Giving Compass' Take:

• The Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion gathered 30 female world leaders to launch a campaign that invests in policies that will advance gender equality.  

• How can donors help this campaign gain traction?

• Check out the Giving Compass Gender Equality guide for donors. 

More than 30 influential women are teaming up to achieve gender equality and empower women.

The Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion launched a new campaign this month with an open letter calling on the world to reinvest in policies and frameworks that achieve gender equality and inclusion, the Guardian reports.

The group including current and former heads of state and three former-UN leaders represent countries all around the globe. They say they’ve witnessed firsthand how women’s rights are often perceived as a direct attack on power structures, and the only way to fight is through multilateralism, which requires different countries and governments to work hand in hand.

The coalition — including former Argentinian foreign minister Susana Malcorra, former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, and Bulgarian politician and former UNESCO director Irina Bokova — emerged out of the 2018 UN general assembly in New York.

“We had a sense that there was another wave of pushback on gender equality and gender empowerment and the policies that we worked so hard to achieve,” Malcorra told the Guardian.

Malcorra said the pushback against women’s rights is especially visible in countries led by “a macho-type strongman” like Brazil, the Philippines, Italy, and parts of eastern Europe. Wins like paternity leave, for example, that help women gain respect by balancing caregiving responsibilities, are seen as a threat in some places, Malcorra explained.

Read the full article about female leaders teaming up across the globe by Leah Rodriguez at Global Citizen