Category: Feminist Strategy

VIVA Girls: How MADRE Funds Girls on the Margins

Around the world, girls and teens are exposed to violence, environmental devastation, societal exclusion and harm, and other difficulties. MADRE is an international women’s rights organization that typically partners with women-led groups dealing with war and disaster. It is now stepping up to specifically support girls’ growth as they face diverse challenges through a new grantmaking program: VIVA Girls.

Girls from Columbia working with MADRE. (photo credit: MADRE)

With a focus on listening to and uplifting girls’ voices and solutions, MADRE wants to reach “girls from marginalized communities who endure many forms of discrimination; what some people would call ‘girls on the last mile,’” Executive Director Yifat Susskind says. Susskind offered us insights into how VIVA Girls works. MADRE plans to devote about $3 million to this initiative during the next three years.

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Investing in Gender Equity with a Better Tax Structure

Here at Philanthropy Women, we are primarily concerned with how gender equality movements are being cultivated through charitable giving. However, we occasionally like to step out of our silo and bring in news about how gender equality can be fostered through our collective distribution systems known as governments.

Which is why, today, we want to talk about Elizabeth Warren’s proposed ‘Wealth Tax’. According to Nancy L. Cohen, author, historian and thought leader on gender and American politics, “Warren’s wealth tax would be a massive investment in gender equity.”

Warren’s proposed tax structure might be the biggest boon yet for gender equality in the U.S. (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

“Senator Warren’s proposed wealth tax is a massive investment in gender equality – and if enacted, would be a gamechanger for women and girls across the US,” said Cohen, further describing the tax plan as a “bold investments in universal childcare and early education” that would “raise wages for childcare workers” and “unleash the potential of American women – increasing workforce participation and helping to close the gender wage gap.” 

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Feminism is for Everybody: Spotlight on Suzanne Lerner

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Suzanne Lerner, activist, philanthropist, and co-founder and president of fashion brand Michael Stars. She serves on the board of the Ms. Foundation, ERA Coalition, and A Call to Men, as well as being a member of Women Moving Millions and Women Donors Network. To learn more about Suzanne, go to www.suzannelerner.com.

What is the most important message people need to understand about why gender equality is so important? 

suzanne lerner
Suzanne Lerner, CEO of Michael Stars, shares her insights on how funding women is changing the world. (Photo credit: Nadia Todres)

Equality is good for everybody. Period. 

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Leadership for a Changing World: Mary Robinson at #WomenFunded

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, provided the keynote address for Women Funding Network’s conference, Leadership for a Changing World, held in San Francisco in September. With a message of urgency about our climate crisis combined with a call for more women’s leadership, Robinson brought the audience to their feet with applause for her words.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – September 12 – Mary Robinson and Melanie Allen attend Women’s Funding Network Conference and VIP Reception with Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson on September 12th 2019 at Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, CA (Photo – Susana Bates for Drew Altizer Photography)

“Unless women take leadership in dealing with the climate crisis, then all the other issues, and I fully believe in the intersectionality of all the other issues, but all the other issues will actually fade, because we won’t have a livable world for our children and grandchildren,” said Robinson. “It’s as simple as that, and as stark as that, and as real as that, and that’s why it’s so important that women are now taking that leadership.”

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Funding Women Week in Review

Funding Women: The Good

Melinda Gates Commits $1 Billion to Gender Equity in the U.S. : It’s a good day for funding women when one of the richest women in the world declares she will invest $1 billion over ten years (still not enough!) in new efforts to address gender equality. Not surprisingly, Melinda lays awake at night worrying about many of the same things I worry about:

Bill and Melinda Gates, Co-Chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting with the Union Minister of Women and Child Development, Smt. Maneka Sanjay Gandhi, in New Delhi on September 19, 2014. (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s what keeps me up at night: I imagine waking up one morning to find that the country has moved on. That the media has stopped reporting on systemic inequalities. That diversity remains something companies talk about instead of prioritizing. That all of this energy and attention has amounted to a temporary swell instead of a sea change.

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GameDev Culture Must Change: #MeToo Arrives at Gamer Event

The annual Women in Games European Conference kicked off in London on September 11, facilitating a conversation the games development industry has been itching to have since 2014.

Attendees at the Women in Games European Conference gather for two days of advocacy, discussion, and recognition. (Photo Credit: WIG European Conference)

Sexual harassment, assault, and unhealthy work environments for women, nonbinary individuals, and other marginalized communities are all far too common in gamedev. In recent years, allegations of harassment and assault have come to light, leading to major restructuring decisions from games industry giants like news sources Polygon and IGN, and developer Bethesda.

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#WomenFunded2019: Winning the White House with Women of Color

women of color
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – September 12 – Melanie Brown and Aimee Allison attend Women’s Funding Network Conference and VIP Reception with Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson on September 12th 2019 at Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, CA. (Photo – Susana Bates for Drew Altizer Photography)

In April of 2019, Aimee Allison, Founder of #SheThePeople, brought together 8 of the strongest contenders for the Democratic Presidential ticket in 2020, and had them speak to a key constituency in the upcoming election: women of color. The forum was held at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas, and featured Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

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Back to School: Women Donors and Higher Education

higher education
Roberta “Bertie” Buffett Elliott, who donated $100 million to fund the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University, recently visited the campus. (Photo credit: Buffett Institute for Global Studies)

Institutions of higher learning are major recipients of philanthropic gifts, and received donations totaling nearly $47 billion in 2018 (a more than seven percent increase from the year previous). This rise is fueled in part by an increasingly wealthy, educated and philanthropically active group of women who are willing to make big ticket donations to colleges and universities.

Major female donors to higher education have included Roberta “Bertie” Buffett Elliott, who in 2015 gave her alma mater Northwestern University $100 million to fund the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Studies. The gift from Elliott, a member of Northwestern’s class of 1954, represents the single largest gift in the Evanston, Illinois school’s history.

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Women’s Funding Network 2019: A Finale of Feminist Leader Fireworks

The final lineup of the Women’s Funding Network conference Leadership for a Changing World felt like a fireworks finale of feminist brilliance across philanthropy, art, business, and politics. Let’s take a look at these amazing blasts of thought and strategy leadership one at a time.

Whose Story Is It?

women's funding network
Jeanne Bourgault, President and CEO of Internews, and Cristi Hegranes, CEO of Global Press, discuss strategies for increasing women’s representation as media creators and subjects. The conference was hosted by the Women’s Funding Network.

Cristi Hegranes, CEO of Global Press and the Publisher of Global Press Journal, and Jeanne Bourgault, President and CEO of Internews, discussed how having more women creating and distributing media can have a significant influence on how we interact with, interpret, and change the world.

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Toxic Donors and The Perils of Not Listening to Women

In the fall-out around MIT’s prestigiously respected Media Lab over its acceptance of repeated donations from Jeffrey Epstein, a known sexual predator of underaged girls, a number of sheros shine. Each act of these women highlight a different aspect of the larger cultural problem about misogyny and how deeply masculinist views are entrenched at multiple points in society. I list the women here as the chronology of the story unfolded:

Arwa Mboya, a MIT graduate student, speaks at a rally September 13th on campus organized to protest the university’s accepting Epstein donations. In August she had called for Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, to resign.

Arwa Mboya, MIT graduate student in Civic Media, a division of the Media Lab

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