special grant round
gender justice in the global economy
In 2020, the SAGE Fund piloted a new thematic line of grantmaking to support organizations implementing innovative efforts to strengthen gender justice in the global economy.
In this new video, the six grantee partnerships supported by this thematic grantmaking round discuss what economic justice means to them – and envision what the world would look like if both gender and economic justice were achieved.
Economic globalization has fostered an economic-growth-centered system based on unsustainable models of production and exploitation of natural resources. Though this system harms all people, women in marginalized communities often bear disproportionate costs of production, extraction, and environmental harms.
The voices, rights, and interests of women in these impacted communities are not driving—or even heard in—development and investment decision-making, often resulting in policies and practices that further disempower women and undermine their livelihoods.
Economic policies in many countries continue to dismantle public services and social protection systems, at the expense of women’s paid and unpaid work.
Women continue to be overrepresented in precarious, occupationally segregated jobs; they are paid less than men and often lack social security and effective protection against harassment and violence.
All of these impacts have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it triggered.
With this thematic focus, SAGE seeks to support women-led strategies to prevent or remedy the disproportionate negative impacts of economic globalization on women, creating field infrastructure to advance this work and expand engagement of women’s rights and feminist movements with economic justice issues. Each project centers around power-building with a strong focus on cross-movement collaboration; strengthening women’s leadership and capacity to address systemic causes; and creating platforms for strategizing economic alternatives and agenda-setting.
SAGE’S INTEGRATED GENDER JUSTICE APPROACH
Beginning with this thematic grant round, SAGE has invested heavily in participatory research, outreach and field engagement to strengthen its internal learning about how patriarchal power structures embedded in the global economy exclude, invisibilize and negatively impact women, trans, intersex, and nonbinary people. Expanding its learning, SAGE undertook a landscape analysis on Women and Extractivism, drawing upon nearly 100 interviews with women leaders and their allies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The resulting framework and findings, Building Power in Crisis, provides an analysis of opportunities to support women and their communities both resisting extractive development and leading with sustainable alternatives.
This extensive learning and groundwork has led SAGE to integrate a gender approach across its programmatic work to strengthen accountability and gender justice in the global economy, from seeding women-led approaches in grantmaking to catalyzing new connections between human rights and feminist movements.
grant round locations
Building a Cross-Movement Alliance for Women’s Labor Rights and Unpaid/Paid Work
The project aims to reverse the exploitation of women’s paid work and unpaid care work by promoting investments in public services and social protection, strengthening a cross-movement global campaign alliance for women’s labor rights, and promoting national-level policy changes in Ghana, Kenya, Liberia and Zimbabwe.
organizations
ActionAid International, actionaid.org, Global and Africa
ActionAid Country Programs: Ghana, ghana.actionaid.org;
Kenya, kenya.actionaid.org; Liberia, liberia.actionaid.org,
and Zimbabwe, zimbabwe.actionaid.org.
leveraging Constitutional Reform to Enshrine Women’s Economic Justice
The project will mobilize, coordinate and build the capacity of Chilean feminist and other social movements to participate in and shape the upcoming constitutional process, seizing a historical opportunity to address structural inequality and secure strong protections for women’s social and economic rights.
orgaNIZations
Corporación Humanas, humanas.cl, Chile
Observatorio de Género y Equidad, oge.cl, Chile
Centro de Estudios de la Mujer, cem.cl, Chile
Piloting a Tool for Rural Women’s Economic Justice
The project will pilot the implementation of new guide developed to help rural women in Honduras translate recent international human rights standards on rural women’s rights and sustainable livelihoods into local transformative agendas and policies around the right to food and climate change.
ORGANIZATIONS
FIAN Honduras, facebook.com/watch/fianhonduras, Honduras
FIAN International, fian.org, Germany
Building Cross-Movement Capacity to Advocate for Tax and Gender Justice
The project will strengthen cross-movement capacity and collaboration among Global South women’s rights activists working at the intersection of tax and gender justice to advocate for fair and transparent tax policies towards a universal feminist tax system.
ORGANIZATIONS
Global Alliance for Tax Justice, globaltaxjustice.org, Belgium
Womankind Worldwide (Womankind), womankind.org.uk, UK
Generating New Models for Combating GBVH in Indonesian Garment Factories
The project aims to combat gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in the Indonesian garment industry, through documentation, capacity-building, and brand engagement in order to lay the groundwork for an enforceable brand agreement modeled after the groundbreaking Lesotho agreement on GBVH.
ORGANIZATIONS
Lembaga Informasi Perburuhan Sedane, lips.or.id, Indonesia
Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), workersrights.org, USA
National Industrial Workers Union Federation (SPN), spn.or.id, Indonesia
Promoting Inheritance Equality to Ensure Economic Justice for Women in the Maghreb Region
The project will lay the groundwork for a long-term regional strategy to obtain inheritance equality in the Maghreb, and advance women’s economic justice by ensuring access to and control over financial and natural resources.
ORGANIZATIONS
Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD), facebook.com/femmesdemocrates, Tunisia
International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), fidh.org/en, France and Tunisia
In addition to the six grants supported by SAGE Fund, a project by the Solidarity Center, which surfaced through the WEJ RFP Process and will be supported by another donor, will be included in this cohort as part of the learning and accompaniment process.
Cross-Movement Building to Eliminate GBVH at Work
The project seeks to build cross-movement and women-led organizing to support national campaigns for the ratification of ILO Convention 190 and to challenge social and economic inequality as one of the root causes of gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work.
ORGANIZATION
Solidarity Center, solidaritycenter.org, Global
LEARNING AND SHARING KNOWLEDGE
In May 2021, the SAGE Fund convened representatives from a cross-section of organizations working on seven projects related to advancing women’s economic justice as part of SAGE’s pilot grantmaking program. This exploratory grant program centers women’s economic justice at the intersections of women’s rights, human rights, and global economy issues. The convening created a platform for the grantee partners to hold an initial exchange of goals, strategies and ideas about their larger vision for the work on women’s economic justice. Participants reflected on the challenges and opportunities related to the global pandemic, the rise of authoritarianism and shrinking civic space across contexts, South-South collaboration and power-building among women’s movements, and more. The key ideas and takeaways from the learning convening are highlighted in this Dialogue Summary.