Women on philanthropy’s front lines: A conversation with Melanie Brown and Elizabeth Barajas-Román

International Women’s Day (IWD) marks a moment to recognize the many advancements women have made, while acknowledging the difficult work that remains to reach true gender parity in our world. For Black, Latina, and Indigenous women, the road to parity feels longer, windier, and even more uncertain this year.

Pandemics are not great equalizers. Instead, they reveal and exacerbate our society’s most persistent and pernicious inequalities. Working women and mothers all over the world are struggling in this moment. They are balancing being caregivers, teachers, nurses, cleaners, grocery store clerks, and other types of frontline pandemic workers. Many have reached the breaking point.

Enter women’s funds. Women’s funds and gender equity funders are on the front lines of philanthropy. Melanie R. Brown, a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and vice chair of the board of directors of the Women’s Funding Network (WFN), invited WFN president and CEO Elizabeth Barajas-Román to discuss how women’s funds are showing up during the pandemic and how we can ensure a more inclusive recovery for all.

Elizabeth Barajas-Román: As community foundations, women’s funds move money, influence, and power to women- and girl-led solutions that address the root causes of social injustice. They occupy a unique position within their regions—as philanthropic institutions and trusted advocacy partners. By design, they are grounded in long-term relationship building and the ability to be nimble, to learn, and to adapt. At the height of the pandemic, women’s funds moved dollars to frontline communities about nine months sooner than other philanthropic institutions.

Nearly 40 years ago, the women’s funding movement started with a gathering of about 20 women leaders who were convinced that traditional philanthropic strategies were ineffective because they did not listen to local voices and they left out women—particularly women of color. Their vision was to democratize philanthropy through local funds created by and for women, to dismantle gender inequity region by region throughout the world. Four decades later, we see that vision in action: WFN has members in nearly 40 U.S. states and 14 countries, representing nearly US $500 million in annual grantmaking dedicated to gender justice.

Elizabeth Barajas-Román: Despite demonstrable results, women’s funds have been chronically underfunded. They were hit hard last year from the loss of event income, corporate sponsorships, and staff. By May of 2020, one-third were in danger of closing.

WFN launched the Response, Recovery, and Resilience Collaborative Fund (RRRCF) to provide critical financial support to women’s funds so that they could continue their frontline work. Now on more stable ground, these funds continue to rapidly adapt and recast their work for the greatest impact amid the pandemic-fueled “she-cession” and caregiver crisis. The RRRCF second phase will focus on intersectional approaches to the U.S.-based child care and caregiving infrastructure, elevating the power of women-of-color leaders in the larger movement for gender and racial justice.

Elizabeth Barajas-Román: The pandemic revealed what does not work: An economy that relies on women’s unpaid and undervalued labor—especially that of immigrant women, Indigenous women, and women of color—while high-quality and affordable health care, education, and safe, nontoxic environments are considered privileges for the few.

We can respond and rebound effectively by ensuring that these women—those who have experienced the deepest economic impacts—are seated at the tables of power. Those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions. We also must recognize that deep inequities are often generational, especially among historically marginalized communities, and that the well-being and economic mobility of a mother and of her child are inextricably tied. Women’s funds are deploying game-changing whole-family funding strategies that aim to lift entire families out of generational disparities in employment, education, health, housing, and economic mobility.

Elizabeth Barajas-Román: First and foremost is to recognize that racial, gender, and economic inequities not only come from the same root, but they strengthen and reinforce each other as they grow. To support women and girls, government and the philanthropic sector can use this moment to deepen commitments to intersectional approaches, like the ones women’s funds deploy. They are effective because they are built to address complexity.

Our members are exploring bold economic strategies that place racial and gender justice at the center and advocating for systemic change that is community focused, patient, and socially accountable for the impact on people and the planet. They are designing interventions for caregivers using an intersectional feminist approach. WFN members are deeply concerned about addressing both the root causes and acute violence, including supporting survivors of intimate partner violence whose situations have become especially dire due to the pandemic and addressing root causes of institutional violence like police brutality and criminal justice reform.

While it may seem daunting, we must remember what we have lost. Nearly 10 years of progress on gender equity crumbled in less than a year. Single-issue solutions are fragile. Vigorous, varied, and interconnected solutions are resilient and can evolve. Now is the time to build something that lasts. Now is the time to invest in women’s funds and the women’s funding sector.