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Building Constituencies

This theme explores how to create more demand for women’s empowerment, and how coalitions seeking to build commitment work effectively to influence and change the institutions that exercise public power, and dismantle obstructions to women’s empowerment.

It explores how to institutionalise and legitimise women’s empowerment in the policies, actions and populations (staff, members, leaders) of these institutions.

How do we create greater accountability within institutions that exercise public power, so as to promote social justice and wellbeing for all?

Listen to Mariz Tadros, Building Constituencies researcher, speaking about legitimacy of leadership and justice agendas and the ways women are gaining political agency.

Featured Research Projects

  • Research Project

    Legal Reform and Feminist Activism

    This project researched the reforms that have been taking place in Egyptian personal status laws since 2000. The aim was to examine the unfolding reform story and what it entailed in terms of successes and challenges for women's rights activists in their pursuit of justice and equality in marriage and divorce rights, and for Egyptian women at large who seek legal redress in family courts. The focus of the study was on two aspects of the reform story: 1) the process of mobilising for the new laws, building alliances, choosing strategies, and making concessions, and 2) the implementation of the legal reforms in the new family courts that were introduced in 2004. …

  • Research Project

    Domestic Violence Legislation

    This project investigated women's struggles and pathways for the implementation and monitoring of public policies addressing violence against women in Brazil. The project was launched with the creation of the Maria da Penha Law Observatory Consortium, under the national coordination of NEIM. The Observatory monitors the implementation of the Maria da Penha Law in all 27 Brazilian states. …

  • Research Project

    Women and Local Governance in Sierra Leone

    This study aimed to illuminate the pathways of women's political empowerment, the relationship between political participation and change and interrogate the effectiveness of the decentralisation commission in empowering women in Sierra Leone. …

  • Research Project

    Mobilising for Women’s Rights and the Role of Resources

    This project concerned the significance and impact of official external financing for women’s organising at global, regional and national levels. It used participatory methods of critical reflection involving both donor staff and representatives of women’s rights organisations and networks in Bangladesh and Ghana as well as at regional and global levels. …

  • Research Project

    Constituency Building by Women's Organisations

    This research project sought to document and analyse strategies and approaches used by selected women’s organisations in Bangladesh to mobilise and advocate for women’s rights and raise demands to the State and other rights holders. The research selected a few key movements to analyse and fed back the findings and analysis to the groups being studied so that they could use that to further reflect on their practice and identify what changes they would like to make to be more effective in the future. …