This report, Redefining Risk: The Cost of Not Funding Women’s Rights Organisations, investigates the critical consequences of defunding and suppressing feminist movements globally. While donors often focus on the perceived risks of funding Women’s Rights Organisations (WROs)—such as “absorption capacity” or “misuse of funds”—this study argues that the far greater risk lies in the inaction and the subsequent erosion of gender equality progress.

Introduction

This study by EM2030 and the AFM seeks to strengthen the evidence base for advocates and funders who look to direct more and better funding to WROs.

We know many donors face significant public and internal scrutiny over the perceived risks associated with funding WROs. These risks include scrutiny over whether funding WROs delivers sufficient measurable results, alongside perceived risks related to absorption capacity and misuse of funds. The AFM has consistently raised this issue, which came up repeatedly with panellists during the Dutch-hosted Shaping Feminist Foreign Policy Conference in The Hague in 2023.

In this context, AFM and EM2030 aim to flip the narrative of ‘risk’ on its head, interrogating what risks to gender equality and broader development outcomes arise when robust, well-funded and well-supported WROs cease to operate. To do this, the study explores four country contexts in which feminist movements have experienced a decline in funding or closing civic space since 2000: Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Türkiye and Zimbabwe.

This research will contribute evidence for campaigners to use both within funding bodies and in the broader WRO space to advocate more and better resources for feminist movements and thereby bolster gender-equality progress across issues and contexts.