Who Gets To Panic?

Thoughts on funding cuts and the feminist movement

When some RESURJ members went to CSW this year, they heard one thing louder than ever: the funding for “the feminist movement” is disappearing. But the conversation felt a little alienating for them, because in their local organizing efforts, these funds were never theirs to begin with. RESURJ members from SWANA & Central America got together and had a chat about it. Here is the transcript of their conversation.

Nana Abuelsoud (Egypt): 

At the last Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) session, you noted the panic in many of our colleagues over the recent funding cuts, especially over government and bilateral funding. How do you read the current moment? Over the past years, you’ve been organizing locally in similar, or even worse, circumstances, in terms of access to funds and resources. How did you navigate that?

Laura Valenciano (Costa Rica):

I felt detached from the panic around the cuts. Being based in Costa Rica, I feel the need to counter the question of “Why is the feminist movement being defunded?” with a different one: Which feminist movement is being defunded? Who makes up that movement? In reality, how we organize locally is not being affected by the cuts. There’s a disconnect between our local concerns versus the current panic the global feminist movement is feeling. Here, we don’t count on foreign aid for anything. Very few recurring funds trickle down to grassroots organizations. When you take into account the local resources, knowledge, and information we use in our organizing, money isn’t the most decisive factor in the work we do.

Inas Miloud (Libya):

The situation in Libya is similar. Feminist movements and organizing rarely receive funding. When we do, it’s usually on a project basis. There’s no long-term, sustainable core support. That’s always been the case, even before the revolution (2011). Feminists, particularly younger ones, have to look at resourcing differently. I’m not saying there’s no impact at all. Women’s civil societies registered as national NGOs will be impacted by the defunding. Even though we’ve been working for over 15 years, my collective is still considered to be a grassroots movement because we don’t receive large, long-term funds. In terms of survival, I don’t think money has ever been the issue. My work will continue regardless. I attend protests because I need to. I’ll partake in a relief response to the climate crisis in Libya even though that’s not my specialization, because of the urgency of the situation, and because I’m part of the larger community. I think this is true of most feminist movements in the Global South.

Umba Zalira (Malawi):

I also agree the impact isn’t direct, but looking at my context in Malawi, I think the difference is that many consider the feminist movement in Malawi to be non-existent. Most of the work is done in silos. Sometimes, we’ll come together for a particular cause, but it’s inconsistent. So, it’s accurate that the feminist movement here will be defunded, because most of the organizing and resources come from UN Women. But I also think we’re being presented with an opportunity to figure out how to function without the influence attached to those resources. I also couldn’t relate to the level of panic that broke out at CSW. I think it mainly revolves around resourcing for organizations that work on reproductive health, mainly funded by USAID, but I don’t think it directly impacts the women’s movement as a whole per se.

Laura: 

The UN also operates differently depending on the region and country, so the impact of the cuts will vary. Something we all have in common is our ability to shift and pivot. We always have several back up plans. We’re resourceful folk. We’ll seldom say we can’t move forward when met with challenges. We adapt and accept that things will look differently from our original plan. I’ve been working with a local organization for 8 years now, and sometimes money will trickle in through intermediary organizations, but we’re used to that tap opening or closing depending on what resources there are to spare. I also relate to not having sustainable core support. Maybe if we did, we’d be thrown into a panic if we were ever defunded, like what we saw in New York. Right now, I’m not panicking. We’re going to keep organizing. Though not having a fixed salary affects our free time and what jobs we take, it also comes with so much freedom. When you’re not funded, you don’t have to run your decisions by anyone, send reports, or adhere to certain numbers. You get to focus instead on the kind of organizing your community needs.

Inas: 

I completely relate to being able to be free and radical in your activism. Not every feminist organizer in the Global South or similar contexts has to make the same kind of choices, but there needs to be a sense of discernment. I honor my work and that of the feminists in my country when I choose not to work with agencies like the UN, who have no respect for our feminist organizing or agendas. To them, we’re not partners; we’re beneficiaries or target groups. Indigenous feminists risk abandoning their agendas and aims if they receive access to these funds. The freedom we enjoy allows us to bring issues that may not outwardly be deemed as feminist to the agenda. 

