I have spent more than two decades working inside philanthropy to support feminist movements for systemic change. Grave gender injustices, intersected with racial and economic injustice, are bubbling to the surface and exacerbated during this pandemic in ways that are both disturbing and sobering.
Philanthropy must respond to Covid-19 by focusing on the impact on women. The global crisis demands nothing less of us.
Around the world, domestic violence calls have spiked as stay-at-home orders have left hundreds of thousands jobless, putting more people — the vast majority women — pent up with abusive partners. Increased unemployment among men has long been correlated with an escalation in violence against their female partners. At the same time, the existing and disproportionate pressures on women to care for those in their homes, in addition to their full-time jobs, have exponentially increased under stay-at-home orders. The pandemic has exposed care work’s gender gap, long subsidized in the formal global economy by women’s unpaid or underpaid labor.
In the work force, women hold over two-thirds of America’s low-wage jobs, and early data shows women are hardest hit by job loss. Front-line and essential care-work jobs, like domestic work and health care, the vast majority of which are held by women, put workers at increased risk from personal contact. Reports show sex workers have lost income during Covid-19 but are often ineligible for government emergency funds because this work is criminalized in most countries.
Politically, talking about this crisis as a war has effectively marginalized women’s perspectives. Women are rarely presented as experts or decision makers in “war room” militarized settings. And not surprisingly, authoritarians are using the pandemic to push regressive gender policies. In Hungary, instead of responding to the crisis at hand, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is seeking to make it impossible for transgender people to change their legal gender. From Venezuela to Brazil and in several U.S. states, policy makers are using Covid-19 as an excuse to ban abortion care.
It is hard to see the light these days. But the novelist Arundhati Roy has urged us to use the pandemic “to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.” The doomsday machine has several moving parts, and a key one is patriarchy.
Philanthropy could help to rethink the machine. Here’s how to start:
Look inward.
Examine your grant-making strategy for responding to Covid-19: Do you highlight your existing priorities and then just add, “with a special focus on women, people with disabilities, migrants, and LGBTQ communities” at the end? I call this the “just add women and mix” method. Or do you focus on ensuring women, girls, and gender-nonconforming people are central to your grant-making practices?
Is your leadership and team as diverse as the communities in which you are making grants? If not, how can you begin to rapidly shift or change the composition of key staff or consultants?
Is your crisis-response approach focused on returning to “normal times” or on shifting power dynamics and increasing the voice and agency of people and communities that are rarely considered the focus of the work?
Grant makers should also ask themselves who is leading the organizations they are funding in both crisis and “normal” times. How many are led by women, people of color, or those from communities historically excluded through structural discrimination, which is only exacerbated by a crisis like Covid-19? How many grants go to organizations that are based in the developing world?
Fund the building of feminist movements.
While there is no doubt social distancing can slow the spread of the coronavirus, it can be problematic for advocates who seek to build social solidarity to grow their movements.
Consider rapid-response funding that will help movement leaders build resilience and expand. Partner with feminist funds, which are more closely enmeshed in feminist movements and can quickly pivot to make small grants that are accessible in the most remote and hard-to-reach communities. Feminist funds like the NY Foundation for Women, Ms. Foundation, Global Fund for Women, International Women’s Health Coalition, and MADRE help democratize what is still the very white, male-dominated field of philanthropy.
Expand your grant making to ensure that it offers to networks, groups, and leaders flexible general operating support over a multiyear period. Yes, the movements you support now are even more at risk as markets tumble, donors hesitate, and galas are canceled. Key movement leaders may be sick or incapacitated, or even die, during this period — think about grants that help with transitions, offer processes to build intergenerational learning, and honor the legacy of leaders who may have died. Your grantees need you to step up and stay the course, not force them to change everything they are doing so you can say your grants directly helped address the coronavirus.
Advocate for a stronger economy focused on caring for everyone.
The market-based economy will not fix all the problems that the coronavirus has exposed and worsened. The market helped create them by undervaluing and exploiting the labor of people of color, women, and gender-nonconforming people.
This terrible pandemic has unexpectedly created an opportunity to challenge dominant narratives. Covid-19 has sharply revealed the value of government investments and the role of the state in caring for its people. It has also made clear the role of civil-society organizations, including unions to protect collective bargaining and workers’ rights.
This is a moment for philanthropy to act boldly, not just by protecting the most vulnerable during the outbreak, but also by helping to build an economy that cares for people and the planet. A care economy ensures that all people have access to essential human rights and services, like quality child care, universal health care, safe housing, and paid sick leave. It places value on work done by domestic workers, service workers, teachers, and it pays them what they deserve for their labor.
In Argentina, researchers have suggested that stronger investment in the care economy could create 600,000 jobs and increase the wages of those who perform care services. An integrated federal care system could then counter the economic downturn by boosting domestic demand.
While contemporary philanthropy and philanthropists are an outcome of modern-day capitalism, we could channel these immense resources in bold new ways that herald a feminist future. We must be willing to use all the tools at our disposal — grant making, impact investing, and advocacy — to support a range of interventions rooted in feminist economic theory.
As Roy once famously said, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
