The possible annulment of Roe v. Wade should surprise no one. Marginalized women have been sounding the alarm for decades

Shortly after the news broke, Laurie Bertram Roberts of the Yellowhammer Fund, an Alabama-based nonprofit that provides support for women who are having abortions, was quoted by NBC as saying“We’ve been anticipating this possibility for several years…It’s not a new threat, but it’s a bigger threat.”

Despite their size, the organizations represented by these individuals have played an outsized role in protecting democracy and human rights for all of us, but their effectiveness – and their ability to safeguard hard-won victories – has been limited by a severe shortage of funding.

A report analyzing existing data, and published in 2021 by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development found that “99% of development aid and foundation grants still do not reach women’s rights and feminist organizations directly” and “despite new funding commitments, women’s rights organizations Women only receive 0.13% of total official development assistance and 0.4% of all women’s entitlements. corresponding help.”

And yet grassroots feminist groups – organizations, leaders and networks working together to challenge and change power structures that reinforce gender inequality – have been credited with helping to end the war in liberia and bring progressives to government in Slovenia. Among other victories, they also succeeded in expanding access to legalized abortion in countries of Argentina for Ireland.

These organizations do the hard work to create the conditions and accelerate much-needed social change, and data analysis shows that women’s rights organizations in the Global South that do this essential work operate on shoestring budgets on average. $30,000 per year.

On the other hand, according to a 2020 report by the Global Philanthropy Project, over a 10-year period, American organizations that oppose the rights of women and those of LGBTQ+ communities, have made a cumulative income of more than $6 billion. They spend their money in the United States but also around the worldfunding campaigns against our rights and support court cases.

Roe’s reversal against Wade will be the culmination of decades-long attacks on abortion rights in the United States. Feminist movements, especially led by black women, and especially in the southern United States, have also been on the front lines of responding to attacks that have included undermining reproductive rights in the At the state level and so-called dangerous ‘abortion reversal‘ methods.

The fact is, even with Roe versus Wade intact, abortion had become increasingly inaccessible for many women, especially poor women, women of color, and those who live in rural areas.

As Paris Hatcher, Founder and Director of Black Feminist Future, said via email: “Too many of our communities in the United States existed in a pre-Roe reality. With few clinics and growing bans and restrictions, access to abortion is still legal.” out of reach.”

“The reality is that the Roe decision has been the baseline in reference to what we really need and want for abortion access and reproductive justice,” added Hatcher, whose organization offers a leadership development and community care. “The lack of serious investment in feminist groups over the past decades means that our movements have barely what they need to respond to the constant attacks rather than lean on Roe and advance visions and policies bold moves that we desperately need”.

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People who care about access to abortion — in the United States and beyond — should also want to see unprecedented resources flow directly to those most affected by this injustice. We must counter the under-investment in these people, which is reinforced by faulty practices such as the selection of beneficiaries from closed networks, the granting of project-based rather than grassroots support, and the the size of grants solely on the budget of the organization rather than on the needs and promise of the organization. . These practices have perpetuated rather than challenged inequalities.

This month, new research from my organization Shake the Table — in conjunction with the Bridgespan Group which provides advice to nonprofits and philanthropists — calls for an additional $1.5 billion a year to be invested in movements. feminists globally, including in organizations in the United States.

In order to reverse the growing damage to women’s and LGBTQ+ rights every day, feminist movements need more resources. They also need the freedom to respond to new threats and opportunities and to innovate boldly. Threats, in their source and nature, are constantly changing and we also need feminist organizations that are resilient and able to change. Now is the time to fund these organizations.

The story of the week

Filipino youth and children at a rally to draw attention to the sexual abuse of women and children as part of the campaign

Online platforms and digital services that bring millions to the Philippine economy also facilitate online child sexual abuse and exploitation. Can a new president and a new law hold companies accountable?

In the Philippines, the fight against online child sexual abuse poses a tension between human rights and economic development

Badly Behaved Women: Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997)

Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu in a lab at Columbia University.

She was dubbed, among other things, the “first lady of physics”, and yet it is believed that Dr Chien-Shiung Wu’s contribution to particle physics didn’t get the recognition it deserved when she was alive.

Born in Liuhe, a fishing town north of Shanghai, Wu studied at a school founded by her father who believed girls should be educated. In 1934, she graduated at the top of her class from Nanjing National Central University, now Nanjing University. Then in 1936, she enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley to do a doctorate in nuclear physics, which she obtained in 1940.

A career in academia followed: first Smith College, then Princetown University where she was the first woman on the faculty of the physics department. After that, while working at Columbia University, she joined the Manhattan Projectthe classified project funded by the US government to develop the first atomic bomb.

In 1956, she was approached by theoretical physicists Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ling Ning Yang to design an experiment to prove one of their theories which received the Nobel Prize in Physics a year later. But Wu’s contributions went unrecognized. However, the physicist will receive several other awards and accolades, including having an asteroid named after her.

Throughout her career, Wu has been an outspoken critic of gender discrimination in science. She once asked an audience during a symposium at MIT “whether tiny atoms and nuclei, or mathematical symbols, or DNA molecules have a preference for male or female treatment.”

The possible annulment of Roe v. Wade should surprise no one. Marginalized women have been sounding the alarm for decades