Women Deliver - Chroma’s Side Event Recap

Every three years, Women Deliver convenes the largest global conference dedicated to advancing gender equality. This July, the conference was held in Kigali, Rwanda and a number of Chroma members attended to share, reflect, and learn from one another and the numerous international organizations that were present. 

The Chroma Collective, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, organized a side event with a panel discussion entitled Coming Up Roses: Cultivating Donor Support for Gender Equality. During the discussion, panelists described the different approaches donors have taken to promote gender equality over the last decade. The overall aim was to learn from one another’s work and to identify pathways of greater collaboration. 

Five dynamic individuals spoke that morning. Theresa Hwang, a Chroma member from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, opened the session and introduced the Chroma Collective to the audience. Dr. Margaret Greene from Iris Group presented an analysis of the gender equality donor and financing ecosystem, mapping the landscape and posing provocations based on themes that emerged from her review. Evelyn Boy-Mena, a Chroma member from the WHO, spoke about her agency’s gender mainstreaming manual and ways the WHO has navigated backlash and alternate views to its gender approach. Engaging the audience from yet another perspective, Lakshmi Moore, Program Director of Girls First Fund, shared about donor collaboratives; she highlighted the importance of supporting and learning from grassroot organizations in the Global South. Angelika Arutyunova–an independent feminist and co-founder of FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund; and the Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central and North Asia (CEECCNA) Collaborative Fund–spoke of notable trends in financing gender equality since the release of her co-authored publication entitled Watering the Leaves, Starving the Roots.1 Angelika challenged those in the room to strengthen collaboration for gender equality.

A few conclusive themes emerged from the side event, both from the panel and the audience. First, donors need to more thoughtfully engage with country-level, grassroots organizations by increasing overall coordination, including cross-sectoral efforts between and among different implementing partners. Second and similarly, access to resources for grassroots organizations needs to improve. Donors should find ways to channel funds that were once reserved for international organizations to country-level organizations. This might require more flexible funding options than previously considered, as well as longer-term commitments. Third, audience members urged one another to place external pressure on donors in the areas previously mentioned, while also respecting each donor’s relative role and value addition in the donor and financing ecosystem. The conversation came to a close with the collective reminder to seek out joy and renewal in this work to achieve gender equality. 

Dr. Greene concluded the side event with a final word: Consider the image of a wind map. Each donor is an arrow that takes a slightly different approach to this work, but the overall movement flows in the same direction. The charge was to continue to work together, collectively challenge the status quo, and confidently move forward in respective areas of influence to advance gender equality across the globe.