Her eyes brightened as she accepted.

I didn't expect to meet Tsegaye again. But a few months later, Desta reported that she'd seen her while out feeding the hungry. Tsegaye had been repatriated to her village, but on her arrival, her mother remarked that she looked like she was pregnant, and due to the shame she feared would come to her family, she'd returned to Addis. Stunned by this news, I was reminded that we should be including health care services, especially sexual and reproductive health care, into the program. In hindsight, it seems insane that I was more concerned about offering housing, education, and psychosocial support to these children than health care. After all, if they were not physically well, how could they take advantage of the other services?

I found Tsegaye at a small church shelter, asleep, with eyes swollen from crying. The attendant said she was not eating, which wasn't healthy for a girl in her circumstances. Before thinking, I asked if she could come home with me. She spoke no English and my Amharic ended with greetings, but as she settled into a warm bed in my house, she accepted a warm plate of injera and wot. The next day, we went to an obstetrician, who inquired about the father of the child, which elicited no response. We later learned that the father is most likely the “kind” man who periodically offered her a warm room in which to sleep, food to eat, money, all in return for allowing him liberties with her body, an arrangement she did not see as prostitution. There were a couple more such opportunities with older men but none of them as frequent. There were also other times when she was attacked and raped by peers.

Desta suggested that Tsegaye should be tested for HIV, as she was seeing an upswing in cases among the street children. When Tsegaye returned from the doctor with the results, I saw in her eyes that it was not good news. With her permission, I spoke to the doctor, who said he had explained to her that while she was HIV positive, it was still possible for her to have a healthy baby. But somehow, Tsegaye heard something very different. The next morning, she left without my knowledge. After two days of being worried sick, Desta reported that Tsegaye was at a convent outside the city where she was undergoing a fasting protocol that many believed cured HIV. I later found out that she and her baby died after 12 days without food.

I wonder, to this day, if things would have been different if Tsegaye had received comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care that included the options to choose adoption or an abortion. This was five years before the Ethiopian laws were expanded from allowing abortion only in the case of saving the mother's life to permitting the procedure in the case of rape, incest, or fetal impairment. Adoption, although common and still legal at that time for foreigners, was still seen as a service for those orphaned, not a plan for an able‐bodied young mother. Both adoption and abortion was seen through a highly religious and cultural lens, making it less likely for young women in Tsegaye's circumstances to consider such options.

From Desta, I learned how important it is to include those most affected in the decisions we make about programs aimed toward them. Although Desta, an Ethiopian herself, was intimately involved in the design of the work and I benefited greatly from her insights, there was no participation from the youth working and living on the streets themselves. We interviewed them, but we didn't include them when determining what kinds of services and support to offer them. They were treated only as recipients. After the time I spent with Tsegaye, I came to realize that she and many others like her would have made excellent movement creators. Desta knew this.

Desta is an everyday feminist.

Local Knowledge Produces Local Impact

The fourth major lesson that listening to and observing everyday feminists in action across the globe for more than three decades taught me is the closer, the better.

In developing a program for a particular community, it is vitally important to have input from those who are most affected by the problem the program seeks to address and who will be directly affected by it. That may seem obvious, but too often, in my career, I've seen this lesson ignored.

I, too, have been guilty of it. I'd built an amazing strategy from the headquarters of power and, once I had a very pretty document, send it to the community for review. Often, there was a nice budget attached to the plan as well. The community, understanding that the resources were contingent on signing off on a plan that was not their own, would usually acquiesce and accept both the plan and the resources. Usually these resources would be tied to a contract or grant to a large company or NGO that would implement the plan and provide some small portion of the budget to “help” the community meet the project's objectives and collect the data for metrics also set out in the plan. The plan, the objectives, the metrics—none of it may have been what the community would have come up with themselves.

This approach is like fitting a square peg in a round hole.

Children Living and Working on the Streets

There is perhaps no issue I've seen more affected by this dynamic than homelessness—or, in the case of my time in Addis Ababa, the particular plight of children living and working on the streets.

The phenomenon of street children like Tsegaye is a complex social emergency that affects cities all over the globe. Though it is difficult to quantify the exact number of children living on the streets, UNICEF estimates a population of nearly 120–150 million children between 6 and 24 years of age.² According to a report commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council, there are numerous factors that contribute to the problem³—from drug use, migration, and social displacement in more wealthy nations to extreme poverty, an unregulated process of urbanization, and mass exodus due to famine, war, and drought in developing countries.

In 1983, the Inter‐NGO program on street children and youth defined it as any girl or boy who has not reached adulthood, for whom the street (in the widest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.) has become his or her habitual abode and/or source of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, directed, and supervised by responsible adults.⁴ Although the definition of what constitutes an inter‐NGO program has been determined by the UN, in Addis Ababa the term has a great deal of stigma associated with it. These children are often viewed by mainstream society as a threat and a source of criminal behavior.

After many years working on interventions for these children at community, national, regional, and international levels, I believe that the programs that worked best were those in which the children were known by those building the solution. I don't mean that the parents had to be known to the organization—though that was helpful—but those working on the issue at least had to know the children's language, their neighborhood or community, and they certainly had to have a clear understanding of their culture beyond the socioeconomic circumstances that had led them to the streets. In designing the programs, those closest to the children were best equipped to determine what they needed and what success for them and their extended families looked like.

Even in Addis Ababa, there was not a one‐size‐fits‐all approach for the children working on the streets. These nuances were clear to Desta, but much of what was delivered was dictated by the regional UN office. And metrics to report and determine success were also provided by those far removed from the problem.

Whose Evidence Counts?

Thankfully, it is increasingly recognized that developing programs without the input of the communities affected is not only patronizing but ineffective. In decolonizing aid and philanthropy, it is becoming best practice instead to subscribe to and support strategies that come from the community and are already proven to work.

I am pleased to hear national and multinational corporations direct their strategies toward so‐called place‐based solutions. This approach targets economic, social, and governance efforts at the specific circumstances of a place and engages the community and a broad range of local organizations from different sectors as active participants in their development and implementation. Development circles' recent use of the term localization is also encouraging. This is also an attempt to shift toward more holistic and long‐term approaches to aid delivery, with an increased focus on the root causes of conflict and inequality.⁵

Although there is still a lot to be sorted out, especially in the humanitarian sector, we seem to be moving in the right direction. However, the monitoring and evaluation frameworks of multilaterals and some bilateral governments still frequently ask local partners to meet metrics they did not create and speak to an agenda of which they are not involved in creating. For example, say there is an everyday feminist providing services to street children. As a condition of a grant, she may be required to show that she helps a certain number of children. That she counts all of the points of entry for service provided and, in some cases, writes their name, age, address, and so forth on a report for the donor. I have even seen requirements that the children's parents themselves sign a form accepting that their street children receive services.

Such demands are vestiges of a very colonial approach and should be considered as such. They are unrealistic, unfair, and impede the work of the everyday feminist—who is, by the way, busy reaching these children, with or without our support. Impact indicators and metrics for reports to donors must reflect the local circumstances if they are to create transformative social impact. The evidence sought and characterized in theory in the halls of Oxford or McKinsey are great suggestions. They cannot, however, reflect the reality of metrics of success set by everyday feminists in practice.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Hewan Areaya and the Menstrual Health Movement

Years after my time in Ethiopia, I became aware of an everyday feminist named Hewan Areaya working on the menstrual health movement in the country. The menstrual equity movement may seem foreign to men, but for women, periods are a fact of life. It sometimes comes as a surprise that many societies limit the participation of women, girls, and some transgender and nonbinary folks in education, work, and other social functions because of their menstruation. In parts of Africa and Asia, girls are either not allowed to attend school during their period or cannot do so because they lack access to sanitary products. This means they likely miss up to five days a month or more, decreasing their likelihood of graduation and increasing their likelihood of dropping out altogether.

The movement to challenge these limitations is now in the popular stage, according to Global Fund for Women's MCAT. Countries across the globe are beginning to provide free products for people with periods through public health programs. Scotland is the first country to provide sanitary pads free outside of the school or health facility to reduce what is commonly called period poverty. In Australia, the products are distributed through charities. There are campaigns in other countries to make them more widely accessible. This is excellent news for the everyday feminists who have been working on this issue for decades. These issues are experienced at a local level and must be addressed in the same way.

Next, let's explore more of Hewan's story and leadership.

In Her Words: Hewan Areaya

Hewan is a young feminist activist from Addis Ababa. She is a cofounder of Siiqqee Scholars, an initiative that aims at empowering young girls through education. Siiqqee Scholars have several projects including mentorship for female high school and university students, sanitary pad donation campaign, safe space platforms, and discussion forums. As I talked to her about her work, I reflected on my experience with Tsegaye and Desta's guidance and the importance of developing programs to address local challenges with the aid of an everyday feminist leading on the ground.

Who Is This Everyday Feminist?   I grew up in Ethiopia where being a young girl comes with a price. From the streets to the school, from the public transportation to religious places, nowhere is safe for young girls and women. At a very young age, I realized that there was something wrong with the culture that normalized violence against women and young girls. I didn't have the right words to articulate it, but I knew that the way I was treated in society wasn't okay. Joining one of the most prestigious law schools in the country exposed me to different social justice issues such as human rights, discrimination, and gender inequality. My activism started when I joined a small student‐led initiative that aims at creating continuous discussions on issues of gender‐based violence and empowering women. Through the initiative, we organized weekly activism called table day, where tables were set up in different parts of the campus to start conversations about gender issues and challenge harmful gender norms.

In 2017, I was selected to participate in the Mandela Washington fellowship for young African leaders, a program that aims at strengthening young Africans' leadership skills and experience[ing] personal growth through participation in academic sessions, workshops, site visits, community services, and networking.

What Is Her Movement Work?   At the end of the fellowship, another participant, who is also an “everyday feminist” and my dear friend, and I were talking about how we can use the skills and experience we gained from the fellowship to give back to our community. Siiqqee Scholars were the product of that conversation. Upon our return in September 2017, we cofounded Siiqqee Scholars. The name Siiqqee comes from an Indigenous institution that I hold close to my heart. There are many African values, cultures, and institutions that recognize the fundamental role women play and recognize them for it. One example is the Siiqqee institution, an Indigenous institution based in Ethiopia that shows a strong culture of support and solidarity between women in the challenges they face. Siiqqee Scholars was founded with the vision of building up on positive values to tackle the peculiar challenges faced by Ethiopian girls and young women.

One of the programs that we run in Siiqqee is a safe space platform. It was important for me and my team to create “girls‐only” events where female students come together to discuss issues that matter to them without fear of judgment or intimidation. On these safe space platforms, young girls talk about relationships, sexual rights and human rights issues, sexual harassment, leadership, education, etc. Our mentorship program is also an extension of the safe space platform. We recruit mentors who can support female high school and university students in fostering their self‐esteem, overcoming obstacles, and achieving goals.

As Siiqqee Scholars grows and expands, we started engaging in developing resources to build the capacity of young girls and women to know their rights. In all Siiqqee Scholars projects, we ensure the inclusion of women and girls with disabilities and their unique experiences.

Solidarity and intersectional activism are our guiding principles. We firmly believe that solidarity is a powerful tool to fight oppression. We also believe that our movement will not represent women without intersectional activism. We want to ensure that our movement includes the experiences of more marginalized women such as women with disabilities and women living in rural parts of the country. We aim to create an inclusive space where women from different walks of life feel they belong.

What Impact Is She Making?   Through Siiqqee Scholars, we were able to create a safe space for young girls to come together and support each other in different aspects of their lives. We also helped hundreds of female students to stay at school by providing sanitary materials. Our mentorship and training have also helped several young girls to know their rights, have self‐esteem, and aspire to become more than their circumstances seem to allow.

When strong‐willed and determined women come together, there is nothing they can't accomplish, no system they can't shake. Our initiative is successful because of the women who couldn't be silent in front of injustice. We are here because of the young women who are willing to give their all even when we have very limited resources.

The annual project we implement is our sanitary pad collection campaign. The high cost and inaccessibility of sanitary pads have been one of the major reasons that girls and young women miss school for four to seven days every month, directly affecting their standing in their classes. To mitigate this challenge, we run an annual campaign, a campaign run in collaboration with different organizations to ensure the provision of free sanitary pads for female students in universities and selected high schools. In the years 2017–2020, Siiqqee Scholars has provided a yearlong supply of sanitary pads which will help 700 female students. Our goal is to see an Ethiopia that has a policy addressing the provision of sanitary pads, for free and/or very minimum cost. We use different platforms to advocate for policy change in period justice.

Our movement started with four good‐willed volunteers who used to go from dorm to dorm every week to mobilize female students to gather in a conference room and start conversations that matter to them. We started with no resources and funding, sometimes paying for events from our own pockets. The involvement of many other young girls helped our movement to grow and thrive. We started partnering with other feminist initiatives to organize events and implemented social media activism strategies, which helped us in terms of increasing our visibility and attracting donors. That helped us to expand our activities and reach more women and young girls.

Why Is It Important to Be Close to Those Affected by the Issues You Work On?   We are part of the affected community, which is why we feel so strongly about standing up for our rights and the rights of other women and young girls in the community. We understand intimately that women with many layers of identities experience significantly more difficulties due to their multiple layers of identities. Therefore, we firmly believe in working closely with women with disabilities, women from rural areas, women in conflict zones, etc., to better ensure their experiences are included in all areas of our work. We acknowledge that the best solution can only come when the voice of the most affected population is heard.

COVID had a disproportionate impact on many feminist movements, including ours. We were not able to execute most of our projects due to health concerns and funding problems. After almost two years of being dormant, our movement is only now reviving and developing new projects. I can only imagine what that looks like for organizations managed from afar.

Most of our members are young women in college and recent graduates. Senior members are responsible for mentoring newcomers and passing the leadership role on to them. Mentorship is an integral part of our movements. We work in teams; everyone gets to air their opinion before any decision is made, and nobody has veto power at Siiqqee Scholars. We want our members to own Siiqqee Scholars.

In ten years' time, our goal is to make Siiqqee Scholars a national women's empowerment organization that encompasses a wide range of activities. We hope to carry out social activism, mentorship, and legal research for policy advocacy through the organization. By partnering with other organizations, including schools, media, and other associations, we want to spread awareness in a greater way. We also want to provide the means for young girls in the rural part of Ethiopia to receive mentorship from accomplished women they can look up to. Additionally, by conducting legal research, we want to lobby the government to change laws and policies that will greatly impact women. We hope to advocate and lobby the government of Ethiopia to change laws that legalize marital rape and turn blind eyes to gender‐based violence and harassment.

I understand how it can feel to have a great idea and want to share it with developing communities worldwide. For years, I was responsible for coming up with innovative solutions that I could tailor to the countries where I managed development portfolios. I would even hire the brightest minds to come up with solutions that I excitedly shared with stakeholders in multiple day‐long or sometimes week‐long meetings to unveil strategies that took months to create. Most often, the feedback I would receive from the communities was cordial and productive. I would use their comments to tweak the strategy we developed for them and hand it back to them with a hard‐fought budget from headquarters. And these community organizations would work tirelessly to achieve the metrics we developed for them.

That ship has sailed.

The progression from outside‐created policy to involving locale actors in developing program needs really is a success story of evolution, not one we should mourn. If we think about the history of development assistance, we see numerous critiques, and rightly so: resource flows, host country contributions, administrative costs, finance mechanisms (loans, grants, etc.), and other analyses of development impact. And from these conversations, we can all agree that both the quantity and quality of organizational capacity in countries and communities have significantly risen since the 1960s.

As we have heard from Hewan about the Siiqqee Scholars, and from so many other everyday feminists highlighted in this book, it is essential that a local lead champion or organization spearhead and own the process of determining strategic direction and priorities to ensure the most impact.

Notes

1. US Department of Labor, “Child Labor and Forced Labor Reports” (2021). https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/Ethiopia.

2. “UNICEF Global,” UNICEF Ethiopia. Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.unicef.org/ethiopia/.

3. UN Resolution (New York: United Nations, 2011), 1–6. Human Rights Council Sixteenth session Agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development Resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council* 16/12 Rights of the child: a holistic approach to the protection and promotion of the rights of children working and/or living on the street. 46th meeting 24 March 2011.

4. “Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations for Indigenous Peoples,” United Nations. Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/about-us.html.

5. “Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations for Indigenous Peoples.”

8
Remember the Past … to Craft the Future

Spotlight: Miriam Miranda and Indigenous Rights Movement

Issue: Culture Survival

I first met Djenebou, the Jelisimo, at a dinner party shortly after arriving in Bamako, Mali. She was tall and well shaped, neither skinny nor fat, wearing dark eyeliner and huge gold jewelry. She wore a long boubou, the classic West African robe, sewn from a single piece of cloth, which is worn by both women and men. Hers was made of a burnt orange fabric, which I learned is beaten repeatedly to produce its beautiful shine. She was quietly sitting, contemplating her performance that was about to begin.

Djenebou is a griot, a West African storyteller, singer, musician, and oral historian. Griots train to excel as orators, lyricists, and musicians. The griot keeps records of all the births, deaths, marriages, and so much more through the generations of a village or family. I had heard of griots but had never met one and, for some reason, had assumed they were only men. That night, Djenebou sang a story about birds and trees, which, though translated from Bambara into French by one of the staff, made little sense to me, as it was told in parables and poetry.

The party was being held in my honor at the home of my new USAID mission director. Since joining USAID in 2001, after a stint in Pakistan, I had worked in the mission program offices in Botswana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This was the first time I was working for an office run by a woman. She was rumored to be aggressive and hard to work with. In fact, most of the women leaders in the service had a similar reputation. But the Malians seemed to love her. And I found her organized, thoughtful, and genuinely interested in the culture and what the people there wanted.

Our mission there was to manage US foreign assistance to Mali, determining where to allocate money from US taxpayers to support the development efforts of the Malian people. I had the privilege of helping to negotiate and co‐create the country's Millennium Challenge Account, an independent US agency that works with partner countries to promote growth. And I worked with Malian colleagues to determine the extent and impact of fundamentalism in the north of the country.

A week after first meeting Djenebou, my husband and I met up with colleagues for a bite to eat, and I realized that Djenebou was the artist performing. She sang her story, while musicians played local instruments, including the ngoni (four‐ to five‐string lute), kora (harp), jembe (drum), tama (talking drum), calabash (gourd drum), bala or balafon (xylophone), and kamele ngoni. I could hear all the instruments, separately, playing harmoniously together. During a break, entranced, we invited her to sit with us.

I asked her what it meant to be a griot. She described herself as the keeper of history. She learned the history from her elders—she came from a long line of griots—and remembered it through art, music, poetry, and what in the United States would be called spoken word.

“Is it your family's history that you remember?” I asked.

“Yes, but it's not that simple,” she replied. “It is also the story of Mali, of Africa, of the human experience.”

“But how can you remember all of that without writing it down?”

“It is my work to remember and give it back to the world.”

She asked me about my family, and after I introduced her to my husband, I realized she meant my extended family. My history. I know of my great‐great‐grandparents on both sides but not much more. For the first time, I was ashamed that I did not know my history past my people being stolen from somewhere in Africa and landing on the shores of the United States and the Caribbean. I told her it was a long story. She said that she was sorry, and I could tell that she pitied me.

I met Djenebou a couple more times during my time in Mali. On a walk one day, we talked about the genocide of transatlantic slavery. She said she could feel my pain as I spoke—that my pain was very loud.

I came to learn that Djenebou's role in the community involved much more than singing at weddings and other events. As a griot, she was a therapist of sorts, sought after to hear and keep family secrets so they didn't live bottled up. She knew who was in need of help based on the stories shared with her, and she deployed support when required. The stories become part of her repertoire, offered when most appropriate. I often heard about her hosting a group of people at her home or providing food during a community or religious gathering. I realized that she was not just a griot, but an activist, using her powers for good. She moved people to act by telling their stories and offering lessons from the elders. I'm sure that she has told my story to someone. And I hope that the lesson will be “never again” to the circumstances that landed me and my people in North America.

