Wednesday, March 6th at 3pm UTC
Fund for Global Human Rights, MFPDSA, Africa Albinism Network
Does having an intersectional lens to our grantmaking contribute to the building of more effective movements? Beyond box-ticking, how can recognizing the multiple oppressions our grantees experience contribute to fostering robust, resilient movements? In this conversation, we considered how feminist movements have contended with diverse needs of more marginalized communities when advocating for change, using the case study of efforts to foster connection between established feminist activists and women impacted by albinism. Taking as a jumping-off point the Robert Bosch Foundation publication, The Transformative Power of Intersectionality, shared ahead of last September’s EDGEy Wednesday conversation, “Is there a recipe for applying intersectionality?” we delved deeper into these questions and more!
Participants:
- Evelyn Anviko from Mutuelle des Femmes Paysannes pour le Développement et la Santé en Afrique (MFPDSA)
- Ikponwosa Ero, Executive Director of the Africa Albinism Network
- Myroslava Tataryn, Senior Program Officer, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund
- Jane Waithera, Disability Inclusion Advisor, Light For The World
Moderator: Marianne Mollmann, Director of Regional Programs, Fund for Global Human Rights
French/English interpretation will be available.
Lessons from the Conversation:
- What is intersectionality? Is it just about exploration of power?Supporting cross sectoral organizing? Creating space for trust building? Is it about doing the hard work of listening? Is it about seeking leadership from those who are affected by oppression? Intersectionality is not always defined in funding or the not-for-profit spaces.
- However, there are more definitions on what it means to be cross disciplinary, multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. These differing words can help define intersectionality.
- Cross-disciplinary is to view something from the perspective of another. So almost like an empathetic viewing of a situation and that may not necessarily involve action.
- Multidisciplinary almost always involves action and involves people working together collaboratively.
- Interdisciplinary is different because it’s transformative. The methods and knowledge of the stakeholders involved in interdisciplinarity collaborations come up with something fresh, something new because they have merged their knowledge, they’ve merged their methodologies.
- People with albinism as a constituency of people with disabilities are have gained recognition in the last decade or so, which is late.
- The stage organizations like Africa Albinism Network are in currently is focused mostly on intersectional research. They have a research collaborative that is a research advocacy and policy group called Mothering and Albinism: https://motheringandalbinism.com/
- This data collection and research includes civil society, academia, artists, grassroots. Effective research merges methodologies from human rights, health, genetics, religion and faith due to the layered misbeliefs about discribmination against albimism.
- Research can start at as cross-sectoral work and then move into multi sectoral work and eventually to inter-sectoral, intersectional stage that merges diversity of ideas together.
- At the data level, methodologies between the disabilities and the women, feminist movements, need to be merged in an intersecting way to produce new outcomes that can serve women with disabilities that both groups in the intersectional research can implement together.
- We need to recognize that the gap in data is a gap in power between the feminist movement, the disabilities movement and where women with albinism stand.
- If there was a data gap between the feminist and children right movements, there would be less of a power differential because both have been supported for lengthy periods of time and there is historical data.
- As funders, collecting data cannot be an added burdge on grantees. Funders can find ways to capture stories, and numbers within existing structures without it being a separate project onto itself.
- Funders also need to collect data regularly so work is ongoing and not paused for a period of date collection in a way that makes gathering data the project itself, rather than a means to betteer funding.
- On this journey, data is definitely important and comes up in funder spaces often but funders still need to see its relation to outcomes in a traditional sense to assess their investments. There needs to be continual advocacy on what data means and what data funders are willing to fund.
- Though data is needed and is necessary, there is still a gap in skill and substantial challenges in implementation across sectors.
- Some funders, in pursuit of increasing collaborations and intersectionality, host spaces for “linking and learning” where all grantees came together to meet.
- This practice is good in terms of building collective power and understanding each other’s projects through a marketplace of ideas where people show what they are doing and ideas on potential of intersectional work can emerge.
- However, beyond meeting and inspiring, there is no structure to take those ideas to implementation. But there was no structure to take it beyond that.
