In spite of this, Afghan women’s rights organisations remain committed to a gender-equal future where women and girls can thrive and contribute to a flourishing society. They have shown immeasurable strength and courage in fighting for their rights. At Womankind Worldwide, we continue to stand with Afghan women and girls in unwavering solidarity, for their right to reclaim full inclusion in all spheres of public life. 

Here, we share stories of courage showing that the quest for a better Afghanistan is an investment not just in tomorrow’s generation, but today’s. 

Summary facts

• Five years on, women and girls’ human rights in Afghanistan have worsened not stabilised 
• This is gender apartheid and should be named as such 
• Frontline women’s rights organisations in Afghanistan remain underfunded  
• International solidarity and engagement with Afghan women’s rights organisations must be sustained. 
• Afghan women’s voices should lead the narrative and not be coopted in global and bilateral processes
• Devastating statistics highlighting a plummet in education access for women and girls  

The post Five years since the Taliban takeover – a gender apartheid in Afghanistan appeared first on Womankind Worldwide.

In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematised oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanised inferior. Within this society, that group is made up of black […] people, working class people, older people, and women. (Audre Lorde) 

This year’s fifth Nalafem summit was under the theme of power meets capital: women backing women – an apt euphemism for the above quote by Audre Lorde. More often, than not – those of us from the majority world are banded together as a form of oppression and discrimination. However, in this discriminatory classification, there lies powers in numbers. In whichever minoritised group we have been classified under – women, adolescent girls and young women, LGBTQI+, disabled women. There is power as movement holders of these minoritised/marginalised communities as well as together. We are indeed the majority world. 

If systems built on exclusion derive their strength from dividing us, then feminist movements derive theirs from connection. When women back women -across generations, borders, movements, and sectors -we do more than resist injustice. We redefine power, reshape capital, and build the conditions for lasting feminist transformation. 

It is a radical concept that we can transmute discrimination into power. However, it is not a novel strategy for resistance and dissent. It can be envisaged for example, in history’s remarkable French Revolution when the starving oppressed population in rage turned the tables. We also saw it again during the Gen Z revolution in Nepal where the youth population grew tired of the elitist political class hogging power for decades and anchoring nepotism therein. And, even closer to home, the wave of decolonial political participation and leadership in Burkina Faso – supported by the majority population yearning for a change in tide from colonial and neo colonial policies. The key: the majority is much more powerful together and in support of each other as opposed to centring their power with the minority.  

Our time at Nalafem

Womankind Worldwide was immensely honoured to attend Nalafem this year with our partners from 6 of our focus countries – Nepal, Afghanistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Uganda. Across these regions, partners are working in extremely difficult conditions catalysed by shrinking civic space, gender apartheid, reduced gender funding, censorship, and even enforced disappearances. Having partners with us in person was resilience in practice and more so, dissent towards the ever-growing regression on gender and human rights protection.  

A speaker during the summit asserted – they go low we go underground – this speaks towards the potential we hold in organising and collective solidarity and more-so in nuancing how power manifests in both public and private spheres of society. Dialogue centred on bridging the gap between the profit and nonprofit worlds and how women in all their diversity, leading and working in these spaces can back and support each other.  

Funding was at the centre of the agenda. Feminist movements remain severely under resourced with less that 1 percent ODA financing going to women’s rights organisations. According to AWID’s “Where is the money” report, this is by design and frontline movement holders do not directly receive funds, yet they carry out the impactful work and change in their communities. Consequently, without flexible and trust-based funding models, juxtaposed with the barriers aforementioned – realising gender equality is more of a mirage rather than a dream. 

A collective call to action  

A clarion call from our partners and our feminist allies rings true: our resilience and adaptability is only as strong as our collective solidarity. As such, without a strengthened movement the feminist agenda will be weakened by a hostile environment and thus remain unrealised. It is from our collectivity that we draw strength, can influence from power and harness the innovation and ‘unconventionality’ needed to address our longstanding problem of being under resourced. Womankind and partners call for:  

• Our feminist future must be ‘digital proof’. Eliminate all forms of tech facilitated gender-based violence and realise technology and digital literacy for all women and girls in their diversity. 