Djenebou is an everyday feminist.

Herstory Comes Before Impact

The fifth major lesson that listening to and observing everyday feminists in action across the globe for more than three decades has taught me is acknowledge the why behind the work.

When I've met everyday feminists in my work over the years, I've usually found that each of them has a personal story that needs to be heard to fully understand why their social justice work is so important to them. And beyond each of these personal stories is a broader history that has created the environment in which these everyday feminists live and work. Too often, it's a history of exploitation, neglect, and harm that has pushed the everyday feminist and their communities to the margins. For example, it is no accident the Black people in the diaspora face such inequalities; it stems from the legacy of the North Atlantic slave trade and the decades of racial discrimination that followed. Likewise, the continued mistreatment of Indigenous communities is a direct reflection of the theft of their lands and the subsequent systems put in place to keep them relegated to second‐class status.

Achieving transformative social impact in communities with long histories of inequality and marginalization requires first recognizing their pasts. We can't help them build the futures they desire without a clear understanding of the forces that have shaped their present.

Far too many times I have entertained meetings with well‐intentioned allies who questioned why a community resorts to this or that cultural behavior, as if their conditions aren't a direct result of circumstances that have been well planned and systematically implemented by powerful actors, creating the problems that these communities must now work to undo. I remember during my first year working with UNICEF in Bamako reading the words of Francis Deng, who later became South Sudan's first ambassador to the UN:

History has stripped Africa's people of the dignity of building their nations on their own indigenous values, institutions, and heritage. The modern African state is the product of Europe, not Africa. To attempt at this late date to return to ancestral identities and resources as bases for building the modern African nation would risk the collapse of many countries. At the same time, to disregard ethnic realities would be to build on loose sand, also a high‐risk exercise. Is it possible to consolidate the framework of the modern African state while giving recognition and maximum utility to the component elements of ethnicities, cultures, and aspirations for self‐determination?¹

It was powerful then and powerful now.

Remembering our histories are not only important when it comes to understanding the problems communities currently face; they are also key to finding solutions. Part of shifting power to local communities means respecting the traditional knowledge they have.

Protecting Indigenous Knowledge Helps Us All

Everyday feminist keepers of traditional culture like Djenebou exist around the world. But for centuries, their knowledge has been threatened by the toxic impacts of genocide and colonialism.

This is especially true among the estimated 476 million Indigenous peoples across the globe.² Representing 5,000 distinct cultures, Indigenous peoples share a common history: Their right to their lands and natural resources has been frequently violated. Their ability to maintain their way of life has been threatened. And their traditional knowledge risks being lost.

During my tour in Mali, I learned about the movement to protect the rights and knowledge of Indigenous communities, as well as how to empower them to make informed decisions about the way they live and how their community develops.

The Tuareg are the smallest and maybe most marginalized ethnic group of Malians. Descended from the Berbers of North Africa, they still live in parts of the country long destroyed, like Timbuktu. Since 2012, the region has suffered from severe civil unrest, resulting in decreased tourism and other national efforts to preserve the culture. The Malian Dogon people, Indigenous to the center of the country, are known for their art, including architecture, and genius in astronomy. Before the arrival of Christianity and Islam, a large percentage of Dogon were animists who believe in the importance of a synergy between the spiritual world of gods and ancestors and the living world of plants, people, and animals. The state of Mali does not recognize the existence of Indigenous peoples on its territory, yet it adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).³ Although greatly affected by circumstances beyond the control of these communities (drought, conflict, etc.), there is great interest in Mali to preserve the history and traditions of these ancient cultures.

Thankfully, the international community increasingly recognizes the importance of protecting Indigenous cultures—from the pre‐Columbian Indigenous groups in the Americas to the Aboriginal Australians to the Tibetans in China. This work is important not only for Indigenous peoples—who are some of the most disadvantaged in the world—but for all of us.

Ensuring Language Justice in Our Movements

Protecting Indigenous knowledge includes protecting Indigenous languages. Indigenous people speak an overwhelming majority of the world's estimated 7,000 languages, many of which are endangered.⁴

According to the Communities Creating Healthy Environments, language justice is

about building and sustaining multilingual spaces in our organizations and social movements so that everyone's voice can be heard both as an individual and as part of a diversity of communities and cultures.

Valuing language justice means recognizing the social and political dimensions of language and language access, while working to dismantle language barriers, equalize power dynamics, and build strong communities for social and racial justice. The language justice approach allows agencies to engage diverse organizations, local communities, stakeholders, and victims/survivors in anti‐violence initiatives, placing everyone on equal footing through interpretation, translation, and other strategies for equal communication.⁵

Language justice is key to ensuring the success of everyday feminists. If we accept that everyday feminists working within their local communities are the force that drives social impact, then we must accept that they should not have to speak the language of predominant cultures to get movement work done. In fact, it might well be the opposite: to facilitate and support the work of the everyday feminists, we must encourage them to use the language of the communities in which they work.

With the technological tools at our disposal, prioritizing language justice is easier today than ever. It is our orientation to this issue that matters. Let's learn to embrace and love the fact that everyday feminists often don't speak our language.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Miriam Miranda and Indigenous Rights Movement

Today, the movement to protect the rights, autonomy, and knowledge of Indigenous peoples has become a popular movement, according to GFW's MCAT. According to the Indigenous Rights Movement, “Its purpose is uniting indigenous peoples from across the world to stand together to bring awareness to the issues affecting indigenous men, women, children and two spirits. Indigenous people from North, Central and South America, Oceania, Asia, Africa, and The Caribbean are a target of genocide. Many indigenous people are victims of voter suppression, divided families by walls and borders, an environmental holocaust, sex and human trafficking, and police/military brutality with little or no resources nor awareness of these injustices.”⁶

Within the broader feminist movement, there is also growing recognition of Indigenous feminism, an intersectional theory and practice of feminism that focuses on decolonization, Indigenous sovereignty, and human rights for Indigenous women and their families. Numerous feminist activists and organizations, including Shifting the Power Coalition, National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, and MADRE, work for Indigenous women's rights.

As part of the work that GFW does with feminist Indigenous rights activists, I learned of Miriam Miranda, an activist in Honduras who focuses on empowering and protecting an Afro‐Indigenous community, the Garífuna people. She is the leader of the Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH), which is a grassroots organization that works on behalf of the Garífuna people in a permanent struggle for their autonomy, as well as their collective social, economic, cultural, and territorial rights.

Next, let's explore more of Miriam's story and leadership.

In Her Words: Miriam Miranda

Who Is This Everyday Feminist?   I think it's important to start by explaining how I became an activist. I was born on the coast, in the Caribbean, in a Garifuna community, but my parents migrated to a banana plantation. There is a long history of people like my parents who moved to work in banana plantations during the 70s, 80s. So, I grew up in a banana plantation. Living in a banana plantation, where I saw so many injustices, made me question many things. I started wondering why, for example, so much territory was given to a foreign company and why we did not have access to those good lands that the Standard Fruit Company had. Why our people were in debt. Every week they only received one dollar, two dollars for their work. Throughout the week they went to the stores that the company had, and they got everything they needed. So by the end of the week, they paid them a few cents because they had already spent their pay. It was like a vicious circle: work, work, and more work.

I clearly recall that I was in high school when I connected with the [social] movements. I will never forget that there was a students' gathering organized by the Federation of Secondary Education Students. I connected with the student movement in the early 1980s in Olanchito. It was a very difficult time in the region. There was a revolutionary war both in Nicaragua and El Salvador. At that time, gatherings were considered as something very dangerous because it was immediately related to movements. So many people stopped gathering but others, like me, connected with other people and got more involved during that time. Then I moved to Tegucigalpa to work. There I joined the women's movement and then I was also involved in the student and trade union movement. And, finally, the Indigenous movement, where I have been working for more than 15 years.

[Attending university] was also a very important experience because it made me connect with the young Garifuna community in Tegucigalpa. I grew up in a banana plantation where Garifuna people worked, but it was not a Garifuna community. So I went back to my origins. I went back to the beginning. I started to appreciate my culture, my identity, and to seek better living conditions for the Garifuna people. I did not disconnect myself completely [from other social movements], but I did decide to become more involved in the work with the Indigenous community, with the Garifuna community, given that we are the most vulnerable peoples and sectors, and we bear a big burden: we work, and we fight. We are considered the bottom rung on the ladder, [those] who can be trampled on, whose human rights can be violated.

What Is Her Movement Work?   [My work is motivated by] our future generations. My children. My daughter, my son, my grandchildren, my granddaughter. We have the obligation to be responsible for future generations. There is a serious problem regarding what is happening with the planet, the climate crisis, the current health crisis—and other crises that will keep coming, and coming, and coming. I would like, for example, that my granddaughter, my grandson, could enjoy a little bit of what I am still enjoying now. I wish they could see a coral. I don't want them to find a planet that is completely full of plastic as it is now. I wish there was something that could stop this collective suicide of humanity through the destruction of the environment. I want our children and the children of our children to be able to breathe clean air. I feel that a great catastrophe is coming unless decisions are taken to radically change things. And that's not pessimism—it's reality.

What Impact Is She Having?   I believe that one of the achievements is that in recent decades OFRANEH has been coordinated by women. The Garifuna people are matrifocal, patrilineal, like the Zapotecs of Mexico. So the power of women is strong—you will see it in all the places where OFRANEH has mobilized and all the political work that OFRANEH does. For example, OFRANEH held a meeting of more than 1,500 women in a territory that belongs to the Garifuna people but has been seized by the drug traffickers. It was a space to share. There were women from 16 of the 18 departments that make up Honduras. More than 1,500 women and also about 400 boys and girls were assisted. For all women, it was a space to find ourselves as women and to recognize ourselves.

I think some issues [we focus on] are of national interest. We have been raising our voice about this every time we visit Tegucigalpa. You may find some videos where I start shouting out loud in front of the court, telling them, “Gentlemen, you are just passing by, but we are fighting for a river there, we are fighting for a territory there, but that territory feeds you. So don't pass by thinking that what we are doing is crazy, because the rural areas are essential for the provision, sustainability, and the food supply of the people who live in the urban areas.”

We need the grassroots organizations, the grassroots groups, and also collective and individual leadership. We are nothing, absolutely nothing, without the communities, without the grassroots groups. That's why we've always considered ourselves as a social movement, but people want to put you in boxes and think we are an NGO. We were one of the few organizations, or maybe the only one, that during the narco‐dictatorship kept up the fight, during those 12 years. I am convinced that this [connection to the grassroots] is what makes us strong. Power resides in the communities and many people do not understand that, so that is the point we have to work on, day after day.

Why Is It Important to Support Indigenous Movements?   Ten years from now, we would like to see progress in the compliance with the judgment delivered by the Inter‐American Court regarding the rights of Indigenous peoples, regarding the rights of the two Garifuna communities: … Punta Piedra and Triunfo de La Cruz. Two guilty verdicts were issued in 2015. Seven years have passed and the State has not fulfilled anything. So, in ten years, we want to have at least the recognition of the rights of the Garifuna people. We want to continue working to establish ancestral health care homes of the Garifuna people. At present, there are four or five established homes. This is in response to the lack of provision of primary health care from the State.

We want the State to respect the rights of the Garifuna people, to comply with judgments, to stop the criminalization of the advocates of the Garifuna movement. We want peace, well‐being, no massive migration of mothers with their sons and daughters, people [who] otherwise could stay. I claim the right to stay in Honduras, to build a different Honduras. We want to live in peace, in the Garifuna communities that are not under control of organized crime and criminal groups. We want to live as we used to and, above all, we want to be healthy, to receive comprehensive health care. Those are big challenges. Some will say that they are unattainable challenges. I don't think there is anything unattainable.

The growing interest in finding hope for our planet from the multiple climate crises in the last decades means that human and climate health now rest in the survival of some Indigenous practices that we have long tossed aside. We need to restore our relationships with these practices and the people who have carried them for generations. According to a UN report,⁷ at least a quarter of the earth's land area is owned, managed, used, or occupied by Indigenous people, yet secured Indigenous lands often have lower deforestation rates than other areas. Thus, in addition to limiting their positive contributions to the climate crisis, Indigenous peoples also have strategies for adapting to climate change's negative impacts. They interpret and react to the impacts of climate change in creative ways, drawing on traditional knowledge and other technologies to find solutions that may help society at large to cope with impending changes. In the words of the former UN Secretary General Ban‐Ki Moon, “Indigenous People have centuries of old wisdom to live harmoniously with nature. We have to learn those wisdoms from them.”⁸

It is imperative that as we look to the intersectional rights guaranteed to these cultures, we use an intersectional feminist lens and provide flexible multigenerational support that protects human rights, knowledge transfer, and ultimately the feminist voices for the future. It is not necessary for funders and partners to know these communities directly. There are several women's funds, local and globally, that have long‐term relationships with Indigenous communities, including AYNI, The Indigenous Women's Fund, as well as Global Fund for Women. (See more on this in Chapter 14.) We must embrace past practices to craft futures for all.

Notes

1. F. Deng, African Dilemmas of Self‐Determination: Lessons from Sudan (Washington, DC: The Library of Congress, 2006). https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687759/.

2. “Indigenous peoples at the United Nations for Indigenous Peoples,” United Nations. Retrieved September 30, 2022, fromhttps://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/about-us.html.

3. “Welcome to the United Nations.” Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf.

4. “Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations for Indigenous Peoples,” United Nations. Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/about-us.html.

5. “Communities Creating Healthy Environments (CCHE) Language Justice.” Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://nesfp.org/sites/default/files/resources/language_justice:toolkit.pdf.

6. “Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations for Indigenous Peoples.”

7. “Secretary‐General's Message on the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples Secretary‐General,” United Nations (August 9, 2013). https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2013–08–09/secretary-generals-message-international-day-worlds-indigenous.

8. “Secretary‐General's Message on the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples Secretary‐General.”

9
If the System Is Broke, Let a Feminist Fix It—In Any Sector

Spotlight: Leslye Obiora and Political Empowerment Movement

Issue: Political Empowerment

She struck me as both royal and homey all at once. As she walked into the hotel restaurant in Abuja, I studied her head wrap, which was nothing short of a piece of art. Her skirt flowed behind her in silver with red accents that made my Anne Klein black skirt suit seem dreary and inappropriate. She smelled rich, clearly someone with access to the best perfumes and soaps. When she reached the table, she embraced me, although we had never met before and this meeting was a bit impromptu.

Patra was the wife of one of the state governors in Nigeria. After two years working in Bamako, I'd recently taken a post there as the program director and, shortly after arriving, was thrust into the acting mission director position, responsible for the entire assistance budget from the US Congress to Nigeria. I had reached out to Patra for a meeting, because this was not my first rodeo and I'd learned that connecting with the powerful women of the host country early in my tenure was the quickest path to success. They could provide important knowledge and open far more doors than any diplomat or expatriate ever could.

Patra was trying to formalize the governors' wives as an association and that evening had gathered eight of them (out of 36 states in the country) to meet with me to discuss the agenda of USAID in Nigeria.

Patra told me her story: She came from a family of means, who had built their wealth in the oil sector, which accounts for over 90% of exports in the country, providing her significant connections to the government and military. After studying and living in Switzerland, the UK, and the United States, she'd returned to Nigeria after meeting her current husband. She confessed that early in his career, she had not thought much about her role in politics. But she became increasingly aware of the impact greed and corruption was having on Nigeria's growth. She became sad as she talked about teaching herself the history of her own country, good and bad things that had never been mentioned—in her school, in her church, in her community. Devastated by the loss and lingering trauma of colonialism, tribalism, and transatlantic slavery, she was committed to addressing current challenges facing her nation with the patient love of a mother.

Over dinner, the “wives” provided a simplified explanation of the challenges in particular regions of the country. They talked about kidnappings in the Delta region, the growing criminal gangs responsible for car jackings, organized robberies, and so much more. But they also spoke about exciting opportunities in the health and education sectors. They discussed infrastructure, growing national debt, and the debate on a third term for President Obasanjo. Although I didn't meet with most of them again, over the next three years I spent in the country, Patra would continue to provide valuable guidance.

In my role in the USAID mission in Abuja, I was responsible for the agency's efforts to build partnerships with multinational corporations that work in Nigeria to leverage USAID programs and funds. These companies were eager to partner with the US development agenda in the country, as they were suffering from terrible community relationships and generally bad press. In particular, the oil and gas companies, extracting natural resources from the Delta region of the country, were blamed for serious environmental, political, and socioeconomic challenges borne by the host communities. There had been significant clashes over pollution and other environmental degradation, lack of resource sharing, and the disempowerment of traditional leadership structures, resulting in strikes, damage and theft to company property, hostage situations, and general discontent.

I accepted the challenge to work on leveraging these partnerships into something that worked for the communities. We worked on deals with Coca‐Cola to provide clean water to the communities in which they had bottling facilities, including Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and the River states. We combined resources with the oil and gas companies to provide start‐up funding for communities in the Niger Delta to develop enterprises including fisheries, small‐scale agriculture, as well as larger industries to engage the local supply chain of the industry. These projects were all well received by the Nigerian government and certainly the communities that received direct support.

But it still felt very top‐down to me. Thankfully, Patra pointed me toward Cross River, where there were innovative projects that were already under way and packaged nicely for the USG to support and leverage additional support from corporations. These include developing “Nollywood” into an internationally renowned film industry, attracting national and international tourists to small game parks and natural baths, as well as beginning negotiations with large multinationals like Walmart to invest in the country. USAID provided some support to these endeavors as requested. We did not drive these developments, which currently have been quite successful.

I became increasingly dumbfounded about why we were creating new projects at USAID when clearly there were plans already under way that could use investment. This is when I began to understand the global development‐industrial complex, and how development assistance is often used more as a tool for wealthy nations and less as a pathway to growth for the host nations. The donor nation's agenda, usually political and economic, would often supersede service to the communities and certainly was not set up to attain the goals set out by the national governments receiving such aid.

One of my largest challenges with the Nigerian government and local implementing partners was the use of PEPFAR, the US government's groundbreaking program to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa. The late Professor Babatunde Osotimehin, the head of the Nigerian government's coordinating body on tackling the disease, once asked bluntly why he couldn't use the money to buy contraceptives for HIV‐positive women, who under the circumstances were worried about getting pregnant. I had to explain (myself not convinced) that the US government did not support using these funds for that purpose. The Republican administration considered it to be a slippery slope from contraception to abortion. And the political agenda of the party would not allow any nuance in the programming, despite the needs of women in Nigeria and so many other countries.

Despite this, I felt rewarded when I managed to navigate the complexity of prioritizing diplomatic agendas and nonetheless met the needs of affected communities. I could not have done this without the help of Patra, who introduced me to a few government leaders who would not back down to US and other Western interests in the country. They insisted that they be the ones to chart the course for their country's development, not the head of an international NGO or a desk officer based in DC.

Less than a few months after my arrival in Abuja, the deputy mission director appointed me to fill in for her while taking a much‐deserved leave, and, a month later, I was designated the interim mission director. I was a young, Black woman quickly catapulted to a position of authority, and I could tell that this was hard to swallow for those more senior than me in age and experience. I compensated by emulating the leadership I had known so far. I was firm, all business, careful not to let on my own fears of being thrust into such a large role. I held myself to standards of the patriarchy: perfectionism, urgency, constant growth, and dominance among peers. But spending time with Patra and other women leaders in the country helped train my muscles in a different type of leadership style.

Patra is an everyday feminist.