- It takes very high strategic thinking and a degree of experience in creativity to forge something new to be transformative in that kind of open space, this skill is particular and needs to be invested in. It not easy or common.
- Intersectoral, interdisciplinary work can cost a minimum of half a million US dollars for a period of a few years of data gathering, knowledge sharing and merging for implementation.
- This needs to be well funded to attract a type of leadership that can conduct an orchestra towards implementation.
- Women with albinism are often times those who are left behind even in the mainstream women movement and even in the movement of women with disabilities.
- Women with albinism have not been seen or considered as people with disabilities and regarded as a bit “in between.”
- Persons with albinism and specifically women experience unique barriers for example the issues of safety, the issues of attitudinal barriers and the issues of physical access to facilities. So women with Albinism specifically need to be part of the decision-making processes if there is an intention of inviting them and/or including them.
- An example of a barrier to accessibility is venues that are outdoors especially in hot seasons. The venue was in a place fast close in an outdoor facility and it was like in the very hot season in the country.
- We have to move beyond just looking at inviting women with albinism into spaces, but actually allowing them to be in those spaces and to effectively participate.
- It is important also to note that feminist and disability movements including women with albinism usually means including those who have access to the internet and not necessary those in rural areas.
- For those who are further marginalized, who did not go to school for example, the experience is different. An effective inclusion and solidarity within feminist and disability movements is to ensure those voices are also heard and included in the planning and decision making process.
- This form of solidarity is also a form of equity, which is just as important. Of course without top-down or diminished approaches, equity could be defined as treating people differently to take into consideration some of their particular needs and situation.
- It’s possible for people to be creative and to work within a variety of different funding structures to find ways to fund the things that need to be funded. This usually looks like an individual program officers being a little bit ahead of their time within their institutions.
- In these scenarios, funders can start to talk about intersectionality, not to its full transformational potential, but rather finding hooks within the current structures that can slowly bring the larger institution along.
- Intersectional work thrives when there is trust, multi-year general operating support and less paperwork and burden on grantees.
- Funder spaces, unlike movement spaces, are usually not great at having hard conversations. There needs to be an understanding of historical harm and the power differences and a facing of the feelings those histprical harms have built up.
- Hard conversations are essential for advocacy.
- Male feminists need to be allies in foundations to move and shift the lens of rigid linear change and indicators to have a more compassionate and more nuanced understanding of change in such broad fights.
- Should intersectionality within the broader ecosystem look like funds going to broad intersectionally work or should funding be more at the regional level or more identity-based-funds? There are many entry-points which is why data is important. Funders cannot make those decisions, capacity building and strengthening is needed so regions/groups have the conditions, sovereignty and freedom to actually shape what money goes towards in service of intersectional work and its implementation.
- Sometimes as soon as one proposes an intersectional collaboration that is feminist and disability-justice oriented, the larger feminist organizations start looking for disability funders but there is actually a lot less money targeting disability justice than feminism.
- There is not enough for gender or disability justice work but the numbers show the gap even in that small pot
- Data from 2019 shows that 3% of total of foundation funding was going to disability rights. Of that same pot which is roughly 4.1 billion US dollars, 23% was going to women and girls, 18% was going to LGBTQI issues.
- Other types of population with disabilities get less and less. It’s consistently much smaller.
- There’s a lot of work to be done to accommodate and include but also a lot need to be done in the feminist funding space to be more inclusive of disability issues and see that as part of the feminist issues: it’s not that anybody ceases to be a woman or a girl when they’re disabled, right?
Extra Resources:
- Mothering And Albinism- An intersectional Collaborative
- African Albinism Network
- UN Report on Women Impacted by Albinism
- Is there a recipe for applying intersectionality?
- Climate Justice and People with Albinism
Learn more: https://motheringandalbinism.com/
Consists of more information on women impacted by albinism (a priority area of work) and has 500+ digital resources.
Concludes – based on available data – that women impacted by albinism face compounding oppressions and bear the brunt of the negative impact of the condition.
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