Feminist and women’s movements in the context of ending violence against women and girls – implications for funders and grant makers

Summary & Objectives

The review aims to clarify how feminist and women’s movements contribute to ending violence against women and girls. It maps key concepts, theories and frameworks on social movements, movement ecologies and women’s rights organizations. It also examines how funders and grant makers currently support these movements and how this support can be strengthened.

Findings

The review finds that movement-building is distinct from service delivery and other programme work, and that funders often conflate these roles. Organizations occupy different positions as builders, supporters or constituents of movements, and these roles shift over time and across contexts.

Feminist and women’s movements may or may not use the “feminist” label, but what matters for EVAWG is their political principles, strategies and commitment to transforming power and gender norms. Existing literature shows that women’s rights organizations and feminist movements are central to progress on ending violence, yet evidence on how funding practices strengthen movement-building remains limited.

Funding from women’s funds and some feminist-rooted foundations offers important lessons, but broader resourcing of movement-building for EVAWG is still underdeveloped and poorly documented.

Recommendations

The review recommends that funders deepen their understanding of social movement theories and movement ecologies and use this to guide what and whom they fund. They should assess whether organizations play movement-building, movement-support or constituency roles and fund them accordingly, rather than only backing short-term projects.

Funders are encouraged to invest in practice-based evidence on how support to CSOs and WROs builds feminist movements to end violence, including funding for learning, knowledge generation and cross-movement convenings. More broadly, it calls for long-term, flexible and core funding that can sustain feminist and women’s movements, support leadership from marginalized groups and enable adaptive, context-specific strategies for ending violence against women and girls.