Broken Systems Need Everyday Feminists

In Nigeria, you're more likely to find an everyday feminist like Patra married to a power broker than recognized as a leader in her own right. And this led me to the sixth major lesson that listening to and observing everyday feminists in action across the globe for more than three decades has taught me: feminist leadership is uniquely indispensable.

According to the World Economic Forum's annual “Global the Gender Gap” report, Nigeria ranked 123 out of 145 countries in 2022, making it one of the worst places to be a woman in the world.¹ Women in the country experience harmful cultural practices, like female genital mutilation, poverty, and misogynistic laws.² Nigeria has the fourth highest maternal mortality rate³ and the highest number of out‐of‐school girls in the world.⁴

Nigerian women also face political exclusion. According to the Gender Social Norms Index, eight out of ten women and nine out of ten men in Nigeria believe that men make better leaders than women do, and or that it is not essential for women to have the same rights as men.⁵ This bias means that women are marginalized from fully participating in the highest decision‐making positions. The country has one of Africa's lowest rates of female parliamentary representation, globally ranking 180 of 193 countries.⁶ After the elections in 2019, 5.8% of elected legislators for the House of Representatives and 7.3% legislators for the Senate were women.⁷

But, according to Akindare Okunola, a popular writer for Global Citizen, “a new class of activists and women's right advocates are emerging to take on the Nigerian establishment and its historical suppression of women and push for increased representation for women.”⁸ They include everyday feminists like Hafsat Abiola Costello, president of Women in Africa, who was the first female campaign manager for a major presidential candidate and was herself poised to become vice president had her candidate been successful. And Bisi Adeleye‐Fayemi, founder of the African Women's Development Fund, who has blazed trails for everyday feminists, providing training and support for their organizations and movements.

Women Remain Underrepresented in Politics

While Nigerian women are particularly marginalized in politics, women worldwide are still underrepresented in seats of governmental power. Although data from UN Women shows all‐time highs in 2021 for the number of countries with women heads of state or heads of government, as well as for the global share of women ministers, widespread gender inequalities persist: progression in women holding ministerial portfolios has slowed, with just a small increase from 21.3% in 2020 to 21.9% in 2021; the number of countries with no women in government has increased; and only 25.5% of national parliamentarians are women, compared to 24.9% the year before. In January 2021, no women served in the governments of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Brunei Darussalam, D.P.R. Korea, Papua New Guinea, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Viet Nam, and Yemen.⁹

In 2011, the UN General Assembly resolution on women's political participation noted, “Women in every part of the world continue to be largely marginalized from the political sphere, often as a result of discriminatory laws, practices, attitudes and gender stereotypes, low levels of education, lack of access to health care and the disproportionate effect of poverty on women.”¹⁰

But, as indicated in Chapter 1, everyday feminists don't always end up in political office, even if they should. They are more often the champions pressing elected officials for change. It is this advocate role that we look at next.

Advocacy Is Not a Bad Word

We need everyday feminists both as advocates and as politicians. There are strict distinctions in the US tax code to regulate organizations' participation in the political process. These laws make sense, ensuring that nonprofits, especially those providing services, don't discriminate against those with differing political views. The challenge, however, is that the organizations of everyday feminists, who are naturally concerned with changing the political environment to achieve their goals, are often overlooked for support because of their need to be overtly political and partisan about their issues.

We must remember that everyday feminists must interact with political structures to guarantee the sustainable and transformative change required for today's challenges. But they understand the difference between political activities—running for office and funding campaigns—and advocacy—rallying public support for a particular cause or policy. They are good at the latter and hence their success at social impact. I trust that we can allow them to toe the line properly and not discount them when we talk about feminist leadership in politics.

For example, Francia Marquez, Columbia's first Black vice president, is what I call an everyday feminist. Ahead of her foray into politics, she was an environmental activist centering Black, Indigenous, and rural communities. Whatever one thinks of her politics, I would hate to think that her earlier work would have received any less support because of her political aspirations.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Leslye Obiora and the Movement for Women's Political Empowerment

According to GFW MCAT, the movement to increase women's representation in politics is in the formalization stage and exists globally with its key functions carried out at the local level.

Still, there remains disturbing opposition to female politicians. Research shows that women are the most negatively affected in the digital world, and women running for public office experience a great deal more harassment and criticism online than their male counterparts. Online and offline hate and violence against women running political campaigns is only increasing, according to International Foundation for Electoral Systems and the UN.¹¹ And even women themselves often reject other women serving in the highest political positions. For example, when Hilary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016, most white women in the country voted for her opponent.¹²

During my time in Nigeria, I learned how to find everyday feminists, sometimes in the most unusual places, and more often, right beside me. That's how I came to know Minister Leslye Obiora. I was looking for an everyday feminist to speak with me about the extractive industries in Nigeria and their broken relationships with the communities in the Delta. One day, I was called to visit the minister of Mines and Steel Development. We became fast friends, and she helped me see the need for supporting Nigerian women's leadership in both political and economic issues. She speaks to the work everyday feminists are doing to fix broken systems in her country.

Let's explore the story and leadership of Leslye Obiora.

In Her Words: Leslye Obiora

During my time in Nigeria, I learned how to find everyday feminists, sometimes in the most unusual places, and more often, right beside me. That's how I came to know Minister Leslye Obiora. I was looking for an everyday feminist to speak with me about the extractive industries in Nigeria and their broken relationships with the communities in the Delta. One day, I was called to visit the Minister of Mines and Steel Development. We became fast friends, and she helped me see the need for supporting Nigerian women's leadership in both political and economic issues. She speaks to the work everyday feminists are doing to fix broken systems in her country.

Who Is This Everyday Feminist?   I was raised by a family of very strong women. Since my great‐grandmother, our family has been a matriarchy. Then my mother, who was widowed at age 38 and had nine children. She had to raise herself. So when I was in college and was exposed to feminist arguments about gender oppression, especially of African women, I couldn't relate to it, because that's not my experience. I mean, my models, who were very strong role models, were these incredible African women.

I was a member of the Nigerian National Youth Service Corps, which every graduate in Nigeria must participate in before working. I was posted to a committee that was very poor and had very basic structures and facilities. I raised money at age 20 to start a clinic for 3 million poor women, Indigenous women, and children.

After I finished my master's at Yale, I had the opportunity to go to Stanford to do my PhD. Since 1979, Nigeria had a gender equality provision in its constitution, which is the equivalent of the ERA amendment which failed to pass in the United States. For my research, I looked to see if it had been as transformative as the United States had hoped that including that passage in the US constitution would be for them. I had to do field research for my work, so I came back to Nigeria. I was telling women [about the provision] and some of them were just like, “You can have all the law, but if you don't have the structures, [it won't] impact our material realities.” These women who didn't really know about the laws had such a profound analysis of what it will take to improve their realities. That was very, very key in shaping [my work].

It was in that mindset that I started working at the World Bank. After the World Bank, I ended up starting a nonprofit called the Institute for Research on African Women and Culture (IRAWCC). Under the auspices of this institute, I ended up doing grassroots empowerment stuff with indigent women, where we would give them microcredit and use that to build their confidence and build the skill sets for civil society. I started another initiative called Stimulating Philanthropy in Nigeria.

It was through that work that the president of Nigeria got word of who I was and nominated me to the Minister of Mines and Steel Development. The president said he had confidence in my advocacy skills, and that he wanted to attract foreign direct investment. As a special entrepreneur to anchor this portfolio, I brought my sensibilities and my sensitivities to the importance of community development and how critical it was that gender empowerment was the foundation of what we were doing.

What Is Her Movement Work?   Having served in government, I became much more invested in using my position to help fight for the soul of my country with a particular focus on gender equity and empowerment. Today, what I'm trying to do is establish a STEAM Academy—Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math Academy—through the post‐secondary schooling similar to junior college or A levels in the United Kingdom to help improve this time, education, equity, and excellence. We are trying to attract the poorest of the poor girls across the country, then give them what they need to be globally competitive in the best schools in the world and to come back to Africa to join in connection with other networks of national development.

What Impact Is She Making?   A woman in Nigeria has come a very long way, since 1979, even if it's been slow. I get so fatigued by arguments that say the feminist movement is dead. The reality is, we could never have gotten where we've gotten to but for those fights, even amongst [feminists] ourselves, that made us realize how much we needed each other and helped to bridge the gaps in our understandings of each other. The feminist movement has had its learning curve. At a time it was so elitist that the people could not see themselves in it. Some women thought the emphasis on [gender] equality was misplaced, when people didn't even have food on the table. Other women said to me, “What has it got to do with the price of fish in the market?”

We've made great progress. There are still huge challenges, but that's the beauty of what we're doing. Those challenges help us figure out how we need to tune up to solve those problems. If you were to chart the progress, you'll see the fluctuations, but at the end of the day the gains far outweigh whatever the setbacks have been. Gender inequality is something that we're going to have to deal with for a very long time. As we close some areas, new iterations come up, and we keep patching them up.

How Can We Better Support Grassroots Feminist Leaders?   Grassroots movements in Nigeria—for instance, community‐based organizations—have literally held up the sky for women. But when the development agencies were intervening, those community‐based organizations did not have the credentials that the development agencies, especially the ones from the West, had come in requesting for due diligence. They were not ready, they were not registered, they did not have the kind of fiscal requirements that were needed. The community‐based organizations did not really have much of an opportunity to compete for the kinds of grants that were going to the elites. And the elites, of course, ended up funding lifestyles, and instead of providing the money to get the foot soldiers to do the work, they became gatekeepers.

At the end of the day, we realized that wasn't sustainable. We had to sit up and figure out what is it that we're not doing right. How can we optimize what we're doing? How can we build the capacity of those who have been the veterans of the struggles that we are disregarding just because it doesn't have leaders with real degrees and stuff like that?

I really think that the localization and decentralization of some of these empowerment processes and structures is very, very important. Because at the end of the day, it's [about] going to meet women where they are, seeing what works for them, not disregarding their perspective because they don't speak your language. Moving forward, I would love for us to be even more and more of a learning movement. I would love for us to be more and more of a grassroots movement.

Everyday feminists are natural leaders. In her article on Black women in philanthropy, Janelle Dixon writes, “Acts of protest and revolution have historically been powered by ordinary‐but‐extraordinary Black women … some formally educated, most not, the majority whose names aren't instantly recognizable outside of their communities or included in documented academic and historical retellings. But movements don't move without money.”¹³

Funders must seek out these leaders and support their efforts. This is not as hard as it seems, as we will discuss more in Section III. Feminist politicians need funds to run. Even in countries where the price tag is reasonable, unlike the United States, campaigns are extremely costly. Funding can make the difference between running and paying rent for many feminist activists.

In the United States, there are organizations to help feminist politicians, including Emily's List and She Should Run. Internationally, support is more difficult to find for the political campaigns of women, and restrictions on NGO funding prevent them from directly using funds for this purpose. This means that individual donors have a critical role to play. Their support cannot just help a particular candidate win an election, but it can also help increase the popularity of feminist movements. And this, I think you can get behind.

Notes

1. “Global Gender Gap Report 2022,” World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2022/.

2. “Harnessing the Power of Data for Gender‐Based Violence Prevention and Response in Nigeria: United Nations Development Programme,” UNDP (June 30, 2022). https://www.undp.org/nigeria/news/harnessing-power-data-gender-based-violence-prevention-and-response-nigeria#:~:text=The%20Nigerian%20Demographic%20and%20Health,31%25%20had%20experienced%20physical%20violence.

3. Abbie Trayler‐Smith, “The 10 Worst Countries to Be a Mother,” Concern Worldwide (May 23, 2022). https://www.concernusa.org/story/worst-countries-to-be-a-mother/#:~:text=1.,for%20every%20100%2C000%20live%20births.

4. “Countries Compared by Education > Children Out of School, Primary: Countries Compared,” NationMaster.com. Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Education/Children-out-of-school,-primary.

5. Olawale Y. Olonade, Blessing O. Oyibode, Bashiru Olalekan Idowu, Tayo O. George, Oluwakemi S. Iwelumor, Mercy I. Ozoya, Matthew E. Egharevba, and Christiana O. Adetunde, “Understanding Gender Issues in Nigeria: The Imperative for Sustainable Development,” Heliyon 7, no. 7 (2021): e07622. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844021017254.

6. Inter‐Parliamentary Union, “Women in National Parliaments” (February 1, 2019). http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm.

7. C. Blazina and D. DeSilver, “A Record Number of Women Are Serving in the 117th Congress,” Pew Research Center (January 15, 2021). https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/15/a-record-number-of-women-are-serving-in-the-117th-congress/.

8. “Advancing Women in Positions of Power to Enhance Gender Equity,” Giving Compass (May 20, 2022). https://givingcompass.org/article/advancing-women-in-positions-of-power-to-enhance-gender-equity.

9. “Facts and Figures: Women's Leadership and Political Participation,” UN Women. Retrieved January 2022 from https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-figures.

10. “UN Resolution on Women's Political Participation,” UN Women. Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.minaslist.org/documents/un-resolution-on-womens-political-participation#:~:text=The%20resolution%20calls%20on%20UN,political%20participation%20at%20all%20levels%2C.

11. “Violence Against Women in Elections,” The International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.ifes.org/programs-initiatives/violence-against-women-elections.

12. “An Examination of the 2016 Electorate, Based on Validated Voters,” Pew Research Center (August 9, 2018). https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-.

13. Janelle H. Dixon, “How Black Women Have Powered Philanthropy Throughout History.” Shondaland (April 25, 2022). https://www.shondaland.com/act/a39797732/how-black-women-have-powered-philanthropy-throughout-history/.

10
Quality Partnership Is a Thing: Take Real and Unique Steps Together

Spotlight: Loretta Ross and Reproductive Justice Movement

Issue: Bodily Autonomy

On a hot August day in 2014, I sat in my Manhattan office reading the news with my morning tea, when I saw an article in the reproductive health news site Rewire entitled “Reproductive Justice and ‘Choice’: An Open Letter to Planned Parenthood.”¹ Signed by dozens of organizations and activists, the letter was penned by Monica Simpson, the executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, whom I had met just months earlier, after asking her to join me at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women convening.

The letter was sparked by a recent article in the New York Times about how reproductive rights groups were moving beyond the “pro‐choice” narrative.² In explaining this shift, mainstream groups like Planned Parenthood hadn't credited “the long‐term work of scores of reproductive justice organizations, activists, and researchers that have challenged the ‘pro‐choice’ label for 20 years,” the letter charged. “This is not only disheartening but, intentionally or not, continues the co‐optation and erasure of the tremendously hard work done by Indigenous women and women of color (WOC) for decades.”

The term reproductive justice (RJ) was coined in 1994 by a group of Black women at a Chicago conference who felt the mainstream pro‐choice movement's focus on the legal right to choose abortion didn't fully speak to the issues in their communities. Rooted in a human rights framework, the concept of reproductive justice encompasses the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent a child in a safe and healthy environment. The framework challenges the rhetoric of individual choice in the traditional pro‐choice narrative and highlights how reproductive choices are often constrained by structural factors such as race, class, immigration status, sexual orientation, and more.

“Over the past 20 years,” Simpson wrote, “RJ activists have changed the trajectory of the pro‐choice movement and helped to inform and expand the analysis of reproductive issues in ways that are more inclusive of the lived experience of all marginalized communities.”³ And now that mainstream pro‐choice organizations like Planned Parenthood were increasingly embracing a reproductive justice lens, they weren't adequately acknowledging the women of color leaders who had worked to develop this innovative and intersectional framework.

Monica is an everyday feminist.

At the time I had been executive director of Planned Parenthood Global (PPG) for three years. Just before taking this role, I was evacuated from Cairo during the Arab Spring, retiring after 10 years in the US Foreign Service. I knew I would not return to Egypt with the US government. There were too many signs. My son had asked that wherever we move next, we stay there through his high school years. After moving every 2 to 3 years for the last 20 years, he didn't want to move again. And probably, most importantly, my new boss, who had recently arrived from Afghanistan, was toxic and did not appreciate or respect my role in the mission. He shouted at people in meetings, and he did not listen to dissenting views. I was partial to the former director, who had three decades of technical skills, evolved people skills, and was not afraid to roll up her sleeves for the cause. I told her I wanted to work for an NGO. I'd had enough of navigating the politics of the foreign aid world and wanted to be more of an advocate and activist. Maybe I could even use more of my law background.

At Planned Parenthood, I worked closely with local partners in Africa and Latin America to ensure access to reproductive health services for women and young people. Every country had a unique set of champions and organizations working on women's health using innovative approaches that addressed the specific social, economic, and cultural contexts in which they lived. In Senegal, Guatemala, Sudan, Mexico, Uganda, Ecuador, Kenya, Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, to name a few, we developed one of the first youth peer provider programs, where young people provided counseling, referrals, and contraception to their peers from school and broader community. We offered contraceptive services in local businesses like hair salons, a model I first encountered in Nairobi two decades earlier (see the Introduction). PPG was also a pioneer of the “miso‐only” protocol for a medication abortion and conducted research for countries that did not have access to the preferred protocols for safe abortion services.

I spent an enormous amount of time in Miami, where the regional office for Latin America was based. After a career spent mostly in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East up until then, I was thirsty to learn more about the region. Our programs in Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Mexico were among the most innovative in the field thanks to Dee Redwine, the regional director, a woman of great talent and commitment. During our many visits to these countries, I watched as women advocates created a way where there was none. There, I met midwives, mostly unpaid, who saved more lives than any surgeon could possibly take credit for. I visited the Afro‐Caribbean and Indigenous populations in the four countries and met amazing advocates such as Fundaeco in Guatemala, an organization pioneering work at the intersection of reproductive health and environmental protection. In Peru, Promsex, another PPG partner, led by everyday feminist Susana Chavez, worked on internationally renowned campaigns Ni Una Menos and Let Her Decide, as well as taking cases to the international court on behalf of young girls denied their bodily autonomy.

While I worked on global rather than domestic programs, I still had the privilege to partner with US‐backed organizations, such as Dázon Dixon Diallo's Sister Love, a leading reproductive justice organization based in Atlanta and Johannesburg. Diallo expanded the concept of south‐to‐south partnership, a term that captures a historically used reference by policy makers and academics to describe the exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge between developing countries, also known as countries of the Global South, to include states in the US South, experiencing similar development challenges. Dázon also signed the open letter to Planned Parenthood.

Susana and Dázon are everyday feminists.

Being a Good Partner Matters

The seventh major lesson that listening to and observing everyday feminists in action across the globe for more than three decades has taught me is to learn how to be a good partner.

The open letter resonated with me for so many reasons. The reproductive justice framework was essentially the working platform for our international work at Planned Parenthood. Almost all the everyday feminists we partnered with in Africa and Latin America were much more comfortable with the intersectional nature of the framework than that of a siloed safe abortion reference for the communities where they lived and worked. Yet, we never really gave credit to the pioneers of this work. I was emboldened by the letter and almost wished I could high‐five the everyday feminists who signed it. Reading it, I recalled the many times in my career when I'd suggested an idea, only to hear it restated by a white male colleague and implemented without acknowledging me at all.

Planned Parenthood swiftly responded to the letter and accurately acknowledged the oversight, giving me comfort that I was working with the right organization. The open letter was the topic of our senior leadership meeting for many days thereafter. It didn't come without many tears shed by members of the staff. It also started a long and difficult, and maybe overdue, process for the organization to come to terms with its past racial legacy, including lingering questions about the eugenicist beliefs of its founder Margaret Sanger. Planned Parenthood also held face‐to‐face conversations with representatives from RJ groups, listening to their perspectives and thoughts on how PP could better support their work. I'd like to think that the letter, the response, and subsequent actions made PP and PPG better organizations with special, closer ties to the RJ community.

