Using digital advocacy and research to advance gender equality
(Courtesy of Maryam and Nivaal Rehman)
How the student-created digital advocacy tool Feminae Carta can help activists like you fight for equality.
The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated many of the inequalities girls and women were already facing. Gender-based violence, child marriage, child labour, food insecurity and poverty have all increased during the pandemic — and as many as 20 million more girls could be out of school after the crisis has ended.
In order to address these issues, gender equality needs to be at the centre of leaders’ recovery efforts. In order to convince leaders to prioritise gender equality, activists need research to back up their demands. That’s where Feminae Carta comes in.
Feminae Carta is a new digital advocacy tool we created to provide activists with the research they need to speak out for girls’ and women’s rights and show leaders why investing in gender equality is important. Too often research efforts do not include youth voices and perspectives. As a student-led initiative, Feminae Carta bridges this gap and ensures that young people are leading gender equality research and coming up with creative solutions to the problems our generation is going to inherit. Through research, recommendations and toolkits, Feminae Carta helps young activists understand the root causes of gender inequality around the world and equips them with the information they need to take action.
“Too often research efforts do not include youth voices and perspectives. As a student-led initiative, Feminae Carta bridges this gap and ensures that young people are leading gender equality research and coming up with creative solutions to the problems our generation is going to inherit.”
Feminae Carta is comprised of student researchers from six continents who are committed to equality. Each team member researches women’s issues based on a specific region and theme, investigating the challenges girls and women face, current progress and opportunities for the future. Feminae Carta’s first initiative was creating a background guide on gender equality that highlights the issues girls and women experience around the world and offers recommendations on how leaders can address these issues. Now the team is working on developing roadmaps for countries to adopt gender-equal policies based on this research.
From Mexico to Brazil, Australia to Kenya, each of our researchers has a different experience with gender inequality and how it affects their lives. These unique perspectives help inform our research and create a better-informed product for our users. It also gives us hope for the future to see so many young activists and researchers dedicated to changing current patriarchal systems that perpetuate inequality.
In this article, we want to pass the mic to some of our researchers to share their Feminae Carta research on gender equality and how leaders can better support girls and women.
Mariana Anaya, Mexico, living in France
University and area of study: Life sciences at the University of Paris
Favourite part about research: Meeting other researchers as passionate as I am
Thematic focus for Feminae Carta: Women empowerment in Latin America and North America
Most interesting finding from my research: Education and empowerment are really closely linked! We cannot separate them and we must find new ways to make education accessible since it will empower the next generation of girls.
What I love the most about our research is that it’s made for girls, by girls and it is really accessible. With just a few clicks you can travel the world and read the highlights of where each region stands on different topics. My part of the research focuses on the status of women empowerment in Latin America and North America, so I looked into research studies that show some of the factors that influence empowerment and how empowerment varies from one region to another. In both Latin America and North America, for example, Indigenous women are one of the most excluded groups, while White women are often presented with more opportunities to excel.
Inclusion is at the core of my research since I wanted to include the greatest number of voices possible. Both feminism and empowerment are concepts composed of multiple layers, and they may have different meanings to the actors involved. Nonetheless, two common factors needed to increase women empowerment in both Latin America and North America are political representation and education. How can girls know they deserve a seat at the table if all they see are meeting rooms filled with men? This is true for all girls regardless of where they come from: Education is needed so it is not only boys who have a chance to change the world.
Acknowledging the lack of women empowerment is a first step, but there are many challenges we still need to overcome. North America lacks flexible parenting policies such as family leave for both parents. Latin American women, especially Indigenous women, are more prone to experiencing discrimination in the family and workplace and lacking access to financial resources. Women and girls in both regions still suffer domestic violence and still have restrictive reproductive rights. Raising awareness about these issues and how they affect us is the first step to solving them. There is no denying the barriers that women and girls face, even if a lot of those issues seem invisible since they occur behind closed doors.
Özge Korkmaz Şahbaz, Turkey
University and area of study: Social and political science at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University
Favourite part about research: Investigating how we can incorporate gender equality in post-conflict societies and peace processes
Thematic focus for Feminae Carta: Women's participation in peace building in Central Asia and Europe
Most interesting finding from my research: The powerful effect of the solidarity between different women's civil society organizations in different countries or regions
There are many gender-based assumptions in societies we live in. When the topic is a war or a conflict, women and girls are generally portrayed as victims or passive agents. Although it is true that wars and conflict affect women, they are not just victims or dependent subjects. They have the power to end wars and conflicts and shape new, more peaceful and equal societies. It is time to change the view and think of women as active agents in peace processes and post-conflict societies.
Feminae Carta research provides me a ground to build and voice this new perspective. Throughout my research, I strengthen my view that women’s participation in peace building processes is of critical importance in creating sustainable peace and building more democratic and inclusive institutions and gender-equal, post-conflict societies. The adoption of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 — which recognized how women and girls are disproportionately impacted during armed conflict — has made a significant contribution. However it is not enough, and women’s exclusion from important processes and roles continues because of cultural, social and institutional barriers.
