BACKGROUND
Every three years, the Women Deliver Conference galvanizes momentum for gender equality. It is a bold and diverse gathering, a fueling station of ideas, and a generator of action, convening thousands to identify solutions and drive change for girls and women. The first Women Deliver (WD) conference was held in London, UK, in 2007, bringing together 1,700 people and making the investment case for reproductive and maternal health; Women Deliver secured MDG 5 – Improve Maternal Health – on the global development agenda.
The second WD conference was in Washington, DC, in 2010. In addition to championing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) with the support of 3,400 advocates, the conference meaningfully engaged youth, providing a platform for 100 young leaders to share their expertise and call on decision-makers to prioritize the advancement of girls and women’s health and rights.
The third WD conference took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2013. The Conference brought together over 4,500 attendees from 149 countries and featured many speakers, topics, and events related to the health and well-being of girls and women. In 2016, the fourth WD Conference took place in Copenhagen, Denmark. As one of the first major global convenings following the launch of the SDGs, the Conference underscored the crucial role of advancing girls and women’s health and rights across all of the SDGs. 97 percent of the Conference’s 6,000 attendees affirmed that they would take action as a result of attending WD2016.
The fifth WD conference took place in Vancouver, Canada. With more than 8,000 advocates from over 165 countries on-site and over 200,000 people joining around the world through satellite events and the virtual Conference, WD2019 became the largest convening for gender equality worldwide. The Conference connected grassroots advocates and decision-makers, fueled over USD 1 billion in global and country-level investments, and shined a global spotlight on the importance of gender equality.
OBJECTIVES OF THE WOMEN DELIVER 2023 (WD 2023) CONFERENCE
The overall objective of the WD 2023 conference was to enhance collective power by championing the leadership of grassroots advocates, connecting advocates with decision-makers, and sharing key advocacy strategies and come together to break barriers, address challenges, and identify opportunities to