Building Capacity for Intersectional Advocacy on Women’s Issues
There is no more urgent time than now to embrace intersectionality as a key to eliminating inequalities for ALL women.
Why?
Because a global pandemic has exposed the profound inequalities embedded in our systems and structures, and many women face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and inequality at the same time.
Because renewed outrage over systemic anti-Black violence has opened more eyes to the profound racial inequalities embedded in our systems and structures, which many Black, Indigenous, and racialized women face in addition to multiple and intersecting forms of inequality at the same time.
Because most women’s organizations in Canada want to do more advocacy and collaboration but, following decades of defunding and the consolidation of inflexible, short-term project-based funding, face inadequate resources and uncertain funding.
CRIAW-ICREF’s multi-year project “Building Capacity for Intersectional Advocacy on Women’s Issues” (2017-2021) addresses the need to build inclusive networks to strengthen women and equity-seeking organizations’ collective capacity for advocacy on women’s issues. We know that collaboration makes our advocacy stronger. One means of strategic survival is deepening our collective understanding of intersectionality and building inclusive networks while we’re at it. Placing intersectionality at the core of our work, we recognize that multiple forces are at play in constructing and addressing conditions of inequality and oppression. Intersectionality is about better understanding inequality, then taking smarter action to address it.
Following extensive discussions and consultations with women’s organizations across Canada, we produced popular resources and tools that can be used to
- Deepen our collective understanding of what intersectionality means in theory and practice,
- Identify how to build inclusive networks to strengthen our collective capacity for advocacy on women’s issues.
The thought-provoking discussions, critical feedback and inputs from the women’s organizations who participated in the regional discussion groups, key informant interviews, pilot workshops, and follow up discussions provided invaluable feedback and direction in the development of the resources coming out of this project.
Here are tools you can use to make intersectionality a habit!
Download. Share. Collaborate.
The tools and resources produced through our Building Capacity project help women’s and equity-seeking organizations deepen their collective understanding of intersectionality and build inclusive networks.
CRIAW-ICREF’s multi-year project “Building Capacity for Intersectional Advocacy on Women’s Issues” (2017-2021) was funded through Women and Gender Equality Canada’s Women’s Program.