Vision and Goals

Our vision is of a world defined by social and gender justice where women and girls in all their diversity everywhere are able to claim and enjoy their rights, and live free from oppression, prejudice and discrimination.

Our goal is to promote gender justice and the rights of women and girls across the Global South who face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, putting their voices, analyses and priorities at the centre of policy making, creating more just societies.

Our understanding is that the achievement of gender justice, within a global justice framework, demands the transformation of existing social, political and economic structures. This includes dismantling coloniality: the pervasive attitudes, logics and structures that (re)produce, support, and legitimise new and existing forms of colonial power relations.

We understand too that change happens by influencing and challenging those with power and building collective, positive power by working in alliances. As a network, we build and support collaboration among our members to maximise our combined influence. We recognise that how we work is important, pushing ourselves to be more feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial, adapting our methods to reflect new learning.

Our commitment as a feminist organisation is to challenge and change the unequal power relations created by patriarchy, white supremacy and colonialism. As an organisation located in the UK, we acknowledge our particular responsibility to hold the UK government to account for colonial legacies and ongoing coloniality, and to promote global justice by challenging the international systems that perpetuate inequality. We recognise and seek to disrupt the intersecting oppressions and discrimination that shape the lives of women and girls in different ways and in promoting alternatives we strive to be led by the analyses and demands of feminist organisations and movements across the Global South.

We pursue our goals in four ways:

1. We work collaboratively and strategically with feminist organisations and movements globally to influence global policy and support feminist alternatives

We recognise that change will only be sustainable and transformative if we work together, building feminist alliances globally to boost our collective strength, so that we can hold decision-makers to account in some of the most powerful international institutions. Working with allies, we will promote feminist alternatives to unequal power structures and practices - demonstrating that change is not only necessary but possible. We do this particularly through our REFRAME project where we work with allies globally to promote a feminist reframing of macroeconomics, recognising the central role economic policies play in shaping gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights. We also contribute by amplifying the analyses of Global South feminists in our advocacy towards the UK government and with our members.

2. We work with our members and allies to hold the UK government to account and promote a more progressive agenda.

Given our UK base, we have a particular responsibility and ability to hold the UK government to account to achieve women’s and girls’ rights in its international work, and to resist the global rollback of these rights. Together we challenge existing policy and practice and promote transformative feminist policies towards the achievement of global justice. Given the legacy of colonisation and persistent coloniality, this work includes challenging the way UK relationships with the Global South operate and are framed, acknowledging the need to atone for past and present harm.

3. We support, collaborate with and promote best practice among members

GADN is a network of UK-based NGOs and gender equality experts. We support our members to improve the quality of their analysis, ways of working, programme and advocacy work. We create space to collaborate and learn together, provide access to decision makers and amplify the analysis of feminist activists globally. We encourage feminist, decolonial, and anti-racist ways of working and we act as a critical friend: supporting members to continuously improve their work on gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights internationally.

4. We strive to build a network capable of achieving our aims

As an organisation, we strive to live our feminist values and to be actively decolonial and anti-racist in the ways that we work, constantly listening to and learning from others, and recognising the power relationships that exist in and across the development sector and global feminist movements. We endeavour to model best practice and to maximise our positive impact by working effectively, transparently and strategically in alliances to achieve our aims.

📷 Jennifer Aggrey-Fynn (second from right), National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers discuss workers rights with GADN members (March 2019)