• Flexible and trust based funding is the only way to realise our feminist agenda. Freedom and autonomy start with being resourced and power is reinforced in this reality. 

• As feminist actors, we must hold space in collective solidarity and adapt our strategies to support those who are forced into silence. In hostile environments, the women’s and feminist movement is still at work, holding the ground and protecting the gains. 

As the summit closed, one truth remained unmistakable: our greatest power lies not in proximity to capital or institutions, but in each other. The Nairobi Declaration, alongside the commitments developed through Womankind Worldwide’s partner roundtable, affirms that feminist movements are not simply responding to crises – they are actively shaping new futures rooted in justice, solidarity, and collective care. 

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Today, 15 June 2026, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced the official ban of under 16s from social media, expected to take effect in 2027. This follows months of consultations with many parents in the UK backing this long awaited move.   

While this move is long overdue for enforcing accountability on Big Tech when it comes to safety online- the ban debate is asking the wrong question if we’re to holistically ensure tech abuse is recognised as a distinct harm. And this is harm that affects women, girls and children under 16 through surveillance, humiliation and coercive control. 

Technology Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) is not a digital problem with a digital solution. It is gendered violence with same patterns of coercive control, harassment, stalking, sexual intimidation running through the infrastructure of everyday life that feminist organisations and movements have documented for years. The technology changes the scale; the speed and evidence trail but the power dynamic does not. 

Devices are still weapons, even with platform bans

This was the defining argument of the recently concluded Tech Abuse conference convened by the University College London (UCL) and the Office of the Mayor of London- that TFGBV is no longer niche or emerging concern, but an everyday reality of coercive control embedded in the devices most of us use. The data bears this out where according to Refuge more than 123,000 violent offences against women and girls involving tech abuse were recorded nationally in the UK. The UN has similarly rung the alarm that deepfake videos were an estimated 550 per cent more prevalent in 2023 as compared to previous years and that the tools are morphing rapidly through AI.  

Earlier this year in January, X’s Grok AI mass-produced nude content of women and girls including children without their consent, generating millions of sexualised images. Ofcom UK’s own regulator was unable to investigate the app due to the limitations  of the Online Safety Act. Simply put, the law had not kept up. 

This is not new. As Womankind Worldwide’s Unsafe by Design analysis highlights, TFGBV is part of a continuum of abuse that extends existing patterns of coercive control into digital spaces. Yet, to date, there’s no single national law in the UK that adequately recognises TFGBV as a form of harm legally. With the vast innovation and rapid growth of digital technologies, the law is still playing catch up. 

Tech must adapt to safety from the onset

It’s been long argued that women’s safety has always been an afterthought in how tech platforms are designed, regulated and when governments choose to act.  Worse still, with intensifying digital violence globally, there’s still no single comprehensive legal framework that adequately recognises TFGBV as distinct form of harm. This is coupled with a rise of tech abuse that continues to deepen impunity not just with zero non-redress reporting mechanisms but weak regulation that doesn’t hold Big Tech platforms to account. 

If frontier change that is all encompassing is to be upscaled in ensuring protections for women and girls online safety by design can only be the sustainable solution. This is compulsory safety by design that prioritises preventive steps and not just an after that after harm is done criminally. For example, in the automobile industry, there’s a strong regulation for crash safety before cars leave the factories for the road, why can’t this also connected to safety online from a regulation standpoint? 

While we welcome that the social media ban is being considered as some of the preventative measures of child protection, safety online is not just a children’s issue but a gendered power issue. This regulation fails to consider the structural role that platforms continue to play in enabling gender-based violence where everyone is at risk. 

A national child abuse crisis should not be all it takes to trigger political action while TFGBV continues to be treated with less urgency. The principle is in calling for stringent structural interventions that enable safety by design across all ages. And this is not just anchored on survivor-led response but platform accountability from the start. 

A ban is the easiest political move because it puts the burden on users including families, children and survivors rather than the companies that continue to profit from design choices that enable harm.  

The UK government must instead move beyond broad commitments and adopt concrete measures to prevent TFGBV, including embedding safety by design, strengthening platform accountability and addressing the gendered risks posed by emerging technologies. Only then can we ensure that women and girls can participate safely, free from technology-enabled violence, misogyny, and discrimination. 