Everyday Feminists Succeed and Make Social Impact Through Good Partnerships

This episode within the pro‐choice movement is a lesson in the importance of good partnerships between different organizations within a social movement.

As funders, we must carefully look for these types of partnerships, particularly in the social movement work of everyday feminists. It starts by looking at the diversity of organizations doing the work. There are often larger organizations that are well funded and led by members of more privileged communities. And if the partnerships are thriving, then you also find medium and small organizations that are often run by more traditionally marginalized leaders. In a good partnership, there are participatory opportunities to allocate and share funding—if not by the funding organization, then among the organizations themselves in an open discussion on where resources should be allocated. In good partnerships, larger organizations will also often directly fund smaller ones to maintain a balance of power that drives the success of the movements and appropriately credits all the participants.

It is not enough that movement members show up at the same events and sign onto advocacy letters together. Partnerships that benefit the everyday feminist must take the time to hear from each other and lift each other's independent missions to benefit the whole. After years of managing cooperatives, strategic partnerships, and now feminist movements, I know that the ups and downs, ins and outs, of building lasting relationships with partners matters. The quality of these partnerships is built less on funding and more on the time spent together on the front lines. True partnerships are rooted in the challenges they overcome and the ability to stay together for the cause, despite apparent and not‐so‐apparent differences among the partners.

I've witnessed both good and bad partnerships over the years. For example, as I discussed in Chapter 2, I saw the results the fragmentation of the feminist movements in Nicaragua and Peru had on the delay in achieving successes that were imminent in these countries.

One effective partnership I've been involved in recently is She Decides. For the last five years, this global intergenerational partnership among funders, governments, and activists has been standing up for the right for all women and girls to decide what to do with their body, life, and future. The partnership was created after the election of Donald Trump and his immediate signing of the Global Gag Rule, reinstating restrictions on organizations receiving assistance funds from the USG. The partnership stands up jointly for bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights in a challenging world. Leveraging strong political leadership and joint coordinated efforts across regions, sectors, and actors, it encourages broad recognition of rights that are increasingly at risk around the world in the context of COVID‐19, increased backlash to gender equality, a shrinking civic and democratic space, and decreasing financial and political support for reproductive rights at the national and global levels. And it provides partners with an opportunity to connect with others to renew inspiration, strategize and build smart partnerships, and to strengthen global movements. The partnership respects the autonomy of each member and what they bring to the table and never dictates an approach or strategy, but rather develops agendas and next steps together.

It is imperative that funders support the diversity within social movements and encourage partnerships. When it starts to feel like movement partners are competing or falling into disarray, this is often the time when we can be most useful as the silent partner at the table.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Loretta Ross and the Reproductive Justice Movement

As the open letter pointed out, the reproductive justice movement has not gotten as much recognition as some of the more single‐issue movements around abortion rights, gender equality, LBGTQI rights, and more. Yet, since it was created in 1994, the concept has propelled a growing movement of women of color activists, as well as influenced more mainstream pro‐choice organizations. According to the GFW MCAT, the RJ movement is now a popular movement.

Reproductive justice connects with local feminist groups worldwide and is taught as a human rights framework in Ivy league schools throughout the US. At Columbia University, I teach the course “RJ Movements: Black Bodies in a Patriarchal Society,” a popular course for burgeoning public health students interested in putting marginalized communities at the center of their empirical analysis. There is a growing use of the term reproductive justice by pro‐choice politicians, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vice President Kamala Harris.⁴ The latest International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) +20 report shifts its language on reproductive rights to include justice.⁵ As a member of the high‐level commission that wrote the report, I can tell you that the deliberation to include this tenet was quickly adopted and celebrated.

Popular reproductive justice organizations include the Black Women's Health Imperative, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Forward Together, and many more. They help to inform and expand the analysis of reproductive issues in ways that are more inclusive of the lived experience of all marginalized communities that contribute significantly to major organizing and political victories. They are the pioneers of work that centers on women's lives more generally, as well as staunch advocates of abortion rights, environmental rights, immigration rights, and other intersectional issues for women.

Loretta J. Ross is an African American academic, feminist, and activist who advocates for reproductive justice, especially among women of color. As an activist, Ross has written on reproductive justice activism and the history of African American women.

Let's now explore Loretta's story and leadership.

In Her Words: Loretta Ross

A decade after joining Planned Parenthood, I serendipitously ran into a member of the delegation of Black women that I joined at the 4th Women's Conference in Beijing back in 1995: Loretta Ross. I remember being awed by her words, her boldness, and her ability to articulate how human rights apply to Black women the same as everyone else. As a Black American, I knew her voice was revolutionary and powerful.

Ross was one of the original groups of Black women who coined the term reproductive justice and cofounded SisterSong in 1997. In the years since, Loretta has continued to lead the RJ movement. She is a renowned professor at Smith College, teaching such courses as “White Supremacy,” and a sought‐after expert in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In recent years, she has started a public conversation on the “calling out” and “calling in” culture as it applies to transformative human rights organizations. She has partnered with many organizations, academic institutions, and media outlets.

Who Is This Everyday Feminist?   I think I could only answer that question by saying the movement was in me before I was in the movement. I became pregnant through incest at age 14. And at age 15, I had that baby. Quite naturally, that is one of the worst ways to become a mother. And then, seven years later, I was sterilized by the Dalkon Shield [IUD]. I was 23. So long before I was conscious of reproductive oppression, it was happening to me. And the intersection of sexual violence and reproductive oppression kept contouring my life. But it wasn't until the sterilization and my outrage at that, that I began to seek out and find explanations for what continued to happen to me. And I was lucky enough to start volunteering and then working at the DC Rape Crisis Center, which was founded in 1972. I came in ’78 and that's where I learned the vocabulary to attach to and explain my experiences. So that's when I can say that I came to the understanding that grew into reproductive justice, but I'm convinced that my participation in the defining of reproductive justice was based on what I'd been through.

The greatest force that I encountered in the movement was the support and mentoring by older Black women who were around me. I came from San Antonio, Texas, went to school at Howard University in 1970, in Washington, DC. And DC has always been a city where it's hard to not be conscious, not know what's going on in the world, because some random cab driver will give you a whole elegy on it. So, it's very hard not to pay attention to world affairs and even local community affairs in Washington. But it was those older Black women [whom] I kept encountering who didn't give up on me. Because I thought I knew everything, like every other teenager who thinks she's woke. They didn't like me much, but they didn't give up on me. They could see the potential in me I hadn't even seen in myself. And so, I always want to honor the fact that they invested their time and attention into someone that they didn't particularly like or understand. I always think about the gifts that those women gave me in terms of recommending me for positions, giving me perspectives, telling me to shut the fuck up when they needed to.

What Is Her Movement Work?   Since I've been doing this work for more than 50 years now, I've had a lot of time to think about the meaning of what I've done. Because it's one thing, like Foucault says, to know what you do and it's another thing to know what you do does. And I've had the time to understand that, in the ’70s, I was part of a group of Black women who defined the movement in violence against women. Twenty years later, I was part of another group of Black women who defined reproductive justice. Twenty years after that I'm part of a human rights movement that's redefining the Calling In, Calling Out culture.

So, I think that if I have a gift from the universe—I'm not necessarily responsible for having but I want to be responsible for how I use it—it is that I'm good at synthesizing what looks like disparate or random facts into a trend, into an analysis. Kinda like Hermione. That's a gift when you can detect these things pretty early on and somehow perceive what the next logical step is in the process. People say that's an act of prophecy. But I think it's an act of analysis. It's just that I see how things fit together.

What Impact Is She Making?   I'm sure there are books written about the power of naming something. Because it gives it a corporality, a substance that was always there but unmarked or unnoticed by people until it was named. I mean, Newton didn't invent gravity, but he named it and that changed everything. Kimberle Crenshaw didn't invent intersectionality, but she named it and that changed everything. And so, I like to think that reproductive justice had that same effect. It did not invent the concept of intersectionality, nor were we the first to apply the concept of intersectionality to reproductive politics. But once we named it, it became an on ramp for a lot of people to see reproductive politics differently. That's the impact that I think it's had, where we've gone beyond simply fighting for the right to keep abortion safe and legal, which is in the reproductive justice framework, obviously. But we focused equally on the right to have a child, which, for many people, particularly white women, is not an issue for them.

For the most part, there's such a social pressure on white women to breed, to have children. I'm convinced that all the restrictions on birth control and abortion are not about trying to produce more Black and Brown babies—it's about trying to produce more white babies. Because these white supremacists have not convinced me that they want more Black or Brown babies. So, if you don't have a racial lens through which you see reproductive politics, you're missing most of the story. Reproductive justice goes beyond focusing only on the biological debates to looking at non‐biological issues that affect the conditions under which we parent and raise our children. So we can have conversations about gun violence, or poor schools, or unfair tax property policies, or political corruption, or gentrification, or housing and food insecurities, those kinds of things. I love the way reproductive justice by naming it has expanded into an examination of every field of human endeavor, which just simply focusing on abortion didn't do.

I think changing human hearts and minds is a glacially slow process. 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the first rape crisis center in this country, the DC one, which was founded in 1972. Think about how significant the change is—between saying women deserve services when they've been raped, to the Me Too movement, to where we're actually getting consequences, major social and economic consequences [for perpetrators]. That's 50 years. But in the arc of history, that's just a drop of time. But I've lived to see it all. I'm always encouraged by that.

With reproductive justice—it's been 26 years or something like that. And yet, we have moved from the margins to the center. We've changed how people talk about both pro‐life and pro‐choice politics. We got people to see everything we're talking about through a human rights lens that they hadn't done before. We've defined a universal framework that includes everyone because everyone has the same human rights. And it has been so attractive and capacious that you even got the opponents using it. I mean, one of the more interesting conversations I recall having was with Mary Krane Derr, who was the founder of Feminist for Life. But I included her article in my anthology, because I knew we were on to something when someone representing the pro‐life movement wanted to use reproductive justice. I was like, “Oh hell, this is truly transformative.” Because I think many analysts would argue that when your opponent starts using your framework, you've won the war.

There was a communication consulting firm called Communications Consortium and they did a lot of polling work for the pro‐choice movement. When we first created the term reproductive justice, Kathy Bonk, who was the founder, said, “Let me do some polling on this, let me do some focus group work on this term, Loretta. Let's see what the community thinks of it.” And it was so new, because this was in the early 2000s, maybe five or six years after being created by us. We hadn't popularized that beyond those of us who created it. And when she showed me some of the data from the focus groups, the term reproductive justice evoked the most hilarious responses. One person asked, “Reproductive justice? What do they have against copiers?” And then when they focused on the justice part, they only knew the TV show Law & Order. “Oh, why are we talking about Law and Order?”

So, it's come a long way from “Why are we mad at copiers?”

How Have Partnerships Helped the Movement?   One of the strengths of the movement is its adaptability. I was so pleased when Indigenous women started talking about reproductive justice, but through the lens of sovereignty in a way that we had not anticipated they would. Or when the LGBT movement started talking about it through the question of sexuality and personal autonomy and gender identity and all those things which we cis[gender] women hadn't thought about. It has something in it for everybody and is flexible enough to be adapted and embraced by widely varying people from their own standpoint, from their own perspectives. Even if what they find in it is not what someone else finds in it. I often compare reproductive justice to the optometrist shifting all these eyeglass lenses in front of you until they find the one that's yours. That doesn't make all those other lenses wrong—they're just not yours. Reproductive justice is one of those shifting kinds of framework. Depending on what your vulnerabilities and needs are, you can land at a framework that is yours, while not invalidating all the other frameworks.

[One] tension that I encounter is what I call identity reductionism or identity determinism. There's a group of Black women, often the younger ones, who think that because reproductive justice was created by Black women that it should only apply to Black women or be used by Black women. So, they want to monitor the boundaries of who gets to call themselves a reproductive justice organization, who gets to use the term. They want to police how it's used and all of that, which is a lose‐lose proposition, because this is entirely too flexible, too expandable, too amorphous, and too ambitious to be contained by any one person's perception of what it should or could be. As a matter of fact, by insisting on that kind of conformity, you're guaranteeing its underperformance because you're denying it all its tremendous power and possibilities based on your insistence that the lens you got is the only lens that matters.

The question becomes, how much energy are we going to put in policing the boundaries or the debate, rather than just moving the debate forward? You can fight the rear guard of making sure people do that right or you can just move it forward, and let those people just catch up to the Freedom Train.

I've been doing more focused work on a concept I call reproductive futurism. Because I'm convinced that our reproductive technologies are promising a scientific utopia that's not actually going to manifest itself. This “designer babies” thing. This “freeze your eggs and become pregnant at your choice and timing” thing. The “right to become a parent, even if it means exploiting other people's economic and social vulnerabilities” thing. Those are the kinds of questions we're not having enough discussion on. So, I'm taking a reproductive justice lens to look at reproductive technologies and questioning whether or not our preexisting inequalities will be upgraded using technology.

The fruit of the reproductive justice movement continues to be its ability to bring more people into the conversation that didn't previously think that they had any common ground with other people. And so it may be that the people who've had infertility issues that for whatever reason are seeking surrogacy or technological solutions can be brought together under our second tenant—the right to parent—in a way. They haven't necessarily seen themselves in that conversation because they have this perception that reproductive politics is all about abortion. So I think it's always going to provide that opportunity to build bridges with people who didn't think they belong in it.

The thing that surprises me the most about reproductive justice is how people globally have adopted it. When we conceptualized it, we thought of it as a way of bringing human rights home to the United States. I know I personally said, “Well, the other people in other countries, they're using the human rights framework better than people in the US are doing it.” So I never thought that it would have the transnational appeal that it has proven to have. I was not expecting women in Ireland, or women in Chile, to be embracing the reproductive justice framework, but that, again, shows its true universality.

In this post‐Roe world in the United States, there is a great deal of scrambling among institional and individual donors to figure out how to support women, particularly in unfriendly states, in accessing abortion services. In this moment of crisis, it is a critical to think about our strategies when it comes to supporting pro‐choice organizations. This moment requires that we step up support to all those groups in which we partner on this issue to ensure the push back is appropriate at all levels.

In the “Resource” section, I provide a list of RJ groups that you can partner with to support their intersectional agendas. For those who are already in the gender equality or reproductive health and rights space, I encourage you to reevaluate your relationships with these organizations. Focus less on extraction, co‐optation, and public relations. Instead, lean into being a more supportive and silent partner providing resources that further the agenda of RJ organizations around the world.

Everyday feminists—like Loretta Ross, Dazon Dixon Diallo, Paris Hatcher, Rickie Solinger, Dr. Joia Crear‐Perry, and many more—have been doing this work for decades. They are worthy of good partners in this work.

Notes

1. “Reproductive Justice and ‘Choice’: An Open Letter to Planned Parenthood,” Rewire News Group (August 5, 2014). https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2014/08/05/reproductive-justice-choice-open-letter-planned-parenthood/.

2. J. Calmes, “Advocates Shun ‘Pro‐Choice’ to Expand Message,” New York Times (July 29, 2014). https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/us/politics/advocates-shun-pro-choice-to-expand-message.html?_r=0.

3. J. Calmes, “Advocates Shun ‘Pro‐Choice’ to Expand Message.”

4. A. Abrams, “How Advocates of Reproductive Justice Found Their Spotlight,” Time (November 21, 2019). https://time.com/5735432/reproductive-justice-groups/.

5. “Population and Development,” UNECE. Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://unece.org/population/population-and-development.

11
Start Feminism Young

Spotlight: Purity Kagwiria and Girls Education

Issue: Climate and Youth

One morning in the dry season of fall 2017, Deepa rushed into my office at the Planned Parenthood Global headquarters in the Kilimani neighborhood of Nairobi. Sweating from climbing the two flights of stairs from the regional office, she was clearly extremely upset.

After 5 years leading Planned Parenthood Global from New York, I had gotten approval to move the headquarters of the international subsidiary to Kenya. It was important to me that the work we did be grounded in the voices of those affected, and, to me, that meant being closer to the organizations we partnered with and the staff members who managed the on‐the‐ground programs. And so, just after Trump won the election and 15 years after first falling in love with the country as a law student, I found myself living in Nairobi again. This time around I wasn't living in a hostel with a roommate and no expectation of privacy; I moved my family into an exquisite house in a compound called Kihingo, where we lived the sometimes exceptional life of expatriates.

As the executive director of Planned Parenthood Federations of America's international division, I was responsible for supporting service delivery and advocacy programs for more than 12 countries in Africa and Latin America. I loved partnering with local organizations and their leadership to make a significant impact for families seeking reproductive care in some of the world's most challenging settings. It became clear to me within a few years that we needed to center youth—and especially young adolescent girls—in our work. They were often stigmatized when asserting their rights to services and overlooked when lifting their voices in defense of broader social agendas. In one clinic I visited in Kenya, a 16‐year‐old girl came to ask for contraception and the provider, her neighbor and mother's friend, asked if she was having sex and she said no. She was sent away because she didn't “need” a service. And this was a relatively friendly environment.

Having worked in bilateral and multilateral programs for many years before arriving at Planned Parenthood, it was a new experience to have to raise funds the way I did now, working in a large nonprofit. This was a challenge, but it also allowed for more freedom and flexibility in the work.

Although early in my career I couldn't quite put my finger on it, I had always felt there was a certain colonial dynamic built into the relations between countries that supplied foreign aid and those that received it. The approach, ideas, and priorities always tilted toward the donor needs and interests. Sometimes this sense of superiority was explicitly stated but more often it was cloaked within language about impact, scale, and accountability required from the recipient. It was neither necessary nor recommended that we include the recipients of services in our strategy planning. Donors were often more impressed with McKinsey & Company–informed strategies than those informed by the community themselves. Accountability from donors and philanthropy is only a recent phenomenon, putting the onus on the grantees to jump through hoops to prove their worth to foreign entities. Often, this dynamic led to strained relationships that looked more like the cop and robber than partners in meeting the needs of marginalized communities.

Leading the work at PPG meant that I could vet our resource partners and ensure their values were aligned to the work. And even when they were not, I could keep unsuitable donors away from the work and the everyday feminists leading these local organizations. It was a different world. It enabled us to quickly pivot our programming to those most in need. And based on the experiences of those on the ground, those most in need were youth.

Deepa, my distraught colleague, was a young Sri Lankan woman and the head of content strategy at Snake Nation, the South Africa–based organization that developed a youth intervention together with the young people throughout Africa called Billi Now Now (BNN). Created in 2017 in Kenya by a group of Black men and women from the United States, Africa, and Asia, it was a groundbreaking attempt to engage African youth in the decisions that affected their lives. Backed by a diverse group of funders to PPG and staff at Planned Parenthood, the outcome was a collaboration that was Afro future meets MTV with a sprinkle of social justice movement building. Young people in Uganda, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, and Burkina Faso engaged in community uplift activities—such as clean‐up days, civic education, government engagement, and art events, including making films, music, and art—all while addressing profound challenges in their homes, schools, and places of work. They wrote blogs that described their desires and hopes for the world they would inherit.

In our work with Billi Now Now, PPG let go of the habit to plan for young people and lay out a strategy for development. Together with local creators, Deepa moved around the continent listening to young local activists. She resisted the urge to create a program and instead handed over the tools to start a movement to the young people themselves.

But that day when Deepa rushed into my office, she told me that the staff was convinced she'd gone too far this time. She reported that a BNN youth had written a blog about anal sex on the site that we asked them to manage. And while the young writer was from Burkina Faso, where there were no legal restrictions against anal sex, the rising homophobia on the continent, and the desire to control sexuality by a growing religious fundamentalist movement generally, was enough to shake the PPG staff. They worried that the governments in the countries where we worked in Africa would shut us down and make our work on many fronts more difficult. Deepa disagreed. She was not someone who usually pounded my desk when trying to get her point across. But she refused to take the blog post down as was requested of her.

