Editor’s Note: The following opinion piece is from Jamie Allen Black, CEO of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York, in response to a recent opinion piece from Jeannie Infante Sager.
As Jeannie Infante Sager, director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, points out in her recent Philanthropy Women article, MacKenzie Scott, the world’s most famous female philanthropist, has embraced “trust-based” philanthropy.
Jamie Allen Black, CEO of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York, raises important questions about relationship issues related to trust-based philanthropy. (Image credit: Jamie Allen Black)
Yet the conversation about Scott leaves one fascinating thing unsaid: She’s female and a philanthropist, but she doesn’t give like a female philanthropist.
I recently took the time to read Lighting the Way, a new report from Shake the Table and The Bridgespan Group. These two entities came together to enhance our understanding of the connections between feminist movements and global philanthropy, and to provide some strategic guidelines on how to expand this work.
Lighting the Way, a report from Shake the Table, The Bridgespan Group, and many feminist leaders, details five steps for improving funding for gender equality worldwide. (Image Credit: Lighting the Way)
In order to formulate these guidelines, the group conducted 43 conversations with high-net-worth individuals, institutional funders, and leaders of feminist movements. Here is a quick summary of the five guidelines they created:
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.
The new HS Chau Women in Enterprising Science Program offers fellows the opportunity to receive $1 million in funding for research. (Image credit: HS Chau Women in Enterprising Science Program)
1: New HS Chau Women in Enterprising Science Program Launches from the Innovative Genomics Institute: The new program will work to enhance “gender equity in bio-entrepreneurship.” With philanthropic support from the foundation of Solina Chau Hoi Shuen (co-founder of Horizons Ventures in Hong Kong), the program is now accepting proposals from entrepreneurs “seeking to translate genomics research into impactful solutions to real-world challenges and advance the representation of women founders in biotechnology.” More information here.
Very few of us can get away with challenging the capitalist and male-dominated values of our country. Unless you have a lot of money, you generally make more headway in American society if you watch every word you say and every move you make to ensure they remain within the lines of the men-first, pro-business, money-above-everything mentality that surrounds us. But MacKenzie Scott is able to challenge these ideas by sharing her resources with organizations that are doing the work on the ground for a better quality of life in America.
MacKenzie Scott with husband Dan Jewett. (Image credit: The Giving Pledge)
This week, MacKenzie Scott put organization names and faces to the recent $3.8 billion she distributed. The money went to a vast array of organizations that support the social and economic fabric of our culture. Here on PW, we are going to provide the gender-lens pull-out list of organizations receiving funding, with the proviso that there are other layers in her funding that satisfy feminist giving values around equity and inclusion but are not explicitly addressing gender bias. These organizations are helping us navigate new territory as a society, a place where we can prioritize healthier relationships, personal wellness, and quality education and healthcare experiences. Almost all of the organizations on this list have been covered in articles here at Philanthropy Women over the past five years.
Jane Manning, former sex crimes prosecutor and current survivor advocate, considers herself a person who doesn’t back down when it comes to seeking criminal justice accountability for sexual assault. “There aren’t a lot of us doing this kind of work in the nonprofit zone,” she said.
The Women’s Equal Justice Project is growing its impact on gender-based violence. (Image credit: Women’s Equal Justice Project)
Manning has spent much of her life prosecuting sex crimes, domestic violence, and child abuse. As a survivor advocate, she has also immersed herself in the complex social issues involved in the fight to end violence against women. Now, as Director of the Women’s Equal Justice Project, Manning helps sexual assault survivors push back on a criminal justice system that is all too willing to dismiss their rights.
As many of you know, along with founding and editing Philanthropy Women, I am also a psychotherapist. So today I am offering something new here for readers: a chance to explore your inner wellness through hypnosis.
Scene for hypnosis: Sunset at Oakland Beach in Warwick, Rhode Island on Sunday, November 14, 2021. (Image credit: Kiersten Marek)
One of my specialties as a therapist is identity development. I have spent many years studying and writing about the archetypes — the different dimensions of human identity that come into play across the lifespan. In 2018, I also trained and became certified as a hypnotherapist. This is a hypnosis session to help you get a deep night’s sleep, and to give you a chance to experience your inner Innocent.
In February 2021, 18-year-old Úrsula Bahillo was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, an officer in the Buenos Aires police force. The femicide led a group of Argentine women to create the organization Mujeres en Acción, an entirely volunteer brigade of women providing support to survivors of gender-based violence in the Latin American region.
Volunteers spanning from six countries in Latin America are coming together to support domestic abuse survivors, using a platform called GetBEE. (Image credit: Mujeres in Accion)
Úrsula’s untimely death was the 44th femicide registered in Argentina in the first two months of 2021, and its occurrence prompted immediate outrage in the country. After all, the 18-year-old victim had followed all the recommended steps: she reported her attacker to the police stations and the courthouse. She got a restraining order that made it illegal for him to come near her, but he broke the restraining order numerous times. One major way the system fell apart for her: Úrsula requested a “panic button” from the police, but she never got one. Her last message to her friends read: If I don’t come back, tear everything down.
It’s finally happening: America is charting its course as a nation to remedy our problems with gender equity and equality. What is contained in the momentous document, and how will it affect funding for gender issues?
The Biden-Harris administration’s Gender Policy Council recently released the country’s first National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality. (Image credit: White House Report)
The President and Vice President begin the document by locating the issue in our current context of heightened stakes for women and girls in the US and across the globe:
This document, the first-ever United States government strategy on gender equity and equality, is a part of that noble American tradition [of valuing equality]. It comes at an inflection point for the economic security, safety, health, and well-being of women and girls in our nation and around the globe. COVID-19 has exacerbated preexisting economic, health, and caregiving crises that disproportionately impacted women and girls long before the pandemic struck. Following the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, women’s participation in the American labor force plummeted to its lowest level in over 30 years. Rates of gender-based violence have risen significantly, and racial and ethnic inequity has deepened.
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.