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FCDO allocations announcement

The recent FCDO announcement on how funding will be allocated (within an aid budget shrunken from 0.5 to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income by 2027) is indicative of the evolving system we’re operating in. For, while ‘women and girls’ are named as a priority, we’re also seeing reductions in bilateral aid from £818m to £688m (although the exact extent of impact is unclear due to country allocations not yet being available). Mitigating measures, like increasing the proportion of aid that prioritises women and girls to 90 per cent of bilateral programmes, are welcome. But the plans also include a shift in emphasis from long-term sustainable funding to short-term initiatives, and increased redirection of funds to private sector models. We will continue to speak out on the need to return to funding levels that will not put vital gender equality programmes at risk, but what else can we do to promote gender equality in the current reality? 

It appears that the UK government will, in some cases, function less as a funder and more as a connector to groups like high net-worth individuals. This growing shift from statutory funding to increased interactions with less regulated private sector channels feels uncomfortable. But exploring ethical ways to engage with it, could be an important way to fight back against the global rollback of gender equality at a time when options are increasingly limited. This is particularly significant considering opposition movements are benefitting from billions of dollars of private sector investment to carry out anti-gender agendas.  

Lessons from Womankind’s corporate partnerships 

At Womankind, we’re not entirely new to working with the private sector. In common with many civil society organisations, we benefit from funding from corporations and philanthropists, and we can take lessons from how we do this ethically as we extend our advocacy. One way is by carefully evaluating who we work with. Our donor acceptance policy helps us choose appropriate corporate partnerships, avoiding corporations with questionable practices. This helps us honour our external calls, as part of the corporate justice movement, for accountability for companies that harm people and the planet. In the same way, advocacy with non-traditional partners must be selective, involving interactions with corporations aligned with our values that are well-positioned to strengthen and amplify our Majority World partner’s agendas. 

Global Partnerships Conference

Such strategies will be important to keep in mind when Womankind attends the Global Partnerships Conference on the 19th and 20th of May. Co-hosted between the UK and South Africa, it aims to “drive global growth and prosperity and tackle global challenges head on.” It will include sessions on key themes relevant to our work, including violence against women and girls (VAWG), AI and technology, and climate change. A key focus of the conference will be championing diverse forms of finance and, as well as civil society allies, we will encounter business and tech leaders, investors and philanthropists. Moreover, based on what we’ve learnt from the FCDO announcements, engaging with the UK government could also involve private sector interactions.  

Our recommendations 

As ever, our advocacy will be guided by our Majority World partners’ priorities, in the form of our partner-informed research reports and forthcoming policy brief setting out our calls to the UK government. 

Key calls will include:

• A UN Binding treaty to regulate corporate activity and prevent and mitigate harms and a UK Business, Human Rights and Environment Act.

• Support to end impunity to femicide, enact survivor-centred VAWG laws, such as States’ ratification of the Istanbul Convention, and stop workplace harassment and abuse through States’ ratification of ILO 190.  

• Support for flexible funding that can be used for core activities, and engagement with women’s rights organisations (WROs) and movements that respects their autonomy and expertise in their contexts.

• Actions to counter tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), such as support for global governance and regulation, strengthened legislation and enforcement, and the development of community-driven technologies.Such actions should seek to redefine online safety not only as protection from harm but as freedom from surveillance, harassment, and silencing. They should take place alongside efforts to disrupt the continuum of TFGBV by identifying patterns of harm, generating critical evidence for advocacy, and translating research into actionable recommendations that strengthen partner strategies and inform and coordinate policymaker and tech sector engagement and responses.  

• Support for a UK National Plan on Afghanistan that centres Afghan women’s voices and supports girls’ education and women’s freedoms in all walks of life. 

As we pursue our advocacy agenda as well as those of our partners at the Global Partnerships Conference and beyond, we’ll consider how we can get the best out of new rooms and non-traditional partnerships, while staying true to ourselves and our pursuit of a world where women and people of all genders enjoy equal rights and freedoms and can live in joy, choice, and dignity. 