As a compromise, I suggested that we take our name off the site, so we would not immediately be associated with the content. She was obviously disgusted at my decision. “We made a promise to these young people that they could write about anything that concerned them. Why should we hide if they want to go public with their issues? They don't need us telling them what to do.”

Ultimately, we took our name off the site so the BNN youngsters could speak freely. We later learned that the article was a description of a young man's attempt to allow his young lover to maintain the virginity so important in her society while also sharing the intimacy that both desired. When I read it, I was glad I listened to Deepa and didn't pull it down. That voice was authentic and important.

Deepa is an everyday feminist.

Give Real Support to Young Feminists

The eighth major lesson that listening to and observing everyday feminists in action across the globe for more than three decades has taught me is get out of the way of young feminist leaders.

Young people—and particularly adolescent girls—are driving today's social justice movements and building a more just and equitable world for all. In recognition of this reality and in line with the commitment to intergenerational feminism, we must lift and support their work—in real terms. It is great to invite young women and girls to speak at conferences or hire them to run social media for our projects and programs. But it's even better to provide them with some startup resources and capacity and let them fly on their own.

I know how hard it can be. I have a daughter, a young everyday feminist. I sometimes worry about her approaches, her dogmatic stance on issues of social justice, and especially her willingness to show the world her impatience with our systems, processes, and methodologies for change. Yet, she also pushes me in ways that older everyday feminists don't. She holds me accountable for what I say and what I do. She teaches me about others that are experiencing discrimination and marginalization. I am sure we all have a young everyday feminist in our lives. We applaud her and share a video on Facebook to show everyone how fierce she is. Right up until she is old enough to do something about her convictions.

According to a 2008 study commissioned by the Dove Self‐Esteem Fund, 7 in 10 girls in the US believe that they are not good enough or don't measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school, and relationships with friends and family members.¹Alice Broster, in her Forbes article, suggests this distinct drop in self‐esteem for adolescent girls can be attributed to social media and unique events such as the COVID pandemic.² The way we support youth advocates must take this crisis of self‐esteem into consideration. Too often, our tendency is to only ask the class president–type—the young person who excels according to the metrics set by her society—to represent all youth. We overlook those that attend public school or don't get good grades. To fully embrace the important role that diverse everyday young feminists can play, we must look beyond the certificates and degrees, and even the physical characteristics of the young people including weight, color of skin, eyes, and so on.

A model for meaningfully supporting young everyday feminists is GFW's Young Women's Leadership and Mentoring. Launched in partnership with CREA, a feminist human rights organization based in India, and the Kendeda Fund, it now works with young everyday feminists in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Kenya, and Tanzania.³ These strategic visionaries and leaders are building strong movements that effectively address challenges facing women and girls in their countries. Through an innovative model of feminist mentorship and peer learning, they are building their own leadership as well as that of other young activists in their communities.

When empowered young women rise up together, they break isolation, build solidarity, and strengthen movements that challenge the prevalent social, economic, and political barriers to their vision, voice, and agency. As Bishnu Maya Gharti, a young leader from Nepal, says, “The women I work with are what inspire me to fight for women's rights. I have seen women living through the worst, the best, and the hardest conditions. Their courage to work, their confidence, and their willingness to fight—that keeps me going.”

“Youth empowerment” is a popular buzz phrase in the development and philanthropy communities. But too often, support for youth activists is limited to rhetoric. It's like we want young people to voice their opinions, but we don't want to provide them with adequate resources and environments to do the work required. When we support Bishnu, and her young peers, we help them realize a better future—for them, and for all of us.

Youth Activists Are Leading Us Out of the Climate Crisis

Climate change is one key issue in which youth activists have been at the forefront, pushing the rest of us to confront the crisis with the urgency it demands. Ayesha Constable, a young climate activist and everyday feminist from Jamaica, says, “Climate justice is on the agenda because of young activists who applied a human rights framework and asked the questions of addressing historical antecedents, flawed global systems, and climate governance. We must credit the young feminist activists for being the faces and voices for climate action across the world.” She points out that Fridays for Futures, the global climate strike movement that started when 15‐year‐old Greta Thunberg began a school strike for climate in 2018, and other rebellion campaigns are led by young everyday feminists, who often get very little support after the splashy headlines are over.

Fortunately for all of us, young everyday feminists like Ayesha are here to stay, challenging the status quo and holding the line on gains that we have made over the years. We should be supporting these young activists like our lives depend on it, because they do.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Purity Kagwiria and the Movement for Girls Education

It is anticipated that by 2030, people between the ages of 15 and 24 will make up more than 60% of the population of Africa.⁴ Young people in Kenya, and in many other countries across the continent, are leading some of the most profound social justice work, fighting for change on issues such as female genital mutilation and child marriage. The Network of Adolescents and Youth in Africa (NAYA) was created in 2001 by a group of young people who wanted to bring these youth empowerment movements together. These everyday feminists have been successful in getting increased funding from local actors to address the needs of young people in their communities. In recent years, the movement has greater access to and recognition by political elites. They are now what GFW MCAT considers at the formalization stage with higher levels of organization and coalition‐based strategies. At this level of capacity, the organizations no longer rely on mass rallies or inspirational leaders, and professional staff carry out key functions.

One of the organizations shaped by the environment for youth NAYA promotes is Akili Dada, founded by a young everyday feminist, Dr. Wanjiru Kamau‐Rutenberg, and now led by everyday feminist, Purity Kagwiria.

Let's explore Purity's story and leadership.

In Her Words: Purity Kagwiria

Akili Dada is an organization that is part of the movement to protect, educate, and empower girls during their formative years. It is also the focus of a segment of GFW's Fundamental Film series highlighting everyday feminist activists and their work around the world. I spoke to its current leader, everyday feminist Purity Kagwiria, about the work she does every day supporting young girls who leave their homes to go to schools for a proper education. Often, these girls grow up to become leaders in their communities and work toward a better world. It's no doubt powerful for this ordinary woman doing extraordinary things to watch these caterpillars become butterflies.

Who Is This Everyday Feminist?   I became involved with the sexual and reproductive health rights movements when I first took up an internship in a women's rights organization called Coalition on Violence Against Women. It's a prominent women's rights organization here in Kenya. My main job was literally to go through newspapers and see if there were any cases touching on violence against women or girls, or policy, cutting those out and filing them away. And, once a year, they would compile that into a book and publish it and say, in this year, these are all the cases that are covered in the country. That really gave me an insight to open my mind to what was happening to girls and women across the country. And then my other role was to actually take in clients. This organization offered counseling services to women who had been through traumatic experiences. So I started to understand the plight of women and girls in my space. And it also started to just remind me that I had seen some of these things in my own community, in my own environment growing up, but I didn't really have a name for it. I spent nine months doing that internship, but it really grounded me in understanding sexual reproductive health and rights. And I could relate to that, because even though I have not suffered violence myself, I know that my relatives around me [have]. I have seen it and now I could name it—I could name violations that had happened to them.

What Movement Work Is She Doing?   As an active member of the feminist/women's rights movement in Kenya, I am committed to analyzing private and personal spaces and developing strategies that lead to the emancipation of women. Currently, I am committed to the work for a leadership incubator for young women working to meet the urgent need for a new generation of effective African leaders. Akili Dada provides promising young women from underprivileged backgrounds with access to high‐quality education, personalized mentoring, and rigorous leadership development. Education and creating spaces for young women's participation inspires my activism.

What Impact Is She Making?   I think one of the biggest changes is that more and more people talk about SRHR. The conversation is in the open. The other change, I think, is perhaps the legal frameworks and the policy environment in many countries ha[ve] shifted for the better for many, many girls, and women. Sierra Leone's government passed a law against FGM [female genital mutilation], and more and more organizations are working on alternative rites of passage. That's something that's also very common here in Kenya in some communities that still practice FGM. So that policy change, and the legal changes that have happened I think this movement did it. And it's because this conversation, again, is at people's tables and it can't be ignored.

Especially in the Global South, more and more girls and young women actually do stay in school for longer. Even if they get pregnant somewhere along the way, most of them have had at least a chance at education. In the past that was absolutely lost—some of them just stayed home and got married. The fact is that as soon as a girl is in school, they're in many spaces, these are containers to hold them and to give them the information that they need—whether it's about their periods or the menstruation cycle, or about access to contraception. And not just for girls. And that, I think, is a key to success. Because when I think about myself, having the ability to choose whether I want to have a child or not, when I want to have this child, and the spacing between my children, is such an empowering thing that has come out of these movements.

What Can We Do to Support Young Feminists?   I think finding ways or spaces of care for the holders of the movement. The activists who are part of the movement, sometimes they are working on shoestring budgets, and they don't necessarily have the resources it takes to do this work well. This work does feel, to a large extent, like a calling. But if someone is not feeling as efficient as they could be, they tend to burn out. And in that period, when they're burnt out, then there's a lot of traction that is lost. So, if the movement could find ways of investing, so that it's a little more giving to the activists who make up the movements, I think that's really one of the ways to sustain the movements. This is such taxing work. It taxes your emotions, it taxes on you as a person. So, finding ways to find joy in this very difficult work would be something I dream of for the future of the movement. And more funding. I hope that we can move [away] from the international NGOs, INGOs, receiving all the funding, and then a little bit percolating to the grassroots organizations. More and more funders are starting to figure out how to find grassroots organizations. [But we need more effort to shift away from] the model we currently have, where we nourish the top organizations, and then there's very little nourishment to the groups at the grassroot level.

For me, where I sit now as a funder for girls and young women, I think one of the futures we are hoping to create is a future where girls and women have dignity or rather are held with dignity. For them to be themselves. To live lives of equality.

One of the things I think it will have achieved is bringing more men onto their conversation tables—not as policy makers, but as boys and men understanding their role, or the impact that their actions have on girls and women. I've been interviewing girls for the last two months for some focus group discussions and they're saying to me that one of the things they really want to see is boys being included to understand the impact of their actions and how that impacts girls' lives. If we can change the lens of how [men] see the world and see it from women's point of view, I think that is quite a dream. That is such a tall‐order dream.

It is critical that we support young activists in general. And it is even more crucial that we seek out and support young everyday feminists. We don't need to wait for them to receive the spotlight in major media outlets. They don't need to be the class presidents or have millions of Twitter followers. Look for the young everyday feminists who are doing the work. Make sure that the social justice movements you support engage and include young everyday feminists and their organizations. And commit to dedicating resources to the full scope of their intersectional work, the full range of issues they care about, and not just those listed on your mission statement. We will see the benefit immediately.

Notes

1. AAUW of NYS, “Real Girls, Real Pressure: A National Report on the State of Self‐Esteem,” The Dove Self Esteem Fund (2008). https://aauw-nys.org/.

2. A. Broster, “Girls Have Much Lower Self‐Esteem During Their Teen Years, According to New Study,” Forbes (January 28, 2021). https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicebroster/2021/01/31/girls-have-much-lower-self-esteem-during-their-teen-years-according-to-new-study/?sh=713c06db5eb7.

3. “The Future Is Ours: Young Women Leaders,” Global Fund for Women (June 21, 2021). https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/what-we-do/voice/campaigns/young-women-leaders/.

4. M. Saleh, “Africa: Total Population Forecast 2020–2050.” Statista (July 15, 2022). https://www.statista.com/statistics/1224205/forecast-of-the-total-population-of-africa/#:~:text=Forecast%20of%20the%20total%20population%20of%20Africa%202020%2D2050&text=According%20to%20the%20forecast%2C%20Africa's,as%20the%20most%20populous%20countries.

PART III
Getting on Board with the Everyday Feminist

I Have Never Felt Sorrow Without Reason, 2021. Lehna Huie

12
Why You Need the Everyday Feminist

It is difficult to look at her when we first meet. Her skin is various shades of white and brown. She's had several surgeries to repair her nose, eyes, and lips, but I can't believe they couldn't do better than this. Her story is similarly difficult to hear.

“It begins simple enough,” she says. Two years earlier, on a trip to the market in Parachinar, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan, she had run into a cousin, now living in London, who was home visiting after several years abroad. They spoke for quite a while, laughing and reminiscing about their childhoods, and embraced before parting ways. She thought nothing more of the encounter.

Then, one day, while preparing the table for dinner, her husband's mother angrily asked if she's dating someone in secret. Frightened by the question, she denied the allegation. Her mother‐in‐law accused her of lying, claiming that her sister saw her. “We go back and forth like this for some time. She stomps out of the house when it occurs to me that she must be speaking of my cousin. When she returns, and before I can tell her about this huge mistake, she throws acid in my face. I don't remember much else except getting to the hospital thanks to my husband.”

When Bahiya (not her real name) stops speaking, the room is quiet. I'm sitting with several other UN gender and child protection specialists in the UNICEF field office in the provincial capital of Peshawar. We're looking to support organizations like the one Bahiya now leads fighting to end crimes like the one she survived. I ask if her mother‐in‐law has ever been arrested. She laughs and says, “I am still married—that should tell you.”

I received orders to come to Pakistan after a few months based in New York City working on child soldier programs in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, and Yemen through the United Nations Development Programme. After seven years working in Africa, my mentors suggested that I get a position in another region; the nature of an international career meant that I should have a global, not just regional, perspective and expertise.

I accepted the child protection officer position with UNICEF in Islamabad while applying to become a US diplomat through the USAID new entry program for mid‐career professionals, which attempts to increase the number of diverse actors at the senior levels of US foreign affairs agencies, organizations, and companies. So, I knew Pakistan would be my last post with the UN. Two months after the Twin Towers fell, I weaned my 18‐month‐old son, Bongani, and left my family to spend a year based in Islamabad working with the government of Pakistan and communities throughout the country to protect women and children as outlined in international treaty law.

I arrived carrying just a couple suitcases and moved into the family home of a Pakistani colleague, raised in Europe, who was returning to Islamabad for an UN position as well. The house was beautiful with heated marble tiles, intricate Afghan area rugs, and bright, regal furniture. My housemate gifted me on my arrival with a gorgeous hijab, or head scarf—made of the most attractive red silk I have ever felt, with little flowers and birds as the pattern.

I view wearing the hijab as a gesture of respect for the culture and, ultimately, important for my safety. But at my orientation meeting, the country director, a British woman, told me I wasn't required to wear one. When I informed her that I was comfortable doing so, having grown up in a Muslim household and community where all the women around me covered their hair, she said that it was my choice, but that she did not cover her long blond hair because “we” (I suppose she means Westerners) do not make “them” stop wearing the hijab when they come to our countries.

Even wearing the hijab, it was difficult to blend in. Outside of my home or the homes of colleagues and friends I met in the country, I was acutely aware of my Americanness—in ways that for the first time in my life were not to an advantage. Despite the history of my people in the United States, I've enjoyed the privilege of traveling the world with a passport that opens many doors and is most often met with welcome. In post‐9/11 Pakistan, though, I didn't want to be associated with my country's role in the world's systemic injustices. In the markets, the shop attendants frequently assumed I was from South Africa and I didn't correct them.

While headquartered in Islamabad, I managed child protection posts at the field offices in multiple Pakistani cities: Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, and Quetta.

In Karachi, a more Western city, we were focused on child labor, that is, children working to make the rugs and tapestries, who are often denied educational opportunities. The UN programs advocated for and supported direct payments to parents to send their children to school instead of work. It also paid for better services for those children who remained in the factories. Bahiya connected me to Pakistani women who had facilities for these children specifically to help families who have little options.

In Lahore, a city I will always remember for its kites and the welcoming staff in the regional office, my agenda was to help identify homes that employ children as household staff—though employ is not exactly the right word. Many of these children were distant relatives of their employers yet were not offered the same opportunities as their peers in the household. They were often forced into these arrangements by their parents and kept locked in their compounds, sometimes under circumstances of physical, sexual, and certainly psychosocial abuse. The governmental and religious groups we supported were making efforts to register these children and combat the social and cultural norms that treated such arrangements as normal and legal.

In Quetta, a quite traditional smaller city, thousands of Afghan families were crossing the border in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan. I had the task of documenting special circumstances for women and children seeking refugee status in Pakistan, including accompaniment when one or both parents were lost. It wasn't uncommon for violence, protection, marriages, and so on to be causes of women and children seeking refuge. My role was to not just hear the stories but identify and connect services to those in need. And my role would often end when they were assigned to a refugee camp. The days moving from a permanent dwelling to an unknown situation are often the most difficult for families. The short‐term lack of food and care can sometimes mean the difference between survival and death. It is always incredible to watch as the women not only help their own families but look out for those without parents and those most in need.

Finally, in Peshawar, one of my major projects was to support Bahiya's efforts to combat honor killings and crimes. Honor killings and crimes are committed against a family member who is deemed to have acted socially or culturally unacceptably, and thus is seen to be bringing dishonor to the family. Only a year after her own attack, Bahiya started a small organization with other women similarly situated to raise awareness in the community, at schools, at the Mosque, and with local government. She was a force to be reckoned with, speaking out in the community, pushing the government for policies that criminalized this cultural practice, and tasking the foreign organizations in the country, like UNICEF, to do more.

Bahiya was a mother of two daughters and over lunch one day she casually mentioned that the fact that she and her husband never had a son may be the reason her mother‐in‐law never really liked her. Both times she delivered, the babies were met with disappointment. Pakistanis, similar to many cultures in Asia and Africa, preferred boy children, because they are seen to bring more economic benefits to the family. Although this is no longer a proven value, the belief that male children are better still looms and is perhaps why Bahiya was not seen as a preferred daughter‐in‐law and more susceptible to attack by her family. Nonetheless, no woman should have to worry about having acid thrown in her face or any other violence perpetrated against her for any reason due to her gender. This is the work that feminist movements hold paramount everywhere around the world.

And, therefore, you need everyday feminists like Bahiya and all the other everyday feminists.

I laid out the logic model feminists activists use in the field in Chapter 1. I will only summarize here the following points about the importance of everyday feminists:

Invest in women, their organizations, and their movements.

They will take care of themselves and their families.

They will take care of their communities.

They will take care of their countries.

They will take care of the earth.

We will all live in a better world.

You need everyday feminists because they have the community and local influence required to make changes from the bottom up as well as the top down. We trust these everyday feminists to make decisions that put the people and their environments first. They are not driven primarily by profit or expediency.

You need everyday feminists because they are natural leaders, and people want to follow them. They coordinate everything from school meetings to climate marches. They bring attention to injustice and bring available resources to the table, even if it's from their own pocket. And they have a knack for organizing on issues that seem overbearing and bring them down to a level they can manage.

You need everyday feminists because they have local expertise that you can't get from a consulting firm. They know the history of the community and engage daily on the needs of all people in their community, especially those most in need of support. They have connections in the community they bring to the table to discuss the issues and solutions—people who will never talk to you. And they think outside the box understanding what has succeeded or failed before. They pivot when things change, both in subtle ways to engage more in the conversation or in big ways to address conflict, crises, and the most egregious circumstances.

Rakhshanda Naz, an everyday feminist in Pakistan, puts it this way when talking about religious opposition:

Leadership is key. Political and religious leadership hinder our movement by saying what we want is because of western influence. I even see that women in parliament don't want to work on these issues due to fear of being branded. But now there are many women and young girl activist[s] joining this child rights movement, and they are playing their active role. Mine is no longer the only voice. We can give examples of Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia that declared 18 years for marriage, so why not the Government of Pakistan. We must prevent them once and for all from using the religion card.

You need everyday feminists because they can advise you on catalytic social investment opportunities that you missed. They know the power of sustainable impact and are in partnership with members and allies of the community that can bring the necessary change for impact. And their reach cuts across the social, economic, and political sectors.

