Philanthropists want to invest in women and girls, but still have a long way to go.
In recent years, the philanthropic world has increasingly recognized that investing in women and girls is essential for humanity to progress. Governments including Sweden, Canada, France, and Wales have adopted feminist approaches to their international development agendas, while some billionaires like Melinda French Gates—who recently announced $1 billion in spending on women and families over the next two years—have put their support behind organizations working on urgent issues such as reproductive rights in the U.S.
Research unequivocally backs the importance of funding this type of work: the World Bank argues that gender equality is “smart economics,” while a McKinsey report says that addressing the women’s health gap could add “years to life and life to years”—potentially boosting the global economy by $1 trillion annually by 2040.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Despite exciting new funding commitments, however, wider numbers paint a less encouraging picture. In 2022, women’s rights organizations received only 0.34% of Official Development Assistance, or global aid flow designed to promote economic development and welfare, while only 0.42% of foundation grants were allocated towards women’s rights, according to the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, or AWID. The Women’s Philanthropy Institute finds that less than 2% of philanthropic giving in the U.S. directly benefits women and girls.
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“There is a lot of talk about doing this work globally, but not many dollars match that talk,” says Kiersten Marek, who founded the website Philanthropy Women. “I would argue that there is a ‘say/do’ gap in gender justice funding, both in the U.S. and globally.”
Even when donors take a gender lens to their giving portfolio, Marek says they tend to scale back their vision for feminist philanthropy over time. For example, Jennifer and Peter Buffett, the Founders and Co-Chairs of the NoVo Foundation, pledged a staggering $90 million in 2016 towards addressing structural problems facing girls and young women of color in the U.S.—the largest effort ever made by a private organization. Even so, by 2020, the Buffets had canceled plans to fund a women’s building in Manhattan and halted funding for critical programs focused on women and girls, saying that more donors needed to pony up for the work.
“Donors have a tendency to start off strong and strident, and then lose momentum over time,” Marek explains.
Meanwhile, the need for funding has grown exponentially against a political landscape in which authoritarianism is on the rise and humanitarian crises have erupted around the world. In 2020, for example, the U.S. joined Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda to co-sponsor an international anti-abortion declaration. Between 2013 and 2017, the “anti-gender” movement—which the U.N. describes as opposition to reproductive rights, sexuality, and gender-sensitive education in schools, the rights of the LGBT community, and in some cases, even the very notion of gender—received over $3.7 billion, more than triple the funding for LGBT groups globally in those years.
In developing countries, women’s rights are being rolled back in extreme ways: the Taliban government in Afghanistan has banned women and girls from going to school, while women have been caught in the crossfire during the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In countries like Sudan, women and girls are especially vulnerable to violence after a conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted last year.
Keely Tongate, co-director of a philanthropic initiative called the Gender Funders CoLab, says private organizations often struggle to align their work towards common causes that advance women’s rights. “Philanthropy isn’t built to be super collaborative, but there is a desire and a real, deep sense that gender work is essential,” says Tongate.
To help bridge this gap, 10 years ago, Tongate’s CoLab brought together some of the biggest private foundations to form a community of funders who can leverage their power to supply more resources, particularly in the global south and east. Its members include the Ford Foundation, the Foundation for a Just Society, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.
Between 2014 and 2023, CoLab members moved at least $2.2 billion to women’s rights and gender equality work. In 2017, the group helped secure a $45 million fund from the Dutch government for four Global South women’s funds, with private members agreeing to fund an accompanying initiative. In 2019, it helped establish the Equality Fund—the largest single investment ever made by a government in global feminist movements— by securing $300 million from the Canadian government after many private foundations held meetings in Ottawa to shine a light on funding feminist movements. And it has secured $354 million in pooled fund grants from bilateral donors, including for the Bulgarian Fund for Women, which supports 24 grassroots groups working to end gender-based violence.
“CoLab has been able to bring the recognition that governments can’t do everything,” says Tongate, “so here are the places or spaces where philanthropy can complement governments, and where governments can support philanthropy.” (This is the first time that CoLab has spoken out about its efforts publicly, in an effort to “further engage with the wider philanthropic community.”)
Monica Aleman, the Ford Foundation’s international program director of gender, racial, and ethnic justice, who works closely with CoLab, says this work can only be done by strengthening public-private partnerships. “That’s not something that we are accustomed to in the feminist movement, but I do think it’s important to open that door,” says Aleman.
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The impact of feminist philanthropy can be enormous in directing resources to overlooked and underrepresented crises. A 2022 report from Shake the Table, a global research and action hub, and nonprofit advisory firm The Bridgespan Group found that women’s funding was at the forefront of supporting social movements and had the highest impact. “Women’s funds play critical roles in moving money to groups traditionally locked out of mainstream funding opportunities,” says a spokesperson for Shake the Table. Citing successful examples like the Black Feminist Fund in Sudan, the Dalan Fund supporting displaced Armenians of Nagorna-Karabakh, and the Urgent Action Fund in Papua New Guinea, the group has called on philanthropists to invest about $1.5 billion annually.
Yet, there is still a long way to go. While announcing her new chapter in philanthropy, Melinda French Gates wrote: “In nearly 20 years as an advocate for women and girls, I have learned that there will always be people who say it’s not the right time to talk about gender equality.”
She continued, “It’s frustrating and shortsighted.”
Correction, Aug. 6
The original version of this article misspelled a CoLab’s co-founder’s name. She is Keely Tongate, not Keeley Longate.