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Launched in 2021, the Fund has supported feminist groups and women rights organisations in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, leveraging a total of £1,568,687 in 98 grants through five grant- making cycles. This has enabled advocacy addressing intersectional issues on gender-based violence, disability rights, LBQ inclusion, climate justice and land rights, women political participation and economic rights, driving transformative change in challenging and constantly shifting contexts across Africa and Asia.

Today, Womankind is launching ‘Resourcing Resistance: an evaluation of the Her Voice Fund’s impact on feminist advocacy (2021-2024)’. This research focuses on the first three cycles of HVF, the distribution of funds across these five countries and the out of cycles grants. It reflects Womankind’s broader approach of intentional commitment to supporting feminist organising in diverse and often challenging contexts.

The evaluation highlights HVF’s timely and transformative role in nurturing feminist advocacy, while identifying critical opportunities to enhance and strengthen its impact and sustainability. For Womankind and its funders, lessons and recommendations provide a clear roadmap to strengthen HVF, ensuring feminist movements thrive in pursuit of equity and justice.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the 80 respondents from 37 Her Voice Fund (HVF) grantees across Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, who shared their insights and personal narratives with openness and trust. We would like to thank to Isabella Matambanadzo, Esther Svova, Abraham Magoto, and Rungano Muchetu from Balise Consultants for their dedication, care, and thoroughness in conducting this research across all our focus countries and synthesising findings, and to Her Voice Fund Manager, Mercy Otekra, for summarising these for this evaluation.

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This is a systemic issue

For millions of women and girls in all their diversities, the digital world has proven not to be a safe space but of violence, exploitation and extraction. Womankind’s latest research, Unsafe by Design: An Analysis of the TFGBV Continuum, underscores that technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) is not just an isolated phenomenon. It is systemic, gendered, and deeply connected to offline inequalities. The same patriarchal norms and biases that silence women in public, are being coded and amplified online. From coordinated harassment campaigns to non-consensual image sharing, cyberstalking, doxxing, and AI-enabled abuse, digital platforms are not just hosting violence, they are enabling it.  

While policy responses remain fragmented and reactive, reporting systems are inconsistent and laws are struggling to evolve with technological developments. Survivors of TFGBV struggle to navigate complex legal systems that were never designed to address digitally mediated harm and are forced to relive harm through redress processes that rarely deliver justice. The burden remains on women to ‘log off’, ‘block,’ or ‘grow a thicker skin’. 

It is political

When women journalists leave the profession, when women politicians decide not to run for office, and when young women limit their expression online, the digital world becomes narrower, more hostile, and less representative. Democracy becomes weakened with a shrinking civic space blocking young women from fully expressing themselves online. Today, technology is increasingly being weaponized to silence women and human rights defenders thus exploiting gendered inequalities, targeting marginalised groups through sexualised abuse with threats of outing, and identity-based harassment amongst many other forms of TFGBV. Online discrimination continues to mirror and reinforce offline power hierarchies, compounding marginalization and deepening exclusion of women and girls from safe and meaningful digital participation. 

A safer digital ecosystem is possible

It is paramount to recognise that TFGBV is a structural issue rooted in gender inequality and demands coordinated responses across technology companies, governments, donors, and civil society. Building on Womankind’s report- a feminist digital future demands that we prioritise building digital spaces where women and girls in all their diversities can participate freely, safely, and with full agency, grounded in feminist principles, evidence, and coordinated collective care and action.  Accountability must move beyond voluntary guidelines. Transparency in safety by design, meaningful content moderation investment, and survivor-centred reporting systems should not be optional add-ons but baseline responsibilities. Policy must be informed by those most affected ensuring that they are at the frontlines of both innovation and solutions, and this can be achieved to comprehensively address TFGBV in both policy and in practice. Womankind’s recently launched playbook, Reboot the online system, make it safer: a feminist playbook for responding to TFGBV, offers practical, actionable and feminist guidance on making this a reality.  

We have the opportunity to transform the digital world from a site of violence and exclusion into one of agency, solidarity, and justice for all women, girls and marginalised groups. We cannot wait! The future of our autonomy and our digital lives depend on it. 

The post Unsafe by design: when digital spaces fail all women and girls appeared first on Womankind Worldwide.

