WUNRN
AWID - Where is the Money for
Women's Rights?
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MAMA CASH FOUNDATION
"Investing in women also means simultaneously investing in
their children and in the entire community to which they belong. Indeed, in
order to realize a better world for everyone, governments, public institutions,
development organizations and funding groups should be making more money, not
less, available for women’s rights."
Less Money Available for Women’s Rights
Governments, public institutions, development
organizations and funding groups all over the world are allocating less money
for women’s rights. Fifty percent of women’s groups report that they currently
receive less funding than they did 5 years ago.
This is just one of the findings in the AWID report ‘Where is the money for
women’s rights?’ released in 2006. As a result, the women’s fund Mama Cash
receives many more grant applications than it can finance. In 2005, Mama Cash
received around 1,500 applications from innovative initiatives around the
world; only about 20% could be funded.
The lack of funding for women’s
initiatives is a troubling development, especially as women’s rights are
continually violated on a global scale. Rape is used systematically as a weapon
during war. Next to the drug trade, trafficking in women is the most important
source of income for organized crime. And domestic violence is the number one
cause of women’s deaths worldwide. These are just a few of the reasons to
support the innovative initiatives of women who are dedicating themselves to
improving the world.
Mama Cash’s 2005 annual report offers evidence of the impact of the important
work being done by women’s groups and organizations. With a budget of
approximately 4 million euro, Mama Cash was able to fund 284 of the
applications we received in 2005 and to support diverse other women’s funds.
The annual report illustrates how projects worldwide are being carried out to
improve the position of women. Peruvian women, for example, set up a union and
their own fast-food restaurant in order to take a stand against the sexual
harassment they experienced from their male bosses. The widows of fishermen in
India picked up the pieces of their lives after the tsunami and began to do
work never done before by women. Polish women have developed an extremely
popular method of providing sex education to young people.
There is an important
commonality between all these projects: they are all rooted in the strength and
ambition of women and the will to make the world a better place. And, with
relatively few resources, they are all achieving results. Indeed, the results
are measurable; since 2005, Mama Cash has used a new professional tool, Making
the Case, to demonstrate the social impact of women’s projects that are being
carried out around the world.
Investing in women also means simultaneously investing in their children and in the entire community to which they belong. Indeed, in order to realize a better world for everyone, governments, public institutions, development organizations and funding groups should be making more money, not less, available for women’s rights.
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