Gender and Development Network

Widening conflict in the SWANA region is sending economic shockwaves far beyond its borders and organisations working to protect fiscal space for girls’ rights are navigating the fallout in real time.

On behalf of Akina Mama wa Afrika, Malala Fund, MENAFEM and the Debt Justice for Girls Alliance, we’re pleased to share an upcoming learning circle on 10 June where national organisations from the SWANA region will speak to what they are seeing on the ground and what they need allies to do.

Together, participants will explore what the economic fallout of the war means for girls’ rights and what concrete action is needed to defend and expand resources for girls in this moment.

The session will include live Arabic interpretation.

🗓 Wednesday 10 June

⏰ 12pm BST

💻 Register here: https://mala.la/4ndesnq

Join South Feminist Futures’ next Political Economy Teach-in:
“Organizing for Rights: Reproductive Justice in Praxis” with Nana Abuelsoud.

📅 Thu 21 May

⏰ 2pm BST

This session traces the organising that brought the reproductive justice framework to life, and explores how Global South movements are fighting for bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom in a global economy shaped by population control and neo‑eugenic practices.

🔗 Register: https://tinyurl.com/bde69m43

🕊️Join Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's Peace Team Community of Practice (CoP) for a session on peer-supported dialogue and restorative circles.

Together, participants will slow down, meet in small groups, and practice speaking from the “I”, radical listening and mirroring back with care - core skills for feminist peace work.

📅27 May, 7:30-10pm BST

Sign up to the CoP mailing list to get the Zoom link and future invites:

Fill | Welcome to the Peace Team Community of Practice at WILPF!

✍️Women’s rights and gender equality organisations across Europe are facing funding cuts just as backlash and crises intensify.

ODI Europe, together with the Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe and the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual & Reproductive Rights, is launching a new survey to hear directly from organisations working with or led by women and girls.
It takes around 20 minutes, is anonymous, and is available in 15 languages – open to organisations across the Council of Europe region until 30 May 2026.

🔗 Have your say:

Enketo Express for KoboToolbox Queued records, except those marked as draft , are uploaded automatically, in the background, every 5 minutes when the web page is open and an Internet connection is available.

📣This International Worker’s Day, South Feminist Futures new audiovisual collection, “Reclaiming Women’s Work: Women’s Struggles in Images and Art,” brings together powerful visuals from domestic, care, s*x, agricultural, industrial, sanitation, gig and public sector work, insisting that the labour which sustains worlds must be seen.

From March 8 to May 1, they call for protests, commemorations, strikes, tributes and solidarity with all working women and people fighting to end imperialism, colonialism, racial exploitation, oppression, occupation and domination.

🔗 https://tinyurl.com/ynzb6n7u

Reclaiming Women's Work: Women's Struggles in Images and Art - South Feminist Futures Knowledge Hub The South Feminist Futures audiovisual collection was born from our call to reclaim the revolutionary roots of March 8. Reclaiming Women’s Work: Women’s Struggles in Images and Art gathers visuals from across the Global South around one enduring truth: feminism is forged in the struggles of work...

There’s growing momentum to tax extreme wealth through net wealth taxes, capital gains and inheritance reforms - but implementation is the missing piece.

CESR's new tool, ‘From Design to Capacity’, sets out an institutional capacity framework so campaigners can diagnose gaps and push for reforms that are enforceable, not just headline‑grabbing.

It draws on lessons from Argentina and Brazil to show how capacity can be built over time.

🔗 https://www.cesr.org/institutional-capacities/

New resource: Ensuring institutional capacity for taxing wealth A CESR and New Economics Foundation report argues taxing the wealthy depends not just on policy design, but on governments’ institutional capacity to implement and enforce it effectively.

Across Africa, women, gender‑expansive people and informal workers hold together households, communities and economies - yet their labour is still treated as invisible, informal or expendable.

Nawi’s “Feminist Labour Futures in an Age of Crisis” series centres care work, community organising, digital and informal labour as the backbone of how life is sustained – and asks whose labour is valued, recognised and protected.

Join the conversation across four webinars this May (with French interpretation).

🗓 14, 19, 21 & 26 May, 12:00 PM

🔗https://tinyurl.com/yjme98pt

💧New blog from WaterAid UK reveals how Women and girls still carry the weight of the world’s water crisis.

When water is unreliable, unsafe or far from home, it is women and girls who pay the highest price – with their time, their safety, their education and their opportunities.

It also shows what feminist solutions look like in practice: women leading water committees in Timor‑Leste, menstrual health programming with partners across the Pacific, and climate‑resilient, accessible toilets and water systems in Cambodia’s flood‑prone regions.

Water justice is gender justice and feminist movements must be at the table on WASH.

🔗 https://tinyurl.com/2a434bez

Women Still Carry the Weight of the World’s Water Crisis World Water Day highlights how water inequality impacts women and girls. Safe water unlocks education, health and equality.

🚨The backlash against gender equality is not a glitch - it is funded, coordinated and deliberate.

From Afghanistan to Sudan and across the Sahel, women’s rights are being systematically dismantled while women are shut out of peace talks and decision‑making.

Thelma Ekiyor, International CEO of Women for Women International, argues that our response must be just as organised and resourced.

These are not marginal gaps; they are systemic failures. As Thelma argues, the Women, Peace and Security agenda has not failed - political will has.
The article stresses that this moment demands more than concern; it demands coordination, resources, presence and resolve.

🔗https://tinyurl.com/2m6msbna

The backlash against gender equality is funded and organised. Our response must be too | Missing Perspectives By Thelma Ekiyor, International CEO of Women for Women International

❗New blog from Save the Children UK : 272 million children are out of school, including 133 million girls and 139 million boys.

In conflict‑affected contexts, girls remain significantly more likely to be excluded from education altogether and the consequences are profound. Girls are pushed out of school by poverty, child marriage, early pregnancy, gender‑based violence, unsafe or inaccessible school infrastructure and discriminatory norms about whose education “matters”.

When girls miss out on learning, everyone pays the price – from lost earnings (an estimated $15–30 trillion in lost productivity) to weaker community health and political participation.

🔗 Read more here: https://tinyurl.com/3wupmu6z

Gender inequality in education Access to education is a fundamental human right, yet millions of girls and women continue to experience gender inequality which prevents them from receiving the same opportunities as boys and men. This article explores the causes and consequences of gender inequality in education and discusses stra...

💵 Argentina is in a debt crisis. Payments to external creditors are prioritised over the needs of the Argentine people. In ’s first story for the , Aylén highlights how the country’s dependence on external creditors has undermined sovereignty for decades, and what this means for her daily reality.

Watch her full story 👉

Debt and Democracy European Network on Debt and Development