The limited funding of women's organizations has led the Mediterranean Women's Fund to take decisive action in the public arena.
The findings of studies conducted by the MedWF in recent years have not changed over time; they continue to indicate that 75% of women's associations worldwide have annual budgets of less than €50,000. This holds true not only for countries of the Global South, but also countries in Southern Europe, including France.
Yet vast financial resources for "gender" issues are available. It is simply that few of these resources manage to reach local women's organizations.
This is why the Mediterranean Women’s Fund has been committed from the start to developing advocacy to convince institutional and private donors to increase financial resources for women's organizations working for equality between women and men. We work at several levels to achieve this end.
In France:
In collaboration with the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE), the Women's Foundation, the High Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCE), the UN Women France Committee and Women's World Wide Web France, we published two reports in 2016 and 2018 that provided an unprecedented analysis of the situation of public and private funding for women's rights. In our last report, "Where is the money to fight violence against women?", we estimated that the annual public budget needed to help women victims of domestic violence was between €1.1 billion (highest scenario) and €506 million (lowest scenario).
To establish with private foundations and companies joint strategies to support women's associations, we are developing surveys (in collaboration with the French Centre for Foundations) on "The contribution of the philanthropic sector to the promotion of women and girls in France”, and propose partnerships.
With European women's funds, we have formed a coalition named "Knocking on EU's doors". Our mission is to familiarize EU institutions with women's funds, and ensure that these funds become the essential interlocutors and partners for funding feminist organizations in Europe, especially the smallest which cannot be targeted by large institutions due to a lack of financial and structural solidity.
With the Women's funds in Africa and the Prospera network of women's funds, we are developing joint strategies to increase the resources available for women's rights.
