Where You Live Matters, and More Gender Lens Giving News

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to choose where we live. For most people, the decision often depends on employment: people relocate to a place with a better economy to find a job, or as a necessary step to start working at a new job. After college, I relocated from my home state of Michigan to Boston because the economy was much more robust. It has been my good fortune because the decision has worked out very well. While working remotely is not a universally available option, whether due to the nature of the work, like a nurse or a mechanic, it is easier to do and more widely available than ever before.

Lisa Pino is the new COO of Food for the Hungry (Image credit: Food for the Hungry)

And where we live has repercussions beyond the availability of jobs. Quality of life issues matter. Diversity, inclusion, and acceptance of lifestyle matter. Access to quality health care really matters. Health care includes reproductive rights and reproductive rights is more than being able to make your own decisions about your body. For example, how does your state of residence rank in terms of being a good place to have a baby?

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What Makes An Idea Valuable? Feminist Giving Explores

Have you ever wondered why, if we care so much about gender equality in the US, we make no progress on basic indicators like wage equality, which has been at a virtual standstill since 1994? 

Feminist Giving explores the terrain of how we give for gender equality.

One of the themes that my book, Feminist Giving, explores is the question of what makes certain ideas valuable, so valuable that they enter the mainstream of culture and become practiced in significant behavior changes.

The book demonstrates that what philanthropy does to change its behavior is very much a mirror of the rest of society. Sadly, the book concludes that it’s still a man’s world, and philanthropy remains a part of that problem.

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Get Your Copy of Feminist Giving, and Send in Your Reviews!

It’s official! Feminist Giving: Creating New Frontiers in Social Change is now available as a hardcover book! Grab your copy on Lulu to give the biggest resource boost to Philanthropy Women!

Feminist Giving is out! Get your copy today!

You can also buy the book on Kobo, or Amazon. This book is packed with the latest and greatest information from the feminist giving sphere. Loaded with interviews and insights from some of philanthropy’s top voices, Feminist Giving is a comprehensive look at modern feminist philanthropy and the themes, campaigns, and people leading the charge in transforming our world.

Review the Book on Amazon, Kobo, and Lulu

At this time, we’re also asking for your reviews! We want to hear everything you thought about Feminist Giving. You can add a review wherever you buy the book: Amazon, Kobo, and Lulu. You can also give us a shout-out on sites like Goodreads to help spread the word about this unique and groundbreaking book.

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Activist and Expert Allison Fine: Roadmap for Post-Roe Philanthropy

Elizabeth Warren has described the decades-long fight to protect Roe as standing high up on a ledge, and every year the ledge has gotten smaller and smaller. The upcoming SCOTUS ruling overturning Roe v. Wade removes the last sliver of the ledge.  

Allison Fine at a pro-choice rally in Tarrytown, New York on May 14, 2022. (Image credit: Allison Fine)

Overturning Roe has been the goal of the reactionary Right: to whitewash America by oppressing women and people of color. It’s not a byproduct of their relentless 40-year effort to turn back the clock, it is the point.

To be clear, women living in states like Oklahoma, Louisiana and Alabama have been living in a post-Roe world for a while. Still, it’s one thing not to have limited access, it’s another to be imprisoned for murder. 

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If Roe V. Wade Ends, What Should Feminist Funders Do?

What a disturbing time for humanity. It turns out that several of our new Supreme Court justices are outright liars about their commitment to Roe. v. Wade as the law of the land. As a result, we are now facing the end of legal abortion care in the U.S. What should funders of a pro-choice world do?

Doctors and activists gathered at the state Capital in Rhode Island recently to protest the draft new SCOTUS ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. (Image credit: Womxn Project)

That’s a big question, but it all comes down to increasing funding for women. If we increase funding for women, particularly women’s health care and women in political leadership, we can increase the ability for women to control their own lives. These are two of the most significant areas that need more funding, if we want to solve the problem of access to abortion.