You need everyday feminists because they can work on intersectional injustices simultaneously. It is a paramount characteristic of feminist movements that they don't silo their issues. This is especially useful during a crisis—weather natural disasters, war, or other urgent social and organizational issues. I am compelled to quote Audre Lourde again here: “There is no thing as a single‐issue struggle because we do not live single‐issue lives.”¹ We'll see this again in Chapter 13.

You need everyday feminists because they are globally connected to other everyday feminists. They have turned to the tools of modern society to learn about the issues that affect them and push back on opposition when required. They amplify their needs and agendas through networks that are often exclusive. And they use their leverage to match funding and other resources at all levels.

As Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl and everyday feminist, shot by the Taliban for demanding education for girls, signaled in an interview with the UN, “that moving forward, things should not return to the way they were … when will you commit the necessary funding to give every child 12 years of quality education? When will you prioritize peace and protect refugees? When will you pass policies to cut carbon emissions?” underlining the need for “a profound commitment to the way the world should be—a place where every girl can learn and lead, a place where we put people and our planet ahead of profits, a place where leaders keep their promises,” requesting that those gathered “set the norms” of a new sustainable, healthy, educated, and equitable era. This is how everyday feminists talk.²

You need everyday feminists because they take care of you every day … for free. They are your mothers, sisters, aunts, teachers, and neighbors. They are the primary participants in a care economy that is growing as the demand for childcare and care for the elderly is increasing in all regions. It is characterized by a void of benefits and protections, low wages or non‐compensation, and exposure to physical, mental and, in some cases, sexual harm.

Show up for them and support everyday feminists.

Notes

1. Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: Essays (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1988).

2. “Malala Fund.” Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://malala.org/countries/nigeria#:~:text=Nigeria%20accounts%20for%2045%25%20of,poverty%20and%20discriminatory%20social%20norms.

13
Why Everyday Feminists Need You

I remember hearing an everyday feminist once say, “Nobody represents us, nobody lives what we are living. Nobody feels for us. It's always been like that. Nobody stands up for us. We, the women and men of Basra, if we don't stand up for ourselves, we are doomed.” Her name is Reham Yacoub. Only months later, I heard an Al Jazeera news flash:

A female activist has been killed in the southern Iraqi city of Basra by unidentified gunmen who opened fire on the car she was in. Reham Yacoub, a doctor and activist in the local protest movement since 2018, was shot by an assault rifle‐brandishing gunman on the back of a motorcycle on Wednesday. Three women in the car at the time were wounded, one died later. Known for organizing women's marches, Yacoub had previously received threats against her life when she participated in training courses supervised by the US consulate in Basra in 2017 and 2018. Yacoub's killing marks the third incident this week in which gunmen targeted anti‐government political activists after one was killed and a separate attack saw assailants open fire on a car carrying at least two others.¹

I was stunned.

Reham Yacoub, an activist and women's gym manager in Basra, told media that she had been receiving death threats over her support for the protests, citing a photo of her with US consul Timmy Davis. “They used some old photos of me and the American consul and they added them to other photos of me in the protests, saying that I am a spy and traitor working for the USA to sabotage the peaceful protests,” she said. “They accused me of collaborating with the consul to destroy Basra and burn the Iranian consulate and burn the political parties' buildings.” She said the killings and threats had made her afraid of walking the streets. She noted, in particular, the targeting of women in Iraq, which has seen—in addition to Suad al‐Ali, a prominent Iraqi journalist murdered for her affiliation with women's rights movement—social media star Tara Fares and a number of beauticians shot dead in recent months, as well as the fleeing of former Miss Iraq after death threats. “The situation is getting worse. The thing we can do is keep going till we get our rights and for sure there will be some losses in this way,” Yacoub said. As someone involved both in the protest movement and a job that sought to empower women, she feared being another target.

Reham reminds me of my time serving in Iraq with USAID. I met another everyday feminist, Rena, at the Green Zone café. It's really a large makeshift tent with red plastic tables and chairs. There is nothing fancy here. No tablecloths with fake flower centerpieces, no candles to make it feel cozy. Yet, as far as most of us are concerned, it was better than Starbucks, and any of the other fast‐food pop‐ups surrounding us. You can get coffee and conversation at the cafe, which most of desperately needed daily to avoid the sharp pain of loneliness and despair that comes with the conflict setting that had become our lives in Baghdad. Rena is an Iraqi soldier, although she is not deployed to combat, her title is equivalent to sergeant, and she is assigned to support the humanitarian programming under the coalition response to the Iraqi invasion. She wears military tan fatigues like her colleagues from the United States and the other coalition forces in the country. She also wears a hijab, white, stunningly clean, and bright, even with all the dust in the country. She is a proud woman who sits and stands with the elegance of royalty. Her eyes, however, are dull and almost lifeless, telling a story of difficulties that I will never know. I am sure that Rena has stories of her own and doesn't much care about my personal life, but she never lets on. Instead, she commiserates with my situation and as a wife and mother, she shares my passion for service while also feeling the guilt of inadequacy in the family domain.

Our meeting today is to discuss both the requirement to mainstream gender in both humanitarian response as well as the development programs in the country. This is clearly important to her as she is animated in her description of the violence against Iraqi, perpetrated at home, at school, at work, and now at the hands of soldiers. I have experience that is helpful from my previous work in Ethiopia and Eritrea. I ask, “are there any programs for women on the ground?” “There are some but not nearly enough. Mostly, when gender comes up, my colleagues say, there are programs, but women don't come to them. I don't know why they would come to this military outpost to talk to men about their circumstances. It's not our culture to do that.” I agree and suggest that we look for local organizations that are addressing this issue and bring them resources. I know that this will be difficult because they will have to be vetted in ways that I am not used to in my development work. Rena agrees and will bring me back a list of these groups so that we can discuss and find ways to include in the programs.

I want to leave the green zone, where most of us at USAID, as well as other agencies, are relegated. I want to see the country. I want to go to Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi, and the other places where we have US military installations. It will allow me to join Rena in speaking directly with the women's groups to determine their needs. This is way better than getting it from US military liaisons who I am not quite sure understand why USAID is even on the ground. Most of my interactions with military personnel are confusing and aloof. At one meeting in the palace, a member of the command in Erbil requested a school is built for the children. Most of the places of study were destroyed or unfit was his rationale. I ask if this is part of the rehabilitation plan with the ministry of education. There was silence. Another military colleague responded that there was a budget for such construction. “I am happy to hear that, but a construction budget, however important, is secondary to ensuring that the school has teachers, students, administrators, books, supplies… .” I am cut off by a colleague from the State Department who said, “we can get to those details later.” If there is path to building, we should get started and let the Iraqi military know of the plan. They will inform the ministry of education. I acquiesce and feel horrible about it. I have so many questions. Top of mind, will the school include girls? With the growing fundamentalism, I am worried. I talk to Rena about this, and she agrees to get more information. I am starting to wonder what I am doing here. All these resources among such confusion of mission and little access to the people.

I am glad I met Rena and I regret not thinking of her much since leaving Iraq, of course until I heard about Reham Yacoub. Everyday feminists are putting their lives on the line, every day, and we can't just let them do this important work without protecting them.

They need you!

Unfortunately, I could probably tell this story a hundred times taking place in a different town or city each time. Everyday feminists usually classify as human rights defenders, working to improve societies and contribute to peace and democracy. According to Human Rights House Foundation, they are agents for positive change and development and the key to protecting against human rights violations and advancing universal human rights. They mostly work at the local or national level, supporting respect for human rights within their own communities and countries.² They are a protected class. Yet, stories of Reham Yacoub, Marielle Franco, and recently Salma al‐Shehab, sentenced to 34 years in jail for a tweet sent to Saudi Arabia, are common for these brave souls. UN Secretary‐General Antonio Guterres says “these individuals and organizations are our eyes and ears and conscience.”³

Despite the intimidation everyday feminists face in their role, they are fearless. Their focus is always on the society that we can be, and they show up for others in ways that are personal and unique. They grow their organizations in the same way. They are humble and maybe don't talk about their impact enough. But those who are fortunate to be in their network and follow their work are quite awestruck by their numerous accomplishments.

Everyday feminists need you to help them increase their capacity, grow their organizations, and resource their movements. They don't need you to tell them what to do because they've been doing it for years already.

Everyday feminists need you to listen when they have gaps and provide them visibility on their circumstances—when they need it—not when it suits your agenda.

In 2019, the protest in Hong Kong against China's extradition law was front‐page news worldwide. And although it sensationalized what was considered rioting, there was a movement in the making and feminist activists were squarely in the middle. I called the head of the women's fund there, Judy Kan, and she spoke to me about support to feminist organizations both in Hong Kong and the mainland that didn't just amount to money. She talked about visibility of the movement demands in mainstream press. She talked about access to social media by the movement organizers. And she spoke about political statements from governments. But what amazed me during all this, she really wanted to hear how I was doing in my new role at Global Fund for Women and how she could help me.

Everyday feminists need you to take up their issues in your strategies and not the other way around. Approaching them with programs developed in your headquarters and request for proposals to help you deliver whatever is required for your constituencies is not helpful for the type of sustainable change necessary for dismantling inequalities that are hindering progress.

Everyday feminists need you to lift their thought leadership and enable them to tell their own stories. The power in taking a back seat to causes of which you don't have a direct connection increases authenticity and provides everyday feminists with opportunities they can't find on their own. I see this happening more and more, and it seems to directly correlate to better and more effective levers for change.

Finally, everyday feminists need you to provide unrestricted resources over a long period of time while trusting the impact that their communities require. Everyday feminists can't do this work in silos. And change doesn't happen in a one‐year funding cycle. They need you to act accordingly.

Some of you are convinced that everyday feminists need you, but are asking how do you get into the game? Chapter 14 and the Conclusion can help you get started or do more if you are already in the game.

Notes

1. “Iraq: Prominent Female Activist Killed by Unknown Gunmen In Basra,” Al Jazeera (August 20, 2020). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/20/iraq-prominent-female-activist-killed-by-unknown-gunmen-in-basra.

2. “Human Rights House Foundation 2021 Annual Report,” Human Rights House Foundation (2021). https://stories.humanrightshouse.org/annual-report-2021.

3. “UN Values and Principles Needed ‘Now More Than Ever,’ Guterres Says in UN Day Message,” United Nations (October 21, 2022). https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129797.

14
Don't Re‐create the Wheel: The Role of Feminist Funds

Taking the helm of Global Fund for Women meant supporting other brave women wherever I may find them. I am totally psyched by the possibility even if I do have to battle imposter syndrome in the process. I surprise myself when I answer random questions about my own feminism and reflect on how important helping women is to my career and more importantly to my values. I feel this overwhelming desire to pour into others all the energy and solidarity that has been poured into me from my mothers, aunties, friends, and children. And I know this feeling is right and real by the very entry into the organization. I hear it called a feminist handover. I am embraced by an outgoing leader and board—literally and figuratively. Three months before I start my job, I sit with the outgoing leadership and the senior team to develop a plan that requires splitting supervision duties, board interaction, and external engagement. It is done with love and serious consideration for both outgoing and incoming CEOs' capacity while serving the mission and future of the organization. It is a special story and one that I hope is considered by all organizations to avoid the discomfort that comes with change, and mostly, because we don't have time for egos when humanity is fighting for social justice. We finalized our feminist handover in Canada in the company of all our external partners, a simple toast, and off I went to California. I felt held. And as important, I felt equipped to disrupt the toxic systems of patriarchy, colonialism, sexism, and racism that have led to gender injustice. Here I come!!

It's like Play‐Doh, one of my favorite activities as a little girl. I would make shapes and objects until my hands were sticky with the substance and all over my face, forcing my mother or a teacher to tell me to stop and wash up for another activity. Global Fund for Women has all the right ingredients. It is the perfect place to try on new ideas and approaches. Our new strategy is focused on shifting power from the Global North biases and tactics to the Global South where those most affected have solutions ready for startup. We spend the first three years of my tenure trying out various methodologies for showing up to support, not lead. In fact, I am learning that leading looks more like serving every day. I like the shapes I am making.

My introduction to women's funds, which I will interchangeably refer to as feminist funds, meant an introduction to the concept of everyday feminists. These funds are set up to help others find and fund everyday feminists (see Figure 14.1).

Women's funds can accomplish the following:

Leverage your resources as a fiscal sponsor and get them to everyday feminists that are more difficult to reach.

Help you find everyday feminist organizations and movements in a specific geography or market.

Identify everyday feminists whose primary purpose is focused and aligned on a specific issue or set of issues (understanding they may need to pivot as necessary).

Support everyday feminists experiencing a crisis situation with resources and other immediate needs.

For some, this might be the first time hearing about feminist women's funds. Let me explain what they are.

Women's funds are a significant source of support for advancing the rights of women and girls worldwide. In addition to supporting grassroots groups directly, women's funds play a critical role in reshaping the access of organizations and advocates to financial resources through their own local resource mobilization practices. They also contribute to shifting local cultures of charitable giving to address structural causes of discrimination and support equity among all people.

Figure 14.1 What is feminist philanthropy?

Source: Infographic courtesy Global Fund for Women (2022). Full infographic available at https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/what-we-do/women-in-philanthropy-a-feminist-philanthropy-infographic/.

Feminist funds refers to a range of movements, organizations, and donor collaboratives that include “organizations, leaders, and networks working together to change power structures that reinforce gender and other inequalities,” a definition shared by Prospera, the international network of women's funds, from Srilatha Batliwala, a women's rights advocate based in India.¹

These women's funds operate in the follow way:

Mobilize financial resources, assets, and skills, and provide direct grants to local women's organizations and groups.

Strategically support women, girls, and trans people, and amplify their voices.

Build networks among the groups they support for greater influence, power, impact, and opportunities to scale.

There are a variety of women's funds. As feminist funders, these groups take a different approach. Think less top‐down decision‐making, extraction, and poverty porn and more solidarity, trust, and building collective power. They aim to provide general operating support grants—unrestricted, flexible money—to cover the real costs of social justice work. They offer multiyear grants so that groups can plan long term. And instead of dictating priorities, they follow grantee partners' leadership, supporting them in addressing needs, opportunities, and challenges as they arise, on their own terms.

There are global funds:

Global Fund for Women is one of the world's leading foundations for gender equality, standing up for the human rights of women and girls. Its movement‐led approach recognizes grassroots people power as one of the most effective mechanisms to create and sustain long‐term social transformation. Movements have led to more egalitarian workplace regulations, more equitable land rights, better access to financial institutions, expanded legal protections for domestic workers, and stronger laws against sexual harassment. The fund also campaigns for feminist foreign policies, support to women during crisis, and feminist technology. Global Fund for Women uses its powerful network to rally advocates, raise money, and get support to where it's most urgently needed. It funds and partners with women‐led groups who are courageously fighting for justice in their own communities. Since 1987, Global Fund for Women has invested in nearly 5,000 grassroots organizations in 175 countries, helping to win rights for millions of women and girls.

Mama Cash supports women, girls, and trans and intersex people who fight for their rights. Activists who tirelessly and fearlessly make their voices heard. Who criticize oppressive or restrictive norms and practices, and lobby for fair laws. Who demand their political and economic rights and insist on bodily autonomy.

The Equality Fund robustly resources women's rights organizations and feminist movements worldwide by partnering with organizations, coalitions, and networks focused on building power with women, girls, and trans people, especially in the Global South. They ground their work in mutual trust, respect, and collaboration and are guided by an unapologetic feminist analysis. Its investment program seeks to shift the financial ecosystem so that it better serves both people and the planet. It will support change by helping to finance grantmaking and drive change by influencing the financial ecosystem, simultaneously.

There are thematic funds that focus on specific communities of everyday feminists (a sample few):

ASTREA Lesbian Foundation for Justice is rooted in LBTQI communities and movements to work in strategic partnership with foundations, individuals, and governments to ensure that their resources reach the activists who need them most and who are best positioned to make transformational impact over time. To this end, it raises and distributes funds to programs and initiatives led by and for diverse constituencies, prioritizing groups led by lesbians and queer women, trans and gender nonconforming people, intersex people, and people of color.

FRIDA Young Feminist Fund provides young feminist organizers with the resources they need to amplify their voices and bring attention to the social justice issues they care about. We enable the support, flexibility, and networks to sustain young feminist visions.

Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights is a feminist fund that protects, strengthens, and sustains women and transgender human rights defenders at critical moments. They intervene quickly when activists are poised to make great gains or face serious threats to their lives and work. They respond to requests from women's human rights defenders within 72 hours and have funds on the ground within one to seven days. They partner with women's movements worldwide to support women's human rights defenders striving to create cultures of justice, equality, and peace.

There are regional women's funds (a sample few):

Women's Fund Asia is a regional women's fund committed to supporting women‐, girls‐, trans‐, and intersex people–led interventions to enhance and strengthen access to their human rights. It envisions a peaceful and egalitarian region in which women, girls, trans, and intersex people's participation, leadership, and enjoyment of all their human rights is ensured and secure. The core mandate is to support women, girls, trans, and intersex rights groups and activists in Asia; address the non‐availability of resources for rights work for these constituencies across the region; and support strategies and interventions designed, implemented, and led by women, girls, trans, and intersex people. It provides fiscal and technical support to our partners, working to advance women, girls, trans, and intersex rights in their contexts. The aim is to move toward developing a regional mandate that is informed by national and subregional realities, and is responsive to the rights and needs of individual women, girls, trans, and intersex people.

African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) is a pan‐African grant‐making organization that supports the realization and fulfillment of African women's rights through funding of autonomous women's organizations on the continent. Since its inception in the year 2000, AWDF has awarded grants of US$59 million to over 1,300 women's organizations in 47 countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Central American Women's Fund [Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres (FCAM)] is the first and only feminist fund in Central America, which since 2003 has raised funds to support the financial, political, fiscal, and emotional sustainability of groups, organizations, human right defenders, networks, and movements that work for the human rights of women and their communities. They work to build a world in which Central American women, in all their diversity, have their rights guaranteed related to personal security; physical and emotional well‐being; and economic, social, and environmental justice. They also strive for them to participate as leaders in the decisions that affect their lives and their communities.

The Doria Feminist Fund seeks to create a feminist ecosystem where the new generation of feminist movement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has access to more and better funding and resources that enable the development and sustainability of its activism to advance the rights, well‐being, and security of all women and LBTQ+ individuals and groups. They mobilize financial, political, and technical resources to give grants and offer close accompaniment to feminist groups and engaged feminist scholars in the MENA region. They work to ensure they have the necessary resources to sustain and develop their activism, identify and determine their priorities independently, produce homegrown knowledge by and for their movements, and advocate for the rights of all women and LBTQ+ individuals and groups in their countries. Independent feminist groups in the MENA region are at the forefront of the fight for justice and equality for all women and LBTQ+ individuals and organizations.

And probably most important, there are a host of national women's funds around the world (a sample few):

Ukrainian Women's Fund (UWF) supports women's/feminist organizations to ensure participation in the development of a powerful, effective, and mass women's/feminist movement capable of protecting women's rights and promoting gender equality in all areas.

ELAS—Social Investment Fund (Brazil) since 2000 has been investing exclusively in women's leadership and rights of women, creating social impact and change. ELAS transforms innovative ideas of thousands of women from different ethnicities, races, and sexual orientations into reality.

Women's Fund Fiji is the resource mobilization arm of the feminist and women's movement in Fiji. They strive to shift more power and resources into the hands of diverse women, girls, and gender nonconforming people from rural, remote, and marginalized communities in Fiji and the Pacific, opening doors for a more inclusive model of funding in the region.