Local, national and international civil organizations are working to support women’s peace building activities, especially in Central Asia and Europe, where my research for Feminae Carta was focused. Governments and non-state actors including corporations who have the funding need to prioritize supporting these organizations as we can’t build a more just and equal world when half of our voices aren’t included in the process.
Mariel Vander Schuur, U.S. and Philippines
University and area of study: Women’s studies and biochemistry at the University of Michigan
Favourite part about research: Interacting with women from all over the world with diverse experiences and perspectives
Thematic focus for Feminae Carta: Girls’ education in Sub-Saharan Africa
Most interesting finding from my research: Women all across Sub-Saharan Africa are already fighting in their communities to eliminate barriers to girls’ education. Allies need to amplify the voices and stories of girls and women who have firsthand experience with our research topics and know these issues best.
Through researching the state of girls’ education in Sub-Saharan Africa and digging into the stories of girls who were unable to complete their education, it became very apparent to me that while each girl had a unique story to tell, they face many of the same roadblocks year after year. Just a handful of girls receive adequate sex and health education, including education on safe sex, family planning and menstruation. This type of education would mitigate teen pregnancy and the stigma surrounding menstruation in many communities and help enact child marriage laws (as well as enforcement of said laws) so that young girls might have a fighting chance to complete their education.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on young women’s pursuit of education at every level — from primary school to university. History has shown again and again that when crises strike our globe, country or local community, women are the ones who step up to do what is needed for themselves and their families — whether that means working full-time during a public health crisis or leaving school to care for their younger siblings. Young girls all across Sub-Saharan Africa need support — from internet access to meals to portable radios — in order to be successful in school.
I know the power of girls’ education and why it’s so important that leaders prioritize it. My own mother left her home country to receive an education on the other side of the globe. She hoped that her and her daughters would be able to accomplish what the women who came before her never even dreamed of doing in our homeland. I hope that this research — and the research contributed by the many other amazing women whom I have had the privilege to work beside these past few months for Feminae Carta — might help in the fight for a world where girls don’t have to travel beyond the countries they know and love in order to receive a quality education and fulfill their dreams.
Kaye Fisher, Australia
University and area of study: Modern history, ancient history, archaeology of North Africa and the Middle East at Macquarie University
Favourite part about research: Learning more about a topic that I thought I already knew
Thematic focus for Feminae Carta: Health care and well-being in East Asia and Oceania
Most interesting finding from my research: Health care inequalities in Australia and New Zealand are more common than I originally thought.
My research for Feminae Carta examines the inequalities in health and well-being faced by women and girls specifically in the regions of East Asia and Oceania. While it is a right of each and every woman in the world to have access to basic medical care and supplies, from my research I found a major issue: Women and girls are less likely to seek out help due to social stigmas that surround this topic. The fear of them being misrepresented in society because of their mental health or women’s health, as well as family honour, dissuades them from getting help as they do not want to become a source of embarrassment or shame for their families. Every day millions of women and girls suffer in silence from problems that would easily be fixed if they could access appropriate health care without barriers.
You may think about how Oceania includes places like Australia and New Zealand. They are both countries with advanced medical systems in place, so how could they have inequality in health care? It is a valid question, and as I continued researching I found that women face many problems and barriers in these countries — like being unable to afford medical care — which are exacerbated by social identities, like which community you come from.
With my research, I hope to spread awareness on these topics and help pave the way to a fairer and more inclusive society. It has both challenged and moved me and I am honoured to be able to help shape a world without barriers to health care and a world that places value on the health and well-being of women and girls.
Anna Paula Bennech, Brazil living in Germany
University and area of study: Political science at the University of Würzburg
Favourite part about research: Interaction and exchange with a diverse group of researchers (different generations, backgrounds and research fields)
Thematic focus for Feminae Carta: Women’s well-being in Latin America and North America
Most interesting finding from my research: A lot is going on out there to bring us hope and innovative insights. There are incredible initiatives to improve women’s and girls' well-being, it's a matter of listening to what they have to say and learning from them!
Hopefulness always was one of my core characteristics. Not afraid of cliches, I would describe myself as a believer — in people, in life, in social justice. And we live in a weird world for believers. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and issues around gender inequality it has enhanced, it feels like chaos is peeking at us no matter where we look, leading my hopeful believer's heart to flirt with hopelessness and anger.
However, I learned my feelings are legitimate and feeling these emotions is part of being a researcher and activist for gender equality. Knowing we are not alone keeps our hearts warm and our heads up. We are many. We are brave, creative and intelligent.
We are living the apogee of a broader health care crisis — a gendered crisis — and we need to engage in change. Meaningful and creative change. Feminae Carta has been this transformation, bringing scientific evidence closer to social and political solutions committed with an intersectional approach.
My research focused on women's well-being in Latin America and North America. From comparing access to health care and sexual and reproductive rights in Brazil and the U.S., I demonstrated that wealth and fair health care are not necessarily directly related. Public policies need a strategic investment of resources and a design from an intersectional perspective. Hence, my policy prescriptions include:
Including women and girls in decision-making processes;
Valuing the local, learning from ongoing self-organization initiatives and investing in community-based primary care; and
Taking multidimensional and evidence-based joint action, valuing diversity and teamwork.
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