United Nation, New York | On July 1st, 2020 UN Women along with the governments of Mexico and France came together to host a global gathering that will bring together leaders in the movement for gender equality.

After months of deliberation 65 prominent voices from civil society, UN agencies, philanthropic organizations and the private sector were chosen to lead the newly launched Generation Equality Action Coalitions, committed to achieving gender equality and women and girls’ rights. The announcement was made on Wednesday at the Generation Equality Forum and the full list of leaders can be viewed here (full list here). According to UNWomen, “these 65 leaders bring deep commitment to and experience in advancing gender equality and women’s human rights and reflect the different experiences and identities of women and girls from around the world.”

As such, the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG on FfD), of which the Feminist Task Force is a co-convener together with Equidad de Genero (Mexico), has been selected as a leader and will co-lead the Economic Justice and Rights Action Coalition formed by UN Women as part of their Generation Equality Forum and Beijing+25 initiatives.  

The Action Coalitions will deliver concrete and transformative change for women and girls around the world in the coming five years. They will focus on six themes that are critical for achieving gender equality: gender-based violence, economic justice and rights, bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights, feminist action for climate justice, technology and innovation for gender equality, and feminist movements and leadership. Adolescent girls and young women will be at the heart of each Action Coalition’s work.  

“As a founding member of the WWG on FfD, the Feminist Task Force has shepherded the WWG on FfD since its inception in 2006. As a Co-Convener of the WWG on FfD, we congratulate our co-convener since 2017, Equidad de Género, Ciudadanía, Trabajo y Familia, and look forward to working closely with the other co-leads in this category.” ~ Rosa Lizarde, Director, Feminist Task Force

We congratulate the other co-leads in the Economic Justice and Rights Action Coalition: 

1 – FEMNET our long-time partners in organizing the Addis Ababa Women’s Forum for Financing Development in 2015, the African Women’s Development and Communications Network; 

2 – our long-time partners, the Huairou Commission, a women-led social movement of grassroots, poor urban and rural, and indigenous communities founded in 1995 after the Beijing Conference; 

3 – Care International 

4 – International Trade Union Confederation, whose predecessor, the ICFTU, was a founding member of the WWG on FfD.

We also congratulate our friends and colleagues selected as civil society co-leads in the other five thematic areas:

• Gender-Based Violence 
• Bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) 
• Feminist action for climate justice 
• Technology and innovation for Gender Equality 
• Feminist movements and leadership   

The Action Coalitions are designed to work collaboratively. We look forward to engaging our member state partners, the governments of Mexico, Spain, South Africa, Sweden and Germany. Other institutional collaborators in our thematic area include the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Further appointments of the Action Coalitions’ leaders will be made in the next few months, including private sector companies and youth-led organizations, to ensure intersectional and intergenerational leadership. 

As a Co-covener of the WWG on FfD, we will look to Feminist Task Force friends and organizational partners to ground our work in the centrality of “gender equality to end poverty” and to ensure the voices of the most marginalized women and girls resonate in the work of the Action Coalitions. We will work collaboratively not only for economic and gender justice, but for climate justice, human rights, bodily autonomy and women and girls’ leadership and development “to deliver game-changing results for women and girls.” 

|  Feminist Task Force  “Gender Equality to End Poverty” Co-Convener | Women’s Working Group on  Financing for Development   @FemTaskForce   @WWGonFfd