The Taliban’s new penal code, De Mahakumu Jazaai Osulnama, gives the Supreme Leader and Taliban judges full control over Afghanistan’s legal system. It criminalizes dissent and enforces strict social control, including corporal punishments. Women and girls are the hardest hit: husbands can legally beat their wives unless serious injury occurs, women need male guardians for travel and legal matters, and their rights to act independently are severely restricted. By turning discrimination and male authority into law, the code strips women of protections and makes justice almost impossible to access. 

Gender-based violence in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule is a deeply complex and multifaceted crisis. It is not only sponsored by state engineered ‘gender apartheid’ but enabled by the international community’s failure to uphold its commitment to Afghan women and girls.   

Womankind Worldwide strongly condemns this latest assault on human rights. The situation in Afghanistan remains one of the gravest violations of women’s rights in the world today. Having been systematically stripped off their right to participate socially, economically and politically in society, they’ve been reduced to second class citizens in their own country. 

We stand in unwavering solidarity with Afghan women’s movements and their courageous advocacy championing for the rights of women and girls. This includes their full and equal participation in public and political life. 

We call on the UK government and international allies to honour their obligations to women and girls in Afghanistan. This requires treating their safety and security as an urgent priority through sustained international aid, continued diplomatic pressure and the meaningful inclusion of Afghan women’s voices in all peace-building and reconstruction processes.   

• We call on the UK government and the international community, including the UN and other donors, to hold the Taliban accountable for women’s rights, tie aid to compliance, provide financial and technical support to Afghan women’s organizations to document abuses and provide legal aid, and ensure women are actively included in peacebuilding, reconstruction, and all policy decision-making. 

• We call on humanitarian and development actors to ensure all programs directly protect women and girls, provide accessible legal aid, maintain fully confidential reporting channels for abuse, and systematically monitor, document, and report violations to international human rights bodies to guarantee accountability. 

• We call on the Taliban/ the de facto authorities to amend the penal code to end legalised violence against women and ensure they can access justice, education, and basic rights without restriction. Afghan women and girls must be protected, not punished by law. 

Afghan women and girls cannot wait. The international community must act now, and the Taliban must be held responsible for codifying violence, discrimination, and fear into law.

On January 4, 2026, the Taliban released a new Criminal Procedure Code with 119 articles, 10 chapters and three sections signed by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, 

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We will be co-organising a side event: Disrupting the continuum of TFGBV together with our partners from Kenya, Uganda, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ethiopia. This session will draw reflections on the gendered nature of online violence and how it continues to impact women and girls- denying them opportunities socially, economically and politically.  

Launching a research report: Unsafe by Design: An Analysis of the TFGBV Continuum– we highlight the experiences of women and gender diverse people with intersecting identities online-including indigenous, black, disabled, LGBTQI+, migrant and religious women.  

Our call to action:

• Redesigned technology prioritising safety over profit through adoption of Safety by Design standards  

• Strengthened content moderation and enforcement especially in Global South countries where language coverage is not extensive  

• Enforced transparency and accountability through international regulation standards that extends duty of care to users  

• Digital literacy focused on helping users to understand risks, and make informed choices of how to engage online 

Session: Disrupting the continuum of TFGBV

Date: 13th March, 12:30-2:00pm, Salvation Army, Auditorium 

Hosts: Womankind Worldwide, the Open University – Centre for Protecting Women Online and Femicide Count Kenya 

About this session: In this session we will launch the analysis report on TFGBV: Disrupting the Continuum of Online Violence. The report identifies key patterns of TFGBV, provides critical insights, and informs advocacy efforts aimed at ending this form of violence. 

Speakers: 

• Wangechi Wachira, Executive Director, Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) 

• Georgia Tumesigwe, Programme Manager, FOWODE 

• Dibabe Bacha, Executive Director, Ethiopia Women’s Disability National Association 

• Nargis Nehan, Founder, FARAGEER 

• Latifah Namutebi, Strategic Partnership and Advocacy Lead, Women’s International Peace Centre 

• Renu Sijapati, Founding Member and General Secretary, Feminist Dalit Organisation (FEDO) 

• Professor Olga Jurasz, Director of Centre for Protecting Women Online, the Open University 

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In the 2017/18 elections in Nepal, 7,000 Dalit women entered politics for the very first time. A seismic shift in the representation of women and Dalit women in key decision-making spaces and a major step towards true democracy and gender equality in Nepal.

