Worried about the future? Fund women-led movements 

Every year on 8 March, from Madrid and Paris to Warsaw and Athens, people fill the streets to call for equality and an end to gender-based violence. The day has been inspiring change for over a hundred years – but progress never happened by accident or overnight.

If we want to move Europe from today’s state of backlash to breakthrough, we need to understand the current realities on the frontlines of change. That’s why, in 2025, the Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe (the Alliance) commissioned research to hear directly from feminist and gender equality movements across Europe.

Through 30 in-depth interviews with activists and organisers, we set out to answer what movements actually need to thrive and how philanthropy can supercharge progress.

A whisper can become a roar – against all odds

The scale of the challenges cannot be underestimated. Movements face multiple, overlapping pressures: shrinking civic space, democratic erosion, backlash against women’s and LGBTQI+ rights, unstable funding, and growing social need.

At the same time, groups opposing gender equality are now even better organised and have more resources. Their funding reached US$1.18 billion between 2019 and 2023, a 23% increase in just four years.

To put it simply, gender equality advocates in Europe now do their vital work with a fraction of the resources and often under immense threat.

Frontline activists told us this backlash partly stems from their movements’ impact and progress on rights and justice. However, the burden of that success is heavy.

Each gain in legal protection is often followed by organised pushback, requiring movements to sustain pressure, build new alliances, and adapt their strategies over years or even decades.

For example, when Latvia’s parliament voted last October to leave the Istanbul Convention, a key treaty to fight violence against women, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to call for the decision to be reversed. The mobilisation, organised by a grassroots women’s rights organisation rooted in its community, helped halt the withdrawal, preventing a major setback for women’s rights.

How to support progress from backlash to breakthrough

Respondents consistently pointed to two problems: lack of funding and funding models that do not match what movements really need. 

• The form of funding matters as much as the amount

A critical part of any movement is that it does not begin or end with a campaign or a grant cycle. We heard how multi-year, unrestricted grants allow organisers to plan, pivot, and stay agile. Flexibility helps them move, evolve and experiment to find what cuts through the noise and algorithms. A team that isn’t burned out has time to dream forward. 

• Show up when institutional support fades

Our conversations confirmed that women’s rights and gender equality movements often operate in contexts of polarisation and backlash. Supporting them requires funders to offer protection and to provide sustained resourcing for work in high-stakes environments and evolving political contexts. This kind of support is currently all too rare.

• Think BIG by resourcing the ecosystem

Funders can expand their reach and impact by resourcing the ecosystem rather than a single “type” of organisation. Feminist and gender equality movements told us they rely on a web of actors, from informal collectives to long-established organisations, and that each plays an important but distinct role. If a single foundation lacks the resources to go big, it can partner or coordinate with other funders or join a donor collaborative like ours.

• Fragmented movements can’t change Europe, so investing in relationships is key

Activists, advocates and allies are the beating heart of feminist and gender equality organising, but they consistently told us they need to discover, connect and collaborate with each other. This isn’t about funding meetings. It’s about the places where relationships can be built, strategies aligned and hope maintained. But across Europe, these spaces remain rare.

• Transformation also means changing how philanthropy operates

Interviewees emphasised that funders must model the same values – trust, participation, reflection and accountability – that they seek to promote. This requires funders to reflect on their own structures and practices, including how much time and capacity non-profits need to spend on funder-driven applications and reports.

Movements need real support, not penny-pinching

For foundations worried about democracy in Europe, our research confirms that if we want lasting change, we need to fund movements and do it in new, bold ways. If feminist and gender equality movements were more consistently and adequately resourced, their capacity to advance progress could be significantly strengthened.

For us, these findings won’t just sit on a shelf. Women’s rights movements are running out of resources and we are determined to change that. We are using all the insights gathered to plan and shape a new Movement Strengthening Fund for Europe.

We invite peers across European philanthropy to reflect with us on what it would mean to resource movements in ways that match both the scale of the challenge and the scale of their ambition. The backlash is organised, but the breakthrough can be too.