Fonds Pour Les Femmes Congolais (FFC) (Democratic Republic of Congo) was established in 2007 by Julienne Lusenge and a group of Congolese women to fund Congolese women's groups that were not able to access funding through other sources. Since 2010, FFC has awarded approximately 538 grants to grassroots organizations led by women and girls. FFC is active in 16 provinces with the goal of covering all 26 provinces in the coming years. Its vision is a country free of violence, where women and girls have rights to physical integrity and economic justice and where women participate in all levels of decision‐making that affect their lives and communities.

More women's funds can be found at https://www.prospera-inwf.org/#!/-home/.

In “Lighting the Way: The Power and Promise of Feminist Movements,” Bridgespan and Shake the Table argue feminist funds are necessary to “hold ground against the anti‐gender movement and gain traction in shifting power.” Nidhi Sahni, head of US advisory at Bridgespan and a coauthor of the report, says “Because they are cutting across systems, they aren't being resourced at the level they need to be.”²

Feminist funds are proven, effective, on‐the‐ground resources with a track record of creating change, but they lack sufficient dollars and unrestricted support to allocate funds to where they are most needed, the report said. At the same time, 80% of wealthy donors surveyed by Bridgespan want to support organizations that are creating social change and are addressing racial and economic inequities.³ Women's funds provide the bridge to meet both of these needs.

The report details how feminist funds—which refers to a range of movements, organizations, and donor collaboratives—have effectively cut across these silos. The funds include “organizations, leaders, and networks working together to change power structures that reinforce gender and other inequalities,” a definition the report authors took from Batliwala.⁴

I'll end with the words of another everyday feminist, the founder of a national and regional feminist fund, Mozn Nazr, and a board director at Global Fund for Women. She is a bold, sultry, and very controversial woman on a trailblazing path that we all should watch for lessons and inspiration. She explains the powerful impact of feminist funds' grassroots organizing and movement building in the MENA region:

The movements in this region have faced critical times. The process to have a different constitution in Egypt, after a complicated time, losing everything under the Muslim Brotherhood regime, provided an opportunity. Even though in 2014 we knew well from the beginning that it's not a permanent constitution with all this violence and tension between people. But the women's movement decided to go through this process of entering these discussions to gain something and represent our communities throughout the process. This was the best moment for the feminist movement in Egypt since the struggles of 2012 when we were underground, disconnected feminist organizations trying to combat violence against women, especially sexual violence. And suddenly in 2020, the younger generation, focused on securitization and closing the public sphere, faced a pandemic. And no one is sleeping. Sexual violence survivors start speaking out. Sudan begins a revolution and these new generations of everyday feminists, who are thoughtful, hit the ground running. Recognizing the moment, we started a feminist school in Nasir for the everyday feminists right after the revolution, and we mentored them to go through the process to do their work. So now we found that those who have been part of this mentorship work have been conducting feminist schools all over the Sudan. This is part of the collective knowledge and power of feminism. And then in Lebanon, after the Beirut explosion, a regional group of everyday feminists in politics called the caucus of women politicians in the Arab region. And we've been trying from regional missions, to go to certain countries and have this discussion about a feminist agenda and play the role of mediators from the region to have an international process of feminists in the region to change things. It's been more than two years, but we are in it for the long process. This is the moment to pass laws to criminalize violence against women in Tunisia. There have been 55 sessions inside the Tunisian Parliament having women speaking on this for the first time in this region's history. The courage of the Gulf women and the Yemeni women in the last 10 years speaks to why we must keep supporting feminists' movements, including in Saudi. It's amazing seeing new everyday feminist groups coming from Kuwait, from Qatar, from Oman, highlighting women and queer people's political struggles. Feminist movements are diving themselves into the peace process agenda. This is the power of Women's funds and supporting the everyday feminists.

Imagine that … maybe it's time to leave all the important issues of our time to everyday feminists: the Middle East peace process, the climate crisis, and only God knows what else. I mean if we are serious about getting it done!

Notes

1. L. C. Scherer and C. Dobson, “Collective Change: The Value of Mobilizing Local Resources for Women's Rights in the Global South and East,” Prospera. https://www.prospera-inwf.org/#!/-updates/.

2. Anna Quinn, Debby Bielak, Jasmine Reliford, Nidhi Sahni, Pamela Shifman, Stephanie Kater, Swatee Deepak, and Tynesha McHarris, “Lighting the Way: A Report for Philanthropy on the Power and Promise of Feminist Movements,” Search Issue Lab (May 5, 2022). https://search.issuelab.org/resource/lighting-the-way-a-report-for-philanthropy-on-the-power-and-promise-of-feminist-movements.html.

3. “Four Pathways to Greater Giving,” Bridgespan (November 23, 2018). https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/library/philanthropy/four-pathways-unlock-greater-philanthropic-giving.

4. “Four Pathways to Greater Giving.”

Conclusion
Unleashing the Power of the Everyday Feminist for Us and Our World

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

—Margaret Mead

As I look back on my life with like‐minded community activists, I am stunned by what is a network of amazing women around the world. They are a treasure chest of gold: those giving, those working, those leading, and everyone supporting them. Our strategy is meant to shift the power and privilege of a few to equity and equality for all. I am reminded of my first definitive playing field for feminist work, the UN Women's 1995 Beijing Conference for women—a turning point in my life and in the lives of others. To this day, the global impact of that conference cannot be overstated. Recently, in 2020, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of that Beijing conference, in both Mexico and Paris, with renewed vigor under the “Generation Equality” campaign. I got the chance in community with so many others to reflect, rejoice, and refocus on gender equality and what's next on the journey that started so long ago. Although COVID prevented us from doing much of the work in person, UN Women and its partners—of which I am one—managed to ensure that there was a broad array of stakeholders around the table to make bold commitments for feminist technology, gender‐based violence, sexual rights and human rights, feminist movements, and much more. Although we are still working through how all of us show up and account for our commitments, it is clear to me that we are on the right track.

I feel like Stella when she got her groove back. These past couple years I have been surrounded more by family, as we holed up for COVID, than ever. Being in the United States again and having my children, including my nephews, near me is a true blessing. When the three musketeers are around, it's like Christmas every day. Since then, we have welcomed old and new friends into our space and when we finally vaccinated and came out of our COVID bubble, traveled to experience both exotic places—like Mexico, Paris, Ireland—and made stops in close‐by playgrounds in Reno and Vegas. I've had some excursions back to the South to meet parents, celebrate my mother's 70th birthday, and say goodbye to an aunt. I know I am in the right place at the right time. I have a great, healthy relationship with someone who moves in a similar rhythm and appreciates my goals. And finally, having a self‐care focus means I can deliver more for me and so many of those who have been mentioned in this book.

Now that I have arrived where I want to be, I am struck by the opportunities unfolding in front of me. I ask myself, “What's next? What is the plan from here?” Professionally, I have been challenging myself to transform GFW into the feminist organization of tomorrow and, of course, writing this book. It's been a joy to traverse my life and reflect on the pearls of wisdom, the inspiration, and the grit of these everyday feminists whom I've been blessed to know. I admire and am strengthened by them. Personally, I am not sure. I look to my daughter Sahara again to observe and learn. She seems so comfortable not planning for college. She simply states that she will go to one and it doesn't really matter which one. Her very answer makes me anxious. I meditate on the premise “let go and let God,” yet when I want to watch it in practice, I watch my daughter. I need to mirror her. I stop worrying about jumping too fast into a new relationship and just enjoy it. I stop asking myself where I will live when I am an empty nester and just enjoy living in this beautiful city of San Francisco now. And I stop asking myself how to make this world a better place for women and girls everywhere and just relish in the fact that there are amazing women and girls everywhere asking themselves that same question today. And together, we will prevail, one movement at a time.

In your journey with me through this book, we have seen how we can no longer afford to underappreciate, overlook, and underfund what has historically been our most crucial lever for transformative social change: everyday feminist women. The modern, everyday feminist working as a change agent within social movements—whether launching, growing, or sustaining them—has proven to be a critical maximizer for success. And not just for women's and gender issues but for causes that span the social spectrum. Resourcing the everyday feminist and the movements they champion is today's most neglected but powerful pathway to real, sustainable social change, locally and across the globe. Especially for communities in greatest need.

Although these everyday feminists are pivotal movement builders and key to sustaining momentum on a social issue, they are precisely the people who tend not to get noticed or supported. There are myriad reasons why. From being more difficult for funders to find than the easier landing spots of big, well‐established, traditional nonprofits to not fitting the mold of people typically entrusted with grants, the everyday feminist is perennially overachieving but undersupported. It's time we close the feminist funding gap, be bold in our choices of whom and how we support, and listen to the lessons these extraordinary women share on transformational social impact

I hope all of you, like me, are now serious about achieving transformative social impact and the kind of lasting change that will reduce suffering, disparities, inequalities, and degradation of our planet. I see everyday feminists working hard against some incredible challenges. I want to show up for them—and I hope you can join me.

The stories we've heard of everyday feminists like Loretta, M. Adams, Tarana, Miriam, Leslye, and others in this book are just the tip of the iceberg. They are launching, growing, and sustaining social movements that offer us a real pathway for a new world. But their organizations and their movements have been under‐resourced for too long. Whether it's through giving time, talent, or funding, we need to do more for them. Following are some specific ways that you can contribute most meaningfully.

Action Steps: Supporting the Everyday Feminist

Allow me to dream a bit with the following checklists for stakeholders. I encourage you to find where you fit in and consider what steps you will take to help.

Philanthropy (Foundations and Individuals)

Embrace and value the slow path to real, lasting change—stick with everyday feminists through the natural ups and down of movement work. A short‐term focus and pulling resources will disrupt progress and often cause the work to die.

Diversify your portfolio to include movements at different stages: emerging, taking‐off, and formalization, and even decline. This increases the likelihood of funds reaching the everyday feminist at the exact moment of need.

Balance your strategies to center and reflect the work that is already happening and presents opportunities for innovation. Allow more flexible funding to encourage everyday feminists to use resources where they are most impactful.

Move away from directing single‐issue grants to maximize programs that organically intersect.

Center everyday feminists of color with a specific goal to disrupt racist tendencies in philanthropy that hold them back, especially Black women.

Look for everyday feminists—especially those who are the hardest to find and those experiencing specific crises (remember you don't have to re‐create the wheel; you can partner with feminist funds who are experts at finding these grantees).

Nurture young everyday feminists to support their capacity, even if they have small organizations that are battling to achieve more capacity.

And finally, please read if you haven't already, “Lighting the Way: A Report for Philanthropy on the Power and Promise of Feminist Movements,” put out by the Bridgespan Group,¹ and “The Dire State of Funding for Black Feminist Movements—and What Donors Can Do About It,” by Hakima Abbas and Kellea Miller.²

Governments (Bilateral and Multilateral Funding Arms)

Protect everyday feminists serving as human rights defenders everywhere and implement no tolerance policies for countries that don't comply—with sanctions attached.

Urgently dedicate funds to women and girls in humanitarian situations including through women's funds that are closest to the communities.

Increase the percentage of gender funding that goes toward everyday feminists, feminist movements, and gender justice organizations, which include feminist funds so that you don't have to re‐create the wheel.Support feminist technology and startups that double the proportion of women working in technology and innovation, and eliminate online gender‐based violence.

Implement carbon reduction solutions that include a just transition from fossil fuels to sustainable fuels and that include the 1 billion people currently living without access to power of any kind, understanding that the climate crisis has the largest impact on the poor and most marginalized in society.

Expand access to sexual and reproductive health and rights to ensure bodily autonomy for all.

Eliminate the gender gap in the labor market and transform the care economy to ensure economic rights for all.

And, finally, please read if you haven't already, “Moving More Money to the Drivers of Change: How Bilateral and Multilateral Funders Can Resource Feminist Movements,”³ put out by AWID (cite #76) as well as some of titles listed in “Decolonising Aid: A Reading and Resource List,” gathered by The New Humanitarian.⁴

Corporations, For‐Profit or Hybrid Organizations, and ESG‐Minded Businesses

Clarify values of your leadership, boards, and staff members to ensure you partner with and listen to everyday feminists.

Don't re‐create the wheel. Going alone does not garner trust. Partner with women's funds and others who know and work with everyday feminists in specific markets and geographies.

Evaluate your risk appetite and trust everyday feminists, their organizations, and their movements with unrestricted, long‐term, flexible support. The return on investment will be worth it.

Give the everyday feminists a seat at the table to help make decisions for the communities that affect them.

Support investment in everyday feminists through your business strategy and not just corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Value support throughout your enterprise; don't let this be relegated to CSR initiatives where it can be perceived by the rest as “not my responsibility.”

Account for your commitments for transformative social change by showing your progress toward intentional change in your leadership, business practices, and supply chain.

And finally, please read, if you haven't already, “Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women” in Harvard Business Review⁵ and “Because Feminist Activism Works,” put out by Mama Cash.⁶

Everyday Feminists, Women's Funds, and Feminist Movements

Do what you do!

Look for and develop support in your communities and we will find you.

Advocacy is not a bad word. We need your boldness as you drive change. Ask for what you need to do this work. And tell your stories.

Change the whole system. Don't accept promises to change pieces.

And finally, recognize this work is not charity. It is an investment in our collective futures and those of our children. It is a path to dismantling racism, sexism, classism, and ageism.

And finally, if you haven't already, please read “Funding for Intersectional Organizing” and “Where Is the Money for Feminist Organizing?” both put out by the Human Rights Funder Network.⁷ I believe these sources will help you decide if you are interested in direct partnerships with the listed industries or if you'd rather work through trusted intermediaries and partners you already know. There are benefits to both.

We can do this together! I know together, nothing can stop us. Together we are more than the sum of our parts. Be proud to call yourself an everyday feminist—or an everyday feminist ally. Working together we can end poverty, injustice, mass hunger, homelessness, refugee and environmental crises, inequities in education and health care, gender violence, oppression, and create a world where everyone can thrive and not just survive. Join us! Although these everyday feminists are pivotal movement builders and key to sustaining momentum on issues spanning social and economic challenges the world faces, they are precisely the people who tend not to get credit or the resources required to further drive their missions. They are often characterized as being more difficult for funders to find than the easier landing spots of big, well‐established, traditional nonprofits. This means they don't fit the mold of people typically entrusted with grants. I am convinced that everyday feminists are perennially overachieving but terribly undersupported. It's time we close the feminist funding gap, be bold in our choices of whom and how we support, and listen to the lessons of these extraordinary women share on transformational social impact.

Notes

1. Anna Quinn, Debby Bielak, Jasmine Reliford, Nidhi Sahni, Pamela Shifman, Stephanie Kater, Swatee Deepak, and Tynesha McHarris, “Lighting the Way: A Report for Philanthropy on the Power and Promise of Feminist Movements,” Search Issue Lab (May 5, 2022). https://search.issuelab.org/resource/lighting-the-way-a-report-for-philanthropy-on-the-power-and-promise-of-feminist-movements.html.

2. Hakima Abbas and Kellea Miller, “The Dire State of Funding for Black Feminist Movements—and What Donors Can Do About It,” Human Rights Funders Network (April 18, 2022). https://www.hrfn.org/resources/the-dire-state-of-funding-for-black-feminist-movements-and-what-donors-can-do-about-it/.

3. “Moving More Money to the Drivers of Change: How Bilateral and Multilateral Funders Can Resource Feminist Movements.” Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.mamacash.org/media/publications/movingmoremoney_mama_cash_awid_cmi.pdf.

4. “Decolonising Aid: A Reading and Resource List,” The New Humanitarian (August 12, 2022). https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2022/08/12/Decolonising-aid-a-reading-and-resource-list.

5. “Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women,” Harvard Business Review (July 22, 2022). https://hbr.org/2022/07/stop-undervaluing-exceptional-women.

6. “Because Feminist Activism Works,” Mama Cash. Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.mamacash.org/en/en-homepage.

7. “Funding for Intersectional Organizing,” Human Rights Funders Network.” Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.hrfn.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/AHR-Intersectionality-Report-July-2022.pdf.

Resources

Organizations of Spotlight Activists

Chapter 4: Tarana Burke; #MeToo

MeToo (https://metoomvmt.org/)

Chapter 5: M. Adams; Black Lives Matter

Freedom, Inc. (https://freedom-inc.org/)

Chapter 6: Refiloe Harris; MenEngage Movement

She Hive Association Lesotho

Cemetary Rd. Hoolo Ext. Florida, Maseru Lesotho +266 2231 4531

Chapter 7: Hewan Areaya

Siiqqee Scholars (https://www.facebook.com/SiiqqeeScholars/)

Chapter 8: Miriam Miranda

OFRANEH (https://grassrootsonline.org/who-we-are/partner/black-fraternal-organization-honduras-ofraneh/)

Chapter 9: Leslye Obiora; the Movement for Women's Political Empowerment

Institute for Research on African Women, Children, and Culture (nwachi2008@gmail.com)

Chapter 10: Loretta Ross; the Reproductive Justice Movement

Sister Love (https://www.sisterlove.org/)

Sister Song (https://www.sistersong.net/)

Chapter 11: Purity Kagwira; the Movement for Girls Education

Akili Dada Suite B7, Saachi Plaza, Argwings Khodhek Rd. Nairobi, Kenya +254 721 552120 (https://akilidada.org/)

Suggested Readings

Abbas, Hakima, and Kellea Miller, “The Dire State of Funding for Black Feminist Movements—and What Donors Can Do About It,” Human Rights Funders Network, Inside Philanthropy (August 5, 2021).

Arguelles, Pancho, Susan Williams, and Adina Hemley‐Bronstein, “Language Justice Toolkit,” Communities Creating Healthy Environments.

Bielak, Debby, Swatee Deepak, Stephanie Kater, Tynesha McHarris, Anna Quinn, Jasmine Reliford, Nidhi Sahni, and Pamela Shifman, “Lighting the Way: A Report for Philanthropy on the Power and Promise of Feminist Movements,” Candid Issue Lab (May 5, 2022).

Brechenmacher, Saskia, and Nikhita Salgame, “How the US Gender Equality Funding Increase Can Actually Be Affective,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (March 22, 2022).

Campbell, Elizabeth L., and Oliver Hahl, “Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women,” Harvard Business Review (July 22, 2022).

Dobson, Christen, and Lucía Carrasco Scherer, “Collective Change: The Value of Mobilizing Local Resources for Women's Rights in the Global South and East,” International Network of Women's Funds, Mama‐Cash (2015).

Dolker, Tenzin, “Where Is the Money for Feminist Organizing,” The Association for Women's Rights in Development (2021).

Dorsey, Cheryl, Jeff Bradach, and Peter Kim, “Racial Equity and Philanthropy: Disparities in Funding for Leaders of Color Leave Impact on the Table,” Echoing Green, The Bridgespan Group (May 2020).

Fergus, Lara, Karen Kraan, Susan Jessop, and Zohra Moosa, “A Review of Select Literature on the Impact of Feminist Activism in Achieving Women's Rights,” Mama‐Cash (July 2020).

“Funding for Intersectional Organizing: A Call to Action for Humans Rights Philanthropy,” Advancing Human Rights (June 2022).

The Global Resilience Fund, “Beyond Crisis: A Feminist Humanitarian Response That Centers Girls & Young People” (August 19, 2022).

Harris Dixon, Janelle, “How Black Women Have Powered Philanthropy Throughout History,” Shondaland (April 25, 2022).

Minsky, Adam S., “How ‘Cancel Student Debt’ Went from a Fringe Idea to Mainstream,” Forbes (September 21, 2020).

Ricard, Martin, “If You Want to Change People's Hearts and Minds on a Social Justice Issue, Stop Talking About Numbers and Do This Instead” (March 31, 2022).

Staszewska, Kasia, Kellea Miller, and Esther Lever, “Moving More Money to the Drivers of Change: How Bilateral and Multilateral Funders Can Resource Feminist Movements,” The Association for Women's Rights in Development, Mama‐Cash (November 2020).