In the last general election in Nepal in November 2022, a movement of women ran for election backed by their communities, and many won. However not a single woman with disabilities was elected to federal parliament in 2022.

Women with disabilities continue to face significant barriers to genuine participation in decisions that affect them. Social stigma, discrimination and deeply rooted patriarchal norms limit the opportunities afforded to women with disabilities to engage in politics. Economic, educational and accessibility barriers further hinder their participation. Alongside this, political parties rarely prioritise the inclusion of women with disabilities in leadership roles.

Nepal will once again go to the poles on 5 March 2026. Ahead of the election, Womankind partner Nepal Disabled Women Association (NDWA) share their demands for sustained commitment and real action from political parties to ensure Nepal’s democratic processes are inclusive and accessible and the needs of women with disabilities are prioritized. This includes:

Electoral Participation and Accessibility

• Meaningful participation, leadership, and representation of persons with disabilities in governance process
• Participation and inclusion of persons with disabilities in all levels of government, from local to federal.
• A special mechanism put in place to ensure youth with disabilities are represented at the local level Women’s Provision.

NDWA also calls on all political parties to meaningfully include commitments to persons with disabilities in their manifestos, including:

Sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response

• Effective facilitation and management of gender-based violence desks and ring-fenced gender-based violence prevention funds at the local level.
• Provisions to ensure the safety of women and girls with disabilities including through targeted programmes such as free self-defense and self-protection training, given the increased risk they face of gender-based and sexual violence

Economic Support

• Adjustment to social security allowance for persons with disabilities based on their type of disability and needs.
• Improvement to skill development, capacity building and employment opportunities for persons with disabilities so that they can gain economic independence and contribute to the state through taxes. Participation of women with disabilities should be ensured in every training small and/or cottage industries.
• Local employment, and startup and innovation support for youth with disabilities.
• 50 percent exemption should be provided on registration fees and tax rates for self-employment and enterprises run by persons with disabilities. Provision should be made for employers to receive tax exemption of at 10-50 percent for opening opportunities for employees with disabilities.
• Additional arrangements should be made for the promotion and marketing of businesses and products run by persons with disabilities.

Health and Wellbeing Support

• Immediate provision of personal assistant and caregiver services for people who need them, as per the directive order of the supreme court.
• Free health insurance should be made available to all persons with disabilities and life insurance provided for those with [1] where required.
• Rehabilitation and assistive technology: quality assistive devices (wheelchairs, white canes, hearing aids) should be free and accessible based on individual assessments.

Legal support

• Free and effective legal aid for disabled people, gender and sexual minorities, and economically marginalised communities.
• Guardianship, care and support provided by the state to persons with disabilities without guardians and custodians. This can be ensured by robust systems for social participation and rehabilitation home referrals.

Alongside raising these demands, throughout the electoral period, NDWA in coordination with the Forum for Women, Law and Development (FWLD) will be conducting voter education campaigns. These will raise awareness among voters to vote correctly and efficiently, ensuring that their voices will be heard in the democratic process.

Alongside their calls for real commitments to accessibility and inclusion by all political parties, NDWA team members will also be participating as trained election observers focusing on gender equality, disability and social inclusion. These observers are specially trained to ensure the rights of women, gender and sexual minorities, youth, senior citizens, persons with disabilities, religious and linguistic minorities and other marginalised groups are upheld throughout the nomination and election campaign process, on voting day and during vote counting and results announcement.

Nepal Disabled Women Association (NDWA) are a disabled-women led organisation, supporting women with disabilities to pursue their rights, provide them with protection and livelihood support.

[1] Per the Rights Act, in Nepal Severely Disabled refers to a person who faces extreme difficulty in performing daily activities, even with the continuous assistance from others.

The post A Nepal that works for women with disabilities – NDWA’s election manifesto demands appeared first on Womankind Worldwide.

