Mobilising Resources for Women’s Organisations

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Resource mobilisation and financial sustainability for women’s movements worldwide is a significant issue in relation to pathways of women’s empowerment. The current crisis in donor funding for women’s organisations provides the opportunity to interrogate the significance of and relative positive or negative impact of donor funding on women’s organising at global, national and local levels. The research does not assume that successful women’s organising requires external funding. Rather it seeks to clarify the conditions under which external financial support to women’s organising has a positive impact on women’s empowerment as well as the conditions in which successful women’s organising is achievable without such support.

The research will is a 15 month collaborative project with the University of Ghana, IDS, Sussex and the Royal Tropical Institute, Netherlands, which started in April 2009. Participatory methods of critical reflection involving both donor staff and representatives of women’s rights organisations and networks in Bangladesh and Ghana as well as at regional and global levels will be used.