Nana: 

Where I come from, the feminist and human rights movements were institutionalized in the 90s. In this context, feminist organizing is essentially a 9 to 5 job. So, if there’s no funding, and I’m out of a job, does that mean I’m no longer a feminist? At RESURJ, we’ve discussed the institutionalization of movements as a defect in our organizing, and one strategy is to push donors to offer unconditional core support, which doesn’t impose any agendas or infrastructural restrictions. Maybe this moment is a wake up call for larger feminist organizations. Maybe we need to break with the old way of doing things and bring together different regions and struggles. Are we up to potentially losing access to sexual and reproductive health services? As much as we hated the dependence on USAID, it provided many parts of the world with access to contraceptives and necessary medication for life-threatening conditions. How do we navigate this situation? 

Laura:

The truth is, to exist in multilateral spaces, we need money, and there’s obvious interest in decreasing our numbers there. There’s a difference between grassroots organizing and having an impact on how decisions are made. I can understand the panic at a CSW or Commission on Population and Development (CPD) level, because many of us have been working to amplify Global South voices in such spaces. I would take a page from accompaniment work or the work abortion providers do, especially where it’s criminalized. When Roe vs. Wade was overturned in the US, there was suddenly a much more empathetic view toward the Global South’s community knowledge. Not just conversations about how to access medicine, but also abortion aftercare. Lawmakers and policy implementers know nothing about the love, care, and tenderness needed during and after an abortion, even in countries where it’s legal. The conversation stops at access. So, we do have answers and tools in our arsenal. We just need to realize we cannot do it alone, and we need to ask questions and get creative. 

Inas: 

I think now is when organizations need to return to the knowledge that already exists, the feminist organizing already happening on the ground. Every time I meet an international organization in Libya, I always implore them to include civil societies and community members in decision-making. It’s the most basic of demands, but it still doesn’t happen. I also think North-based and transnational feminist organizations should be held accountable regarding how resources are distributed, because there’s a huge gap between them and feminist grassroots movements. This is usually the case no matter where in the Global South you are. How can we build systems that close this gap? I think abundance should be incorporated into how we think about and share resources.

Laura: 

When the political pendulum swings our way and funds start flowing again, are we just going to start funding the same INGOs and pretend everything is fine? Is the aim to just find a way to counteract the cuts and remain in the current structures and systems? That’s like putting a bandaid on something that hasn’t been working for a long time. Maybe this moment needs to lend itself to broader conversations about what defunding means and who it’s actually impacting. Because grassroots organizing won’t stop because of the cuts. Talking to women about their health, little girls about their menstruation, that’ll continue. So, if we’re advocating for our movement to be funded again, what will that look like? 

Nana:

I’d rather have us panic over public funding. The influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank continues to expand in our countries. It’s become the norm to take money away from education, health, and social protection on national and federal levels and opt for more loans. We shouldn’t be guided, or misguided, by international NGOs and North-based, or North-adjacent, feminist and human rights organizations, because they’re completely at peace with international financial institutions continuing to be a part of the Global South’s ecosystem. So much money was spent on overhead and personal budget lines that could have done wonders for grassroots work and organizing. But the bigger issue with funding social movements, even local grassroots, is that we think we can replace the state’s role in ensuring people’s access to quality healthcare and education. Are we fine with being handed crumbs to address this ever-expanding systemic gap, while our governments continue to not be held accountable? Are we even panicking about the right things? 

Inas: 

We mentioned before that there’s so much wisdom in grassroots feminist organizing. I think there are ways of achieving security that are feminist and connected to grassroots movements. There are transnational feminist collectives, including RESURJ, that still do that kind of work and find ways to mobilize resources. I think about feminist accompaniment a lot in terms of finding and talking about resources. Conversations about money are hard on both personal and collective levels, and it’s not something our feminist movement does a lot. That’s something we should work toward. We need money that doesn’t come with strings attached, that aligns with our values as feminists.

Laura:

I’m worried about the privatization of movements as public funds are cut, because we’re not privy to how private funds move. It’s usually unregistered organizations and individuals who receive these funds, and issues such as safety concerns and difficulty accessing said funds in certain countries aren’t addressed. Donors also always seem to assume what they have is insufficient to fund our movements, which may be true of giant international structures, but the impact that same amount of money, or even half of that, can have on the ground is huge. It’s tricky because we love our peers who work at international NGOs and respect their work, but their operations are really expensive. For grassroots movements, the money donors have on hand is enough to make a giant difference, especially when we’re in crisis, putting our bodies on the streets, or holding space for conversations that only get mentioned in passing in multilateral spaces, despite these conversations being anchored in our unfunded work. Are we going to keep pretending those funded structures worked? Because they didn’t.