The series is inspired by Phoebe’s upcoming short film, ‘I Did Everything Right’: a story based on her own experience of being followed home. Rather than focussing on the act itself, the project explores the aftermath, and the ways that a single encounter can send ripples through years of a woman’s life.

On launching the interview series with Womankind, she explains; “Hearing other women’s survivor stories has been integral to my own healing journey. Through my short film, and now these conversations, I’d love to have the same effect for other women: to show them they’re not alone in the struggles they’re silently facing, and that the measures they take to feel safe are nothing to be ashamed of.”

Kavinya Makau, Director of Policy and Communications at Womankind Worldwide, adds, “1 in 3 women experience violence in their lifetime. This is not just another statistic, but real harm continuously meted out on women, girls and people of all genders. As Womankind Worldwide – alongside filmmakers like Phoebe Cleghorn and Coralie Ayala – we believe violence against women and girls is a human rights issue and we continue to challenge social norms such as patriarchy that abet this.”

These numbers equate to 840 million women and girls globally (WHO). According to UN Women, those who experience violence are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety disorders and other long-lasting psychological consequences. 

Together, Phoebe, Coralie and Womankind Worldwide aim to amplify women’s voices, explore the toll that these conditions have on women’ s mental health and call for a safer, more equitable world. 

‘I Did Everything Right: In Conversation’ will launch on Instagram via @idideverythingrightfilm and @womankindworldwide on 20th February throughout the day, with a trailer launching on 16th February at 7pm UK time.

ENDS  

For further information, please contact phoebecleghorn@gmail.com.

About the team behind ‘I Did Everything Right: In Conversation’

‘I Did Everything Right: In Conversation’ brings together a team of rising filmmakers. 

Actor, writer and executive producer Phoebe Cleghorn featured on BBC Maestro’s ‘Acting Masterclass’ with Succession’s Brian Cox and Emmy-nominated director James Buchanan, starred in ‘The Government Inspector’ at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, and has been recognised as promising emerging talent with a nomination for Shooting People’s New Shoots: Actors Award 2024.

Campaign content director Coralie Ayala is an award-winning filmmaker and digital creator known for pushing creative boundaries and using storytelling to spark debate and social change. Most notably, she directed ‘The New Normal’, a documentary by food charity City Harvest on the reality of food poverty in London. 

About Womankind Worldwide

Womankind Worldwide is an international women’s rights organisation and funder, working with women’s rights groups and feminist movements across the world to end gender inequality. They take collective action alongside women’s rights organisations, feminist movements and activists in Eastern and Southern Africa and South Asia, supporting them to challenge inequality at home, in communities and the workplace. Womankind fund and strengthen these movements, and advocate for change alongside them. 

About the short film ‘I Did Everything Right’
‘Tamsin is pursued by a stranger. Though she escapes, fear follows her home.’

After escaping an attempted attack by a stranger, Tamsin’s welcome solitude is transformed to fearful confinement as she tries and fails to reclaim her sense of safety. Three years later, the measures she takes to feel safe remain part of her daily routine. To learn more about the project, shooting in spring 2026, visit the crowdfunder or follow the project on Instagram at @idideverythingrightfilm. 

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Global anti-rights and anti-gender movements have been emboldened by the second term of Donald Trump who has dismantled many initiatives that promote women’s rights with the reversal of Roe verses Wade in the USA and globally through the cancelling of USAID. Social media platforms are not being properly regulated and there is widespread fake news. Authoritarian regimes in other countries such as Argentina, have seen the election of Donald Trump as their cue to erode human rights protections as well, with gender rights often being targeted because of the threat to patriarchal ideology.  

Anti-rights and anti- gender movements have infiltrated society at different levels; in previously progressive spaces like the UN, through local traditional leaders, media influencers, and through local NGOs. Their messaging often reframes human rights language to promote rigid notions of the family and gender roles and criminalises issues such as abortion and sex work.  This infiltration has led to an erosion of space for progressive women’s rights organisations and movements to do their work. It has fuelled a marked increase in attacks and misinformation online and offline, especially towards the most marginalised women and girls and LBTQI+ communities.  

