Acknowledging and Celebrating the Power and Impact of Women’s Human Rights Movements Over Three Decades
Change Takes Time
Over the past 30 years the work of women’s rights movements has led to nothing short of revolutionary changes in public attitudes, law, governance, and in the private sector and civil society. Women’s movements have changed how we think about gender and the meaning that we ascribe to it, and they have transformed how we understand violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and what counts as work.
We recognize that work on women’s rights is a long-term undertaking and requires sustained effort. We rarely put the time aside to reflect on the progress we have made and celebrate our success. For every victory, another challenge emerges. In the midst of urgent work to secure rights and hold the line against backlash, we often neglect to take the time to recognise, honour and rejoice in the gains that we have made.
For our 30th anniversary, we launched a history website that looks back at what we have learned from three decades of funding women’s rights activism. It tells the story of Mama Cash, including some of our key decisions, debates, strategies, groups funded and accomplishments. We also see our anniversary as a perfect moment to reflect on the impact of three decades of women’s organising in making our planet a more just place for women, girls and trans people – and indeed for everyone. As a funder of feminist movements for the past 30 years, Mama Cash is uniquely positioned to reflect on the changes, successes, and achievements to which our grantees and women’s movements have made such groundbreaking and essential contributions.
Taking this opportunity to reflect feels like both a responsibility and an honour. We invite you to join us in reflecting on how the collective bravery, relentless energy and sustained activism of girls, women and trans people has changed the world.
Women’s Movements Have Made Great Gains
For Mama Cash, the achievements of women’s movements during the last 30 years – and particularly those to which we and our grantees have contributed – can be broadly summarised and grouped into four categories:
• The injustices, exclusion and discrimination that used to be accepted are now unacceptable. For example, violence against women and girls is better understood as a social and political problem (rather than a private, individual one) and rejected by the majority of people as ever being justifiable.
• Cases of justice or equality that we once thought were exceptional have today become more commonplace. For example, women hold positions of leadership in politics, business and social movements which has changed perceptions of what women are capable of and can accomplish. Also, policy and legal protection for women’s rights are more prevalent. For example, anti-discrimination policies and laws offering protection in the workplace, educational institutions and beyond.
• Women, girls and trans people who were often spoken for by others are demanding to speak for themselves. Now many different groups of women, girls and trans people are organising autonomously, to speak in their own voices and address the issues that concern them. Many of these individuals see themselves as belonging to their specific movements (like Indigenous movements) as well as to (broader) women’s movements.
• We used to center on protecting women from harm. We are now more focused on the positive aspects of rights, securing freedom for women, and recognising their power and agency.
Women’s rights movements are mobilising to demand their rights, to make governments accountable for living up to the commitments they have made on paper, and to lead legal and policy reform. They are also taking on the hard work of changing hearts and minds, attitudes and behaviours so that girls are not the first pulled out of school, so that families do not feel the need to ‘hide’ their disabled daughters, so that sex work is seen as work and not stigmatized, so that trans children are embraced and appreciated for their uniqueness.
It is a Collective Effort
One person or organisation acting alone can rarely shake up the world. It takes many, many people to deconstruct harmful and discriminatory systems to move us forward. It takes thousands of awareness raising workshops, media interviews, demonstrations, personal stories, research papers, presentations, parliamentary hearings, court cases, one-on-one conversations, coming outs, strategy meetings, long nights, and a few parties too.
In the early 1980s feminism was often seen as a middle class, urban, mostly white women’s movement. But there has always been pressure ‘from the margins’ to make movements more inclusive, and we see many indications that women’s rights movements are becoming more inclusive. This is something that Mama Cash advocates in our grantmaking and accompaniment work. Sex workers, lesbians, bisexual women, trans people, young women, older women, women living with HIV, women with disabilities, women of non-privileged ethnic, economic or cultural backgrounds, and rural women are demanding a place at the table and rejecting the presumption of those who try to speak on their behalf.
Our networks, friends, allies, grantees and partners have been at the front of movements at the grassroots, as well as national, regional and international levels. They have contributed to changes which have brought safety, security, dignity, health, wellbeing, freedom and pleasure to many. We thank and honour you!
Backlash and the Way Ahead
In acknowledging and celebrating the achievements of women’s rights movements over the past three decades, it is imperative to also address what we see as the work that remains to be done, part of which, from our perspective, is the ‘downside’ of our successes. We believe that much of the gender-based violence against women that occurs today is part of a backlash against the greater autonomy that women have achieved in recent decades. Also, work to secure women’s human rights continues to be under-funded and under-supported.
Contemporary realities require new strategies on the part of women’s movements, to protect the gains won and to achieve new ones. The work of sustaining and advancing rights for women, girls and trans people is ongoing and requires creativity and persistence. It also requires generations.
Mama Cash is in it for the long haul! Our work must be unceasing – not because of a lack of achievement, but because we live in a complex world where each victory brings with it new and different challenges. But the victories also generate more strength, more autonomy and more opportunities – and that is what Mama Cash wants to acknowledge and celebrate in our 30th anniversary year.
We are alive and kicking, and we have, together, made so much progress. Concretely, we recognize that women’s rights movements are:
• Transforming how violence is understood and dealt with;
• Supporting the realisation of sexual and reproductive health and rights;
• Increasing access to work and control of money;
• Changing people’s views on gender and sexuality;
• Finding new and better ways of organising for social justice; and
• Challenging fundamentalisms.
In the coming weeks, we welcome you to our series exploring how women’s rights movements globally— including our grantees— have contributed to changes in the above mentioned thematic areas. Each article can stand on its own, but taken together creates an overview that shows how women’s rights activism has secured tangible and significant social, economic and political change over the past thirty (plus) years.
For more information please visit our website.