When I joined the board of Australians Investing In Women a few years ago it was to support a clear and pressing goal: to make sure a gender lens was applied to all philanthropic and corporate giving so that women receive their fair share of funding.
This couldn’t have been more aligned with my values and a career focus on advocacy for women’s rights.
Since joining the board, however, despite an increasing appetite for the gender lens idea, the concept has met with lots of approval in theory but not quite as much practical action.
Times have changed. In the middle of an era-defining pandemic, and as Australia faces a cultural reckoning on the treatment of women, concrete steps are taking the gender lens from a good idea to reality.
This week, AIIW and the Champions of Change Coalition launched the Sharpening our focus on corporate giving: keeping gender equality in the frame guide to set out the reasons a gender lens is needed.
Corporate giving has significant clout in the funding of all kinds of Australian social, community, medical research and other philanthropic programs.
The Champions of Change Coalition already apply gender equity principles to their supply chain and are now ensuring the work of their corporate foundations is consistent with the group’s goals.
The guide sets out the why and the how of the gender lens process: the impact of all kinds of programs when more intentional gender criteria are used to allocate funds; and the need to ensure more women are running and making decisions about funding projects.
It’s circuit breaking work which translates the AIIW focus into tangible action which can be applied right across the business community and beyond.
This is a step that couldn’t be more timely. Women have been suffering disproportionate stress from the triple shift (paid and caring work plus supervising remote learning), unemployment and disruption to their livelihoods during the pandemic.
That’s why AIIW is also following up on the research released in April this year, (Gender-wise Investing: A Springboard for Australia’s Recovery) with a further in-depth look at what’s happening to women and the longer term impact on gender equity.
In Changing the Trajectory – Investing in women for a fairer future, Equity Economics will examine one of the key themes that emerged in the original analysis: how COVID-19 has hit women’s employment, education and skills.
The research – which is part of a continuing series – will assess the latest data on women and work, in particular young women and look at the significant impacts of the pandemic. The findings will be released on 26th October at an event to be held in partnership with Philanthropy Australia.
There’s no question the upheaval of the last 18 months has highlighted inequities and seen a default to traditional gender norms. But it’s also brought some clarity around priorities in our society.
The work of women has been front and centre in politics, health, in essential work of all kinds.
And while times are tough, many philanthropists are reporting enormous community support for a range of programs during lockdowns – such as delivering food packages to families, many from migrant backgrounds, in south west Sydney and setting up community health and vaccination information and centres.
Perhaps this response to a very visible wave of need, and the particular impact on women which we can all see in daily media reports, has given a bit more impetus to the gender lens messaging.
AIIW’s work and messages are certainly resonating with the networks we know, in philanthropy, and beyond to the business community, in a way we haven’t seen before. And that shift is reflecting an international mobilization around this cause.
Just this week, a NY Times feature reported that the face and culture of philanthropy are changing as the boys club in the sector breaks down.
Support for women and girls’ organisations has increased in recent years and high-profile donors, such as McKenzie Scott, Melinda French Gates and Schusterman Family Philanthropies together gave US$40 million to initiatives promoting gender equity in July.
It’s very much needed. Until recently, the amount of giving which went to women specifically was about 2% of the total, according to the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University.
We don’t have much data in Australia at the moment, although AIIW research from a few years ago estimated that just 12% of grants went to women’s programs. And we are working to build more data and fill out the picture.
Meanwhile, women in many parts of the world including Australia are poised to inherit and control more wealth over the next decade than at any other time in history. And women donors, a number of studies have found, are more likely to give to causes supporting women and girls.
The stars, it seems, are aligning.