When you hear the word “relationship,” what do you think of first? A couple in a romantic partnership, or two people sharing a conversation?
Two participants embrace at a Safe Conversations workshop. (Photo credit: Relationships First)
Most of us would lean toward that first option–which is part of the reason Relationships First is setting out to change the way we think about human interaction.
Relationships First is a nonprofit founded on the idea that healthy relationships are key to physical, financial, and emotional health–not just for people, but for the communities and countries they live in. When our relationships suffer, it shows. We tend to disconnect from our jobs, our friends, our children, our family members. And when this happens, performance drops, stress mounts, and communities feel the heaviest effects. This nonprofit seeks to break this vicious cycle by teaching new ways of communication.
Girls participate in the WFG-funded Unearth storytelling project. (Image credit: BRAVE)
“Too few girls have the chance to make decisions about any aspect of their lives – whether they can stay in school, whether and what they can study, when or who they marry, accessing health care, and if and where they can see friends,” Swatee Deepak, director of With and For Girls (WFG) says. WFG is a funding collaborative that seeks to shift the scales of power in teen girls’ favor. It gives financial support to girl-led and -centered groups around the world and engages young women in participatory grantmaking panels. This means, every year, former winning organizations train teen girls to choose the next prize recipients. As we’ve pointed out, girls and young women ages 10 to 24 make up 12.5% of the world’s population — around 900 million people total. But, less than 2 cents of every international aid dollar goes to campaigns directed toward girls in this age group.
The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team is currently the world champion team, and is currently competing in the Women’s World Cup to hold its title. (Photo Credit: FIFA.com)
On June 7, 2019, at the end of FIFA’s first Women’s Convention, President Gianni Infantino announced the organization’s new commitment to dedicate $500 million to women’s soccer programs over the next four years. The announcement came on the heels of FIFA’s new partnership with UN Women, focused on promoting gender equity around the world.
Held on June 6 and 7 in the days before the kickoff of the Women’s World Cup, the FIFA Women’s Football Convention was the organization’s latest foray into empowerment for female soccer players. As the first event of its kind, the Convention gathered leaders from sports and politics in an unprecedented arena to discuss key issues surrounding women’s empowerment and development in professional football.
Katja Iversen, President and CEO of Women Deliver, speaks at the Women Deliver conference held in early June, 2019, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau look on. (Image credit: Women Deliver 2019)
Women comprise a large and growing percentage of the global workforce, yet they often work under unhealthy and difficult conditions, including harassment and violence, that are damaging to them, and to their families and communities. In textile, garment and shoe manufacturing, as well as flower farming and tea, coffee, and cocoa processing, women comprise 50 to 80 percent of the workforce. Many of these female workers are underpaid and suffer from pervasive gender discrimination.
A new study finds men use broad language in grant proposals that leads them to win more science funding. (Images credit: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Bureau of Economic Research)
A recent study of a science grant application
process at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found male applicants received
higher scores than women, even in a blind review. At the foundation’s request,
a team from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed this
imbalance and reported that factors like scientific discipline and position,
publication record, and grant history were not factors — the main difference
was in the language used in proposal titles and descriptions. According to their
working paper, men were found to
use more words described as “broad,” while women chose more words labelled
“narrow.” The broader word choices were preferred, especially by male
reviewers. But, as in most research relating to complex issues of sex, bias and
language, the story is more nuanced.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama with Amy Maglio, Founder of the Women’s Global Education Project. (Photo: Chuck Kennedy for the Obama Foundation)
Recently when checking in with the Obama Foundation, we learned that they are highlighting the Women’s Global Education Project (WGEP) and its work in helping global communities end the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). To find our more about how this work takes place, Philanthropy Women spoke with Amy Maglio, Founder of WGEP. Maglio founded WGEP over 14 years ago after she was a peace corp volunteer in Senegal, where she lived for three years.
“When I got back from Senegal, I thought about all the girls I knew who weren’t in school,” said Maglio. She was particularly concerned with the reasons that girls weren’t going to school, and wanted to find more ways to ensure that girls got into school and stayed in school in Senegal. Maglio began partnering with local community-based organizations in Senegal that were already working on these questions. Local organizers in Senegal identified that girls ended their education often because of healthy, safety, and cultural issues.