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Why We Were So Easily Fooled by Hugh Hefner + Feminist Giving News

Hello there, my philanthro-friends. Welcome to another week of feminist giving updates, as well as other revelations in the world of gender equality news.

playboy feminist giving
Holly Madison, former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner and creator and star of Girls Next Door, discusses her diagnosis of Aspergers in Secrets of Playboy, and how she was drawn to living at the Playboy mansion early on because it gave her a sense of community. (Image credit: Secrets of Playboy)

This week, I did it. I binge-watched the first six episodes of Secrets of Playboy on A&E.

I did it for a lot of reasons. First, because I care about women, especially women who have survived trauma and are trying to make peace with that trauma and with the world that allowed it to happen.

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2% of 2% is Not Much: Why Feminism Grows At Snail’s Pace (And Updates)

Greetings, Friends! Hope you are all well and enjoying life as best you can. We continue to watch the scene on feminist giving news, and I still receive tons of emails pitching stories for PW. It pains me that I do not have the time to do more writing. I have had to increase my therapy caseload to cover the downsizing of PW, so my time for research and writing is more limited now.

Google and other corporations fund initiatives for women and girls and release publicity suggesting that they are big champions of the cause. At the same time, these corporations continue to fund anti-feminist legislators through the Republican State Leadership Committee. See details in the feminist happenings listed at the end of this post. (Image credit: Google on Twitter)

When I get time to come back to PW, one of the things I like to do just to cheer myself up is to take a random stroll through the PW Funder Database. It just makes me feel better about the world to know that funders exist that are putting real dollars into gender equality strategies every day.

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The Ascend Fund Grants $600 K for Electing Women in States

Pilot to accelerate gender parity in politics launched in Michigan, Mississippi, and Washington

(Image Credit: The Ascend Fund)

 Today, The Ascend Fund, a collaborative fund dedicated to accelerating the pace of change toward gender parity in U.S. politics, announced $600,000 in grant awards to 13 nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations in Michigan, Mississippi, and Washington as part of a pilot project designed to increase the number of diverse women serving in state legislatures.  

“Recent debates in state legislatures over abortion, voting rights, and other critical issues illustrate the increasing power of state lawmakers in politics. We want to ensure that everyone affected has a seat at the table in crafting such foundational bills,” said Abbie Hodgson, Director of The Ascend Fund.   

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To Grow Women’s Rights Globally, We Must Invest in Women Locally

Editor’s Note: The following essay is by By Dr. Susan M. Blaustein, Founder and Executive Director, WomenStrong International.

As someone who has funded and worked with women’s organizations to advance gender justice, human rights, and global development, I learned long ago that women always know what they and their families and communities need, in order to thrive; they simply lack the financial and technical resources needed to put their solutions into practice. 

 Partners working together at WomenStrong International’s Girls’ Education and Empowerment Retreat. (Image credit: WomenStrong International)

That’s why I celebrate the recent high-profile donor efforts to invest in women’s priorities. Yet, even with these bold commitments, the total philanthropic support for women’s organizations remains a paltry fraction – 1.6 percent — of U.S. grantmaking, according to the Women’s Philanthropy Institute’s latest Women and Girls Index, published by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. If we hope to improve the lives of and opportunities for women and girls worldwide, those percentages must rise dramatically. 

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WFN2021: Funding Trans Equity and Access to Abortion (Liveblog)

During an afternoon session of Women Funded 2021, Cazembe Murphy Jackson (We Testify) joined Brandi Collins-Calhoun (National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy) and Megan Murphy Wolf (WFN) for a discussion on trans equity and feminism through abortion access. Jackson, who has been an advocate for Black and trans rights across his career, shared his experiences as a Black, Southern, queer, trans organizer.

Storytelling as the Path Toward Trans Rights

“I don’t hear a lot of trans men talking about abortions,” said Jackson. “I want to tell my story so that other people like me will know that they can get an abortion and that there is somebody who went through a similar situation to what they’re going through.”

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