What Do We Do When Gender Equality Starts Moving Backward?
About the session
The case for gender equality has been made.
Commitments have been signed. Frameworks have been created. Laws have changed. Women's movements have spent decades building institutions, shifting norms, expanding rights, and getting gender equality onto political agendas around the world.
And in many places, some of that progress is now under pressure.
Women's rights organizations are navigating severe funding constraints. Reproductive rights are contested. Civil society space is shrinking in some countries. Gender language itself has become politically contentious in institutions where it was previously accepted. Multilateral organizations responsible for advancing and protecting gender equality are operating in an increasingly difficult political environment.
The question is no longer simply how to make the case for gender equality.
What do you do when progress starts moving backward?
There will not be one answer.
Sometimes the work is defensive: protecting organizations, rights, funding, civic space, and institutional gains that took decades to build.
Sometimes it requires new political strategies: finding unexpected allies, building coalitions that can survive changing governments, and giving political leaders the tools to translate commitments into budgets and policy.
Sometimes it means building economic power.
Women leading businesses, investing capital, shaping food systems, and creating enterprises are not simply beneficiaries of gender equality programs. They are changing who owns assets, controls resources, employs people, and makes decisions.
And sometimes advancing gender equality means going into institutions where the conversation has historically struggled to penetrate at all.
Security and defence are a striking example. Decisions about conflict, peace, security, and public safety have enormous consequences for women, yet women remain underrepresented in many of the institutions making those decisions. Gender equality in these spaces cannot be separated from the wider question of who holds power.
The same is true across climate finance, public budgets, food systems, investment, technology, reproductive health, and development.
This session brings those conversations into one room.
Rather than asking participants to make another case for why gender equality matters, it will focus on a harder and more immediate question:
What changes in our strategy when the political conditions become less favorable?
Where should movements protect rather than expand? Where are new sources of capital emerging as traditional funding contracts? Which arguments still move political leaders? Where can economic power create political power? Which alliances have become more important? And where might approaches built for the political environment of the past simply no longer be sufficient?
Discussion Group Leaders
Dhirendra Singh is CEO at Milaan Foundation, advancing education, leadership, and opportunities that empower girls and young women to shape their own futures.
Natasha Kimani is Regional Director at Futurelect, advancing ethical public leadership, inclusive governance, and stronger political representation across Africa.
Ruha Shadab is Director Strategy & Delivery at Financing Alliance for Health, advancing health systems and gender equity through strategic financing, policy, and systems-level approaches.
Vanessa Adams is Founder and CEO at Level4International, advancing scalable food systems, agtech, trade, and investment by connecting farmers and SMEs with markets, finance, and technology.
Azra Ismail is Assistant Professor & Cofounder at Emory University and MakerGhat, advancing responsible AI in reproductive health and expanding STEM and AI education for underserved young people in India.
Juliet Colman is Director at SecurityWomen, advancing women’s participation and leadership in security, peacebuilding, and decision-making through advocacy and research.
What to expect
A candid working conversation among people navigating pressure on gender equality from different directions: funding contraction, political resistance, institutional change, and the challenge of advancing women's leadership and power across very different systems.
The conversation will deliberately connect areas that are often discussed separately, including feminist resource mobilization, reproductive rights, gender-responsive public budgets, climate action, food systems, investment, AI, security, and defence.
The purpose is not to diagnose backlash for another hour. It is to compare what people are doing about it.
Who this is for
This session is for feminist leaders and gender equality advocates, philanthropists and resource mobilizers supporting women's rights, investors and entrepreneurs building women's economic power, policymakers working on gender-responsive budgets and climate action, security and defence practitioners, and others trying to advance gender equality in a more difficult political environment.
What you will get out of it
A candid assessment of how political and financial pressures are changing the operating environment for women's rights organizations and movements
Practical perspectives on protecting existing gains while finding new resources, coalitions, and routes to influence
Insights into gender-responsive budgets and climate action as political agendas, not simply technical exercises
A broader view of women's economic leadership across food systems, enterprise, investment, and the energy-food-water nexus
A conversation about women's power in security and defence and why it belongs alongside the development sector's wider gender equality agenda