Sternfels, Bob, and Tracy Francis, Anu Madgavkar, and Sven Smit, “Our Future Lives and Livelihoods: Sustainable and Inclusive and Growing,” McKinsey Quarterly (October 26, 2021).

Suddath, Claire, “It's Getting Harder to Be a Woman in America,” Business Week (August 3, 2022).

Weldon, S. Laurel, When Protests Make Policy: How Social Movements Represent Disadvantaged Groups (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).

Women's Refuge Commission, “Toward Feminist Place‐Based Responses to Forced Displacement” (March 2022).

Yvette Taylor, Ula, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

About the Author

Latanya Mapp Frett [she/her/hers] is president and CEO of Global Fund for Women and serves on the board of directors for Global Fund for Women and Global Fund for Women UK. As a feminist fund, Global Fund for Women offers flexible and catalytic support to a diverse group of partners—more than 5,000 groups across 175 countries so far—to create meaningful change that will last beyond our lifetimes. She is committed to bringing resource partners to the table as equal learners interested in sustaining social impact through a justice lens.

Previously, she was the executive director of Planned Parenthood Global, the international arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, with regional and country offices in Africa and Latin America. She quadrupled the size of the program in four years to become one of the most innovative and sustainable global health organizations in the field.

Ms. Frett worked for eight years as a human rights officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and for ten years with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Ms. Frett served as a delegate to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and continues to fight for the human rights of women.

An attorney by training, she began her career at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Washington, DC. She has received many honors and awards, including two Esteemed Meritorious Honor Awards from the US government and the highest honor in civil service, the Superior Honor Award, from the US State Department. Ms. Frett was one of 30 foreign service officers honored with the Colin Powell Fellowship by then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Ms. Frett currently serves on the board of directors at Oxfam International and Management Sciences for Health and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She sits on the ICPD High Level Commission and the Advisory Boards for CapGemini, the UNF Resilience Fund, and EXIM Council on Advancing Women in Business. Ms. Frett is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and author of four UN human rights reports and manuals. She is a returned Peace Corps volunteer and alum of International Career Advancement Program Fellows Association. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds a bachelor of arts in government and politics, a master's in public policy, and a JD from the University of Maryland.

Index

A

Abbas, Hakima, 180

Accountability, everyday feminist task, 28

Action (support), infrastructure (usage), 30–31

Action steps, 180–183

Adams, M., impact, 67, 72–76, 179

Adeleye‐Fayemi, Bisi, 119

Advocacy, importance, 120–121

African people, dignity (loss), 106

African Women's Development Fund (AWDF), 70, 119, 173

Ageism, fighting, 9

al‐Ali, Suad (murder), 162

Alignment, everyday feminist task, 29

ALIGN report, 36

Ali, Muhammad, 14

al‐Shehab, Salma, 164

Americanness, awareness, 155

Anti‐apartheid movement, 13–14

Anti‐racist education, providing, 16

Apartheid, 5

Arab Spring, 128–129

Araújo dos Passos, Maria Clara, 46

Areaya, Hewan, 89, 96–101

impact, 98–99

movement work, 97–98

Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), 181

ASTREA Lesbian Foundation for Justice, 171–172

AYNI, 113

B

Bairros, Luiza, 46

Barker, Gary, 82

“Because Feminist Activism Works” (Mama Cash), 182

Bilateral funding arms, 181

Billi Now Now (BNN), 143–144

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) everyday feminists, impact, 40

Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, 67, 72–76

Black nationalist movement, 14–15

Black Panther Party (BPP), 15–16, 68

Black Student Union, rallying call, 4–5

Black Women's Blueprint, impact, 62

Black Women's Health Imperative, 133

Bodily autonomy, 127–132

Bridgespan Group, 47, 49, 174–175

Broken systems, feminists (impact), 118–119

Broster, Alice, 145

Brown, Elaine, 15–16

Brysk, Alison, 36

Burke, Tarana, 11, 49, 53, 59–60, 179

impact, 61–65

C

Canada, development assistance, 43

Caning, 6

Carneiro, Sueli, 46

Central American Women's Fund (Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres) (FCAM), 173

Change agents, 179

funding, failure, 39

Charitable dollars, funding, 42–45

Chavez, Susana, 130

Chemonics International, gender impact, 45

Children

anti‐racist education, providing, 16

household staff employment, 155–156

refugee status, seeking, 156

Climate crisis, 141

fighting, 9

youth activists, impact, 146

Clinton, Hillary, 21

Coalition for Grassroots Human Rights Defenders Kenya, 7

Coalition to End Violence Against Women (COVAW), 28–29

Collective planning (support), infrastructure (usage), 30–31

Communications Consortium, 137

Communities Creating Healthy Environments, language justice determination, 108

Community

change, drive, 32

closeness, importance, 99–100

strategies, usage/support, 94–95

support, 157

transformative social impact, achievement, 106

Constituencies, building (everyday feminist task), 28

Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 57–59

Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 79, 90

Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 79

Corporal punishment

apartheid vestige, 5

cessation, South Africa legislation, 6

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, 182

Corporations, action steps, 181–182

Costello, Hafsat Abiola, 119

COVID pandemic, impact, 31–32, 177–178

Crack, development/epidemic, 18

CREA, partnership, 145

Crear‐Perry, Joia, 140

Crenshaw, Kimberlee, 16

CRIOLA, 46

Critical race theory (CRT), 16

Culture, survival, 103

D

Dada, Akili, 147, 148

DC Rape Crisis Center, 135

“Decolonising Aid: A Reading and Resource List” (The New Humanitarian), 181

Deng, Francis, 106

Diplomatic agendas, prioritization (complexity), 118

“Dire State of Funding for Black Feminist Movements, The” (Abbas/Miller), 180

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, 9, 134

Divest NOW!, demands, 4–5

Dixon Diallo, Dázon, 130, 140

Domestic/sexual abuse survivors, friendships, 55

Doria Feminist Fund, The, 173

Dove Self‐Esteem Fund study, 145

Duarte, Daniele, 46

E

Echoing Green, 47

Educational debt, racial equity issue, 17

ELAS (Social Investment Fund), 174

Electoral Knowledge Network (ACE), 41

El Moctar, Aminetoue Mint, 70

Emerging stage, 25

Emily's List, 125

Enterprising, everyday feminist task, 28

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) businesses, action steps, 181–182

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) corporations, financial funding, 56

Equality, focus, 10

Equality Fund, The (support), 171

Equal Justice Institute, 71

Everyday feminist, 3, 6

action steps, 182

activism, initiation, 9–10

change agent, 179

characteristics, 10, 61, 73, 97, 122, 134, 148

delivery, failure (perception), 48

funding, failure, 39

reasons, 46

identification, 9–11

impact, 8, 74–75

work, 27–31

importance, 12–13

leader, identification, 12

location, difficulty, 46

movements, features, 33t–34t, 61–62, 74

need, reasons, 153–157, 161

opportunities, 178–179

power

absence, perception, 47–48

unleashing, 177

powerbase, 64

Q Mda, 6–7

success, 13

support, action steps, 180–183

F

Fares, Tara (murder), 162

Farrakhan, Khadijah, 15

Farrakhan, Louis, 14

Federation of Secondary Education Students (movement), 110

Female genital mutilation (FGM)

elimination, movement, 29

Sierra Leone law, 149

Feminism

collective knowledge, 176

misconceptualization, 86

power, 176

versions, 70

Feminist for Life, 137

Feminist funds

effectiveness, 175

operation, 170

role, 167

Feminist handover, 167–168

Feminist movements

action steps, 182

comparative definition, 24, 42

racial reckoning, 72

term, usage, 24

Feminist philanthropy, defining, 169f

Feminists

accomplishments, rollbacks, 18–19

capacity, increase (need), 165

contributions, 14–15

human rights defenders classification, 164

identification, 11

impact, 115, 118–119

leaders/leadership

following, 67, 69–71

grassroots feminist leaders, support (improvement), 124–125

importance, 75

logic model (Women's Funding Network), 13f

organizations, misconceptions/false narratives, 49

social impact, 131–132

success, 131–132

support, 144–146, 149–150

work, reasons (acknowledgment), 105–106

Financial resources/assets/skills, mobilization, 170

Flogging, 3, 6

Floyd, George (murder), 71, 72

Fonds Pour Les Femmes Congolais (FFC), 174

Formalization stage, 26

For‐profit organizations, action steps, 181–182

Forward Together, 133

Foundations, financial funding, 56

Fourth World Conference on Women (4th Women's Conference) (1995), 21–22, 134

Franco, Marielle, 164

Franklin, Shirley, 40

FRIDA Young Feminist Fund, 172

Fundaeco (advocacy), 129–130

“Funding for Intersectional Organizing,” 182

Fundraising, gender gap, 41

G

Gbowee, Leymah, 26

Gender‐based violence (GBV), issue, 53, 82, 85–86

Gender Social Norms Index, 119

“Generation Equality” campaign, 177–178

Gharti, Bishnu Maya, 146

Gibson, Dawn‐Marie, 15

Girls

education, movement, 141, 147–150

strategic support, 170

Girls for Gender Equity, 63

Global Fund for Women (GFW), 24–27, 42, 73, 113

Adolescent Girl Council, 6–7

capacity assessment, 60

control, 167

impact, 170–171

MCAT, 71, 82, 96, 109, 121, 133, 147

role, 165

strategy, 168

Young Women's Leadership and Mentoring, 145

Global Gag Rule (Trump signing), 132

Gonzalez, Lélia, 46

Governments

action steps, 181

oppression, resistance, 15

Grassroots base, 27–28

Grassroots feminist leaders, support (improvement), 124–125

Grassroots organizing, importance, 62

Guterres, António, 19, 164

H

Harris, Cheryl, 16

Harris, Kamala, 133

Harris, Refiloe

impact, 77, 82–86

movement work, 84–85

Hatcher, Paris, 140

Healing, possibility, 64

HeforShe, formation, 82

Herd boys, issues/problems, 77–80

Herstory, importance, 105–106

Hijab, wearing, 155

Historically black college and university (HBCU), 41

Human Rights Funder Network, 182

Human Rights House Foundation, 164

Hybrid organizations, action steps, 181–182

I

Identity reductionism/determinism, 138

Implementation, everyday feminist task, 30

Indigenous knowledge, protection, 107

Indigenous movements, support (importance), 112

Indigenous rights movement, 103, 109–113

Indigenous Women's Fund, 113

Institute for Research on African Women and Culture (IRAWCC), 123

Inter‐American Court, Indigenous rights judgement, 112

Intergenerational feminism, commitment, 144

International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) report, 133

International Labour Organization (ILO), 90–91

International nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), 44, 85

International Women's Health Coalition, 72

Intersectional justices, 158

Issue‐base capacity, focus, 45

J

Jim Crow, 4–5

Jones, Elaine, 12, 68–69, 71

Justice, promotion (goals), 4

Just Say No movement, 17–18

K

Kagwiria, Purity, 141, 147–150

impact, 148–149

movement work, 148

Kamau‐Rutenberg, Wanjiru, 147

Karim, Jamillah, 15

Kendeda Fund, 145

Krane Derr, Mary, 137

L

Language justice, ensuring, 108

Laws, passage (inadequacy), 58–59

Leaders, everyday feminist identification, 12

Leadership

importance, 158

strength, 28–29

Legal Resources Centre (LRC)

case collection, 5–6

Hermanus deployment, 5

legal externship, 4

Lesotho, children (harm), 79–80

Let Her Decide, 130

Lewis, John, 39

LGBTTIQ+ movement, capacity (assessment), 28

“Lighting the Way: The Power and Promise of Feminist Movements” (Bridgespan/Shake the Table), 174–175, 180

Local knowledge, impact, 93

Lopez Torres, Rosie, 7–8

Lourde, Audre, 158

M

MADRE, 109

Makeba, Mariam, 14

Malcolm X, 14, 53

Mama Cash, support, 171, 182

Mandela, Winnie, 14

Martin, Trayvon (murder), 72

Mass poverty, fighting, 9

Matsuda, Mari, 16

Members (well‐being/safety), care (ability), 31–32

Men

engagement/allies, 82

issues, feminist issues (connection), 81

MenEngage Movement, 77, 82–86

Menstrual health movement, 89, 96–101

Me Too movement, 49, 53, 59–60, 137

backlash, 65

changes, 62–63

Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

feminist funds, impact, 175–176

feminist movement, 173

Millennium Challenge Account, 104

Miller, Kellea, 180

Miranda, Miriam, 103, 109–113, 179

impact, 111

movement work, 111

Miso‐only protocol, 129

Mntwana, Ida, 14

Mobilizing, everyday feminist task, 28

Moon, Ban‐Ki, 113

Moosa, Rahima, 14

Mosese, Lemohang Jeremiah, 83

Movement capacity, dimensions, 27–32

Movement capacity assessment tool (MCAT), 25

Movement for Women's Political Empowerment, 121–125

Movements, decline (reasons), 26

“Moving More Money to the Drivers of Change” (AWID), 181

Muhammad, Elijah Poole, 14

Muhammad, Sis Clara, 14–15

Multilateral funding arms, 181

Multilateral institutions, examination, 44

Muslim Brotherhood, impact, 175–176

Muslim Girl Training, development, 14

Mwikali, Rachael, 7, 8

N

NAACP, Legal Defense and Education Fund, 68

Nardini, Gia, 36

Narratives, 29–30

everyday feminist task, 29

Nascimento, Beatriz, 46

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 57

National Coalition Against Sexual Assault, 57

National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, 109

National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, 133

National Voter Registration Act, passage, 70–71

Nation of Islam, 14–15, 54

domestic/sexual abuse survivors, friendships, 55

Naz, Rakshanda, 59, 158

Nazr, Mozn, 175

Network of Adolescents and Youth in Africa (NAYA), 147

Networks, building, 170

Newton, Huey, 15

Nigerian National Youth Service Corps, 122

Ni Una Menos, 130

Nollywood, development, 117

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 8, 85, 112, 129

O

Obiora, Leslye, 115, 121–125, 179

impact, 123–124

movement work, 123

Okunola, Akindare, 119

Online/offline hate/violence, impact, 121

Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH), 109, 111

Organizing, everyday feminist task, 27

Osotimehin, Babatunde, 118

Oxfam International, 44

P

Partisan politics, impact, 18–19

Partnership

importance, 130–131

quality, 127

Peace Corps, 21, 78

Philanthropy, action steps, 180

Planned Parenthood, 59, 72, 127–131

Planned Parenthood Federations of America, 142

Planned Parenthood Global (PPG), 44, 128–131, 141, 143

Planning, everyday feminist task, 30

Police brutality, resistance, 15

Policy making, art, 69

Political empowerment, 115

Political leadership, leveraging, 132

Politics

empowerment movement, 115

women (role), 116

women (underrepresentation), 119–120

Positive change, possibility, 55–56

Preparedness, everyday feminist task, 31

President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), usage, 117–118

Private contractors (for‐profit organizations), examination, 44, 45

Private donors, financial funding, 56

Pro‐choice label, challenge, 127–128

Promsex (PPG partner), 130

Q

Q Mda (everyday feminist), 6–7, 8

R

Racial justice, struggle, 67, 71–72

Racial trauma, 71–72

Racism, 47

fighting, 9

Ramdas, Kavita, 11

Reagan, Nancy, 18

Reagan, Ronald, 18

Redwine, Dee, 129

Reflection (support), infrastructure (usage), 30–31

Refugee crisis, fighting, 9

Regional women's funds, 172–173

Religious opposition, 158

Reproductive futurism, 139

Reproductive justice (RJ)

framework, 130

movement, 127, 133–140

partnerships, impact, 138–139

term, coinage, 128

Reproductive politics (intersectionality), concept (application), 136

Reproductive rights, decrease, 132–133

Resources, short‐term delivery (focus), 45

Response, everyday feminist task, 31

Ribeiro, Djamila, 47

Ross, Loretta J., 11, 127, 133–140

impact, 136–137

movement work, 135–136

S

Sahni, Nidhi, 49, 174

Sanger, Margaret, 131

Scott, Portia, 39–41

campaign, contributions, 41

Seale, Bobby, 15

Self‐care, everyday feminist task, 31

Self‐esteem, crisis, 145

Sexual and gender‐based violence (SGBV), 57–58, 65

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), 148–149

Shabazz, Betty, 15

Shake the Table, 174–175

Shared vision, 29–30

She Decides (partnership), 132

She Hive (Lesotho NGO), 82

She Should Run, 125

Shifting the Power Coalition, 109

Siiqqee Scholars, 96–100

Silinga, Annie, 14

Simpson, Monica, 127, 128

Sister Love, 130

SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, 127

Slavery system, 4–5

Smith, Joanne, 63

Snake Nation, 143

Social change

advancement, problems (factors), 47

tenacity, 56–57

Social impact, 131–132

everyday feminist, relationship, 3, 12–13

Social justice

fight, 168

issues, 144–145

Social movement

building blocks/sub‐components, 30

insights, 24–25

leading, 21

life cycle, 25–27

term, usage, 22

Social problems

feminists, intersectional perspective, 56–57

interconnectedness, 10

Social spectrum, causes, 8

Social transformation, 170–171

Solinger, Rickie, 140

South Africa, apartheid, 5

STEAM Academy, establishment, 123

Steinem, Gloria, 21

Stevens, Brian, 71

Stimulating Philanthropy in Nigeria, 123

Stockholm Gender Forum, 7

“Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women” (Harvard Business Review), 182

Street children

focus, 89–90

health care services, inclusion, 91

interventions, 93–94

laborer classification, absence, 90–91

Student Debt Relief Plan, 17

Student loans

debt movement, 16–17

financial toll, 17

Success, defining (variation), 36–37

Suffrage movement, 37

Sustainable development goals (SDGs), contributions, 84

Sustainable impact

creation, 35

social movements, leading, 21

Sustainable social impact, 22

Suzman, Helen, 14

T

Taking‐off stage, 25–26

Taylor, Una Yvette, 14

Thematic funds, 171–172

This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (Mosese), 83

Thunberg, Greta, 146

Toxic masculinity, challenging, 82

Transformative social change, 8, 179

Transition, everyday feminist task, 28

Trans people, strategic support, 170

U

Ukraine, women's movement, 30–31

Ukraine Women's Fund, 31

Ukrainian Women's Fund (UWF), 174

UN Conference on Women (1995), 32

UNICEF, 89, 154

child protection officer, role, 79–80, 90, 154

strategies, funding allocation, 44

United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, 127

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), 107

United Nations Development Programme, 154

United Nations Women's 1995 Beijing Conference, 177

United States, development assistance, 43

Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights, 172

USAID

private sector allocation (Ion Ilasco report), 45

role/responsibility, 116–117

W

War on Drugs (Reagan), 18

Warren, Elizabeth, 16–17, 133

Weinstein, Harvey (sexual assault allegations), 59–60

“What is a movement?” (infographic), 23f

“Where Is the Money for Feminist Organizing” (Human Rights Funder Network), 182

Whipping, receiving, 3, 5

Williams, Patricia, 16

Women

discriminations, 10

funds, 168, 174

action steps, 182

organization, development assistance, 43f

refugee status, seeking, 156

strategic support, 170

violence, combatting, 175–176

Women Deliver, 72

Women & Girls Index (WGI) 2020, 42

Women of color (WOC), work/impact, 128

Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, formalization stage, 26

Women of the Nation (Shabazz/Farrakhan), 15

Women's Fund Asia, 172

Women's Fund Fiji, 174

X

Xavier de Castro, Maria, 46

Y

Yacouba, Sakena, 11

Yacoub, Reham (murder), 161–164

Young feminists, support, 144–146, 149–150

Yousafzai, Malala, 158–159

Youth empowerment, 141, 146

Z

Zimmerman, George (acquittal), 72

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