Read our pledge to tackle racism across our organisation and sector.
Dear John,
Last week Womankind publicly launched our anti-racism pledge, making commitments to reckoning with the colonial past of the development sector and addressing working practices, within the organisation and across our sector.
Womankind Worldwide Chair of Trustees Maggie Baxter said;
“As a feminist organisation, working to dismantle systems of oppression that discriminate against women, girls and gender diverse people is at the heart of the organisation’s mission. For Womankind, this includes understanding and addressing the ways Black, Indigenous and people of colour experience discrimination, as well as recognising that the aid and development sector was founded in the context of colonisation and there are ongoing power imbalances.
To this aim, Womankind has developed an anti-racism pledge that details commitments to working long-term, in a reflexive and accountable way, to ensure that anti-racism permeates throughout the strategies, culture and working policies and practices of the organisation. The pledge covers three areas:
Commitments to partners and allies: including how Womankind will forge better equal partnerships and collaborations with partners in the Global South, and how we will progress from amplifying our partners voices to shifting the power to them;
Commitments in funding, communications and public affairs: considering how Womankind can address colonial dynamics in fundraising practice, how we make flexible and core funding available to partners, how we ensure our communications do not perpetuate power imbalances and how we learn and share with others in the sector;
Internal commitments: looking at how Womankind will strengthen anti-racism within our organisation, how we will work towards equitable and feminist team composition, how we create a safe and conducive working environment for Black and women of colour, and how the forthcoming organisational strategy will prioritise and support anti-racism.
We hope that our anti-racism work over the coming years will enable us to be part of a movement towards systemic healing, justice and a more equitable world no longer based on racial hierarchies. Because we know, there is no gender justice without racial justice.”
We recently explored our personal commitments to anti-racism in our Feminist Bingo game. Click below to read why now is the time to listen, learn and reflect.