The San Francisco Foundation is modeling a higher level of financial integrity as it announces a new $50 million for justice-lens investing, including hiring minority and women financial managers.
When you think of San Francisco, the first thing to come to mind is probably the Golden Gate Bridge, or the picturesque houses lining multi-million-dollar streets. You likely don’t immediately think of the wealth disparity that Silicon Valley brought to the city’s families, or the racial tensions that still crop up in a “dark blue region of a blue state.”
San Francisco faces the same problems that plague any city of its size. But what if that could change?
The San Francisco Foundation recently announced that it is committing $50 million to “investments that are aligned with its mission to building inclusive prosperity and racial equity in and around San Francisco.” In other words, the Foundation is committing 6.3% of its $800 million endowment to investment opportunities that will be good for the city of San Francisco — and they’re looking to invest with women- and minority-owned asset managers.
Over the past few years, the #MeToo movement has brought to light the rampant issues of sexual harassment, abuse, and violence that plague many of our communities. Mainstream media has primarily focused on sexual violence and harassment in high-profile industries, such as entertainment, sports, journalism, higher education, and the corporate world.
A new coalition of 11 funding partners have come together to create support for ending gender-based harassment and abuse in the workplace. (Image Credit: Safety and Dignity for Women)
But the populations most disproportionately affected by sexual violence and harassment are often the same ones that go underserved, both financially and by media coverage. These populations include women of color, trans and nonbinary women, women with disabilities and/or mental illnesses, immigrants and migrants, socioeconomically disadvantaged women, indigenous women, and incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women, among others. Many of these women work in industries where sexual violence is prevalent and often ignored, such as domestic work, restaurants, and hospitality. Workers in these industries often go without the labor protections that can serve as a partial buffer against sexual exploitation.
Take the Lead recently announced the launch of a new program to strengthen women’s leadership in journalism.
Women’s leadership is getting more strategic support to improve gender equity in journalism. Recently, Take the Lead announced a new program that is launching with support from both the Ford Foundation and the Democracy Fund. The program is called 50 Women Can Change the World in Journalism, and is aimed at “harness[ing] the collective power of women in journalism to build a more just and equal world,” according to a press release announcing the new endeavor.
Starting this year, 50 women journalists will engage in online and immersive learning with the program. The cohort will work to “re-envision journalism,” a profession dominated by women, but where women rarely make it into the top spots or earn as much as men.
“Women represent more than half of the journalism workforce, but are chronically underrepresented or misrepresented in journalism leadership,” said Gloria Feldt, Co-founder and CEO of Take the Lead. “Inequities within journalism must be rectified.”
To chip away at this inequity, the new journalism program will provide support and ongoing partnership with its first cohort of fifty professional journalists stationed around the country in publishing outlets. “Cohort members for this first #50WomenCan journalism program include many leading figures in communications,” says Feldt. “From The New York Times to The Center for Investigative Journalism to NBC News, our attendees are coming from the industry’s top media outlets.”
The Ford Foundation’s support for this project grows out of its mission to address equality in society. “Gender equity in journalism, as it is in any profession, is needed to ensure that all voices and viewpoints are heard, reflected and respected,” said Farai Chideya, Program Officer for Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation. “50 Women Can Change the World ensures this will happen.”
A powerful coalition of investors is taking action to steer the tech industry toward better practices that protect human rights in the digital age.
The companies listed above have all been issued the Investor Statement on Corporate Accountability for Digital Rights from the Investor Alliance for Human Rights. This Alliance wants Google, Facebook, and other tech companies to know that they will withdraw their investments if these companies do not take action to address human and digital rights abuses.
This coalition contains some familiar names in the socially responsible investing field such as Pax World Funds and Cornerstone Capital Group, but the largest number of signatories are Sisters of various religious orders: Sisters of Saint Joseph of Chestnut Hill, Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, and this is only a few of the religious funds signing on to this statement.