Our partners in feminist movements tell us regularly how they are struggling to do their work in this increasingly hostile climate. There is an increase in organisations closing their doors or reducing work due to a lack of funding. Online harassment and the use of the law to restrict their registrations and remove legal protections against violence and other forms of gender-based harm is on the rise and targeting marginalised groups and identities. This reality is contributing to worsening wellbeing for activists.  

Our partners are already thinking critically about how they can respond to this worrying reality but to do this, they need support to understand the situation clearly and strategise with others. In response to this need, in November 2025, Womankind created a safe online space for dialogue* and exchange for our partners with expert panellists from across the world to hear how they monitor and mitigate these growing threats and critically, how to push back safely. This webinar complements Womankind’s other work with partners to address these issues via our flexible and core funds, through campaigns and global advocacy.  

*Due to the sensitive nature of the dialogue and to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved, the webinar was not recorded, and the panellist’s names are not provided in this piece.  

Call to action for women’s rights organisations and feminist movements

Monitor:

• Follow the money. Anti-rights movements are well funded. To understand them, feminist movements need to monitor where the money is coming from for this work. By observing how anti-rights actors operate online, feminist movements will be able to gain greater clarity on the links between donors and organisations.  
• Infiltrate: To clearly observe the behaviour of anti-rights actors on and offline, feminist actors should infiltrate their platforms when it is safe to do so without leaving digital footprints.  This may mean joining newsletters, posting on the social media pages, joining WhatsApp Groups.  

Mitigate:

• Reinforce progressive language and create counter narratives. Anti-rights actors  create narratives that seek to erode decades of advocacy in human rights spaces to  ensure language is inclusive of the lived realities of all marginalised groups. ‘Family’ and ‘patriotism’ are narrative concepts that have been co-opted to deny rights. Feminist groups need to monitor the regressive language being used, reinforce and promote inclusive language that promotes the human rights of everyone and develop counter narratives to push back and amplify to new audiences.  
• Expose funders who fund harmful narratives to the media to discredit them publicly online 
• Research and litigate – carry out strategic litigation of cases of anti-rights abuses using international legal frameworks and underpinned by credible research to undermine and discredit anti-rights arguments and narratives 
• Community organising – work with communities to bring them into feminist movements in safe spaces for growth and strategic thinking.  

Stay safe:

Pushing back on anti-rights actors is risky work and comes at a high cost to physical and mental health. Activists should weigh up the risks verses potential gains of any action on and offline and consider developing strategies to sustain health, remain safe and avoid burnout.  

Rebuild and strengthen regional networks and avoid siloed working:    

Within feminist movements there is a wealth of experience. Pushing back on anti-rights actors will require feminists to work collectively and use complementary approaches playing to their strengths in their networks nationally and across borders that work.  

Call to action to donors allied to feminist movements

• Be brave! – Funders committed to gender justice should seize this moment to be brave – this is not the moment to withdraw funds.  
• Step in where others have stepped out – at least 5 countries have withdrawn or reduced their funding to women’s rights work in the last 5 years because of the rise of authoritarian, far right and conservative regimes.  
• Invest in young people and their political awareness – there is energy, innovation and  creativity within young feminist movements who bring a greater understanding and openness of intersectional discrimination.   
• Fund flexibly to so that movements can try new approaches – the landscape is changing rapidly and feminist movements need to be able to act and react differently at different times and try new ideas. 
• Reduce or remove restrictions on funding – anti-rights groups lobby aggressively for their objectives using their extensive resources. If donors fund feminist groups without restrictions on lobbying, they can push back with their own evidence-based advocacy. 

Womankind knows that the stronger and more sustainable feminist movements are, the more able they are to resist the widespread backlash on women’s rights alongside having the resilience to push back and defend hard won rights. This is why strengthening feminist movements and critically providing flexible and core funding to them is that the heart of our strategy to 2030.    

Our flexible and core funding schemes are the  Movement Strengthening Fund / Womankind’s Movement Strengthening Fund Analysis – Womankind Worldwide , HER Voice Fund and Strategic Grants.   

If you feel passionately about investing in stronger feminist movements, please get in touch with Martina Hoggart, Director of Fundraising & Marketing  

MartinaH@womankind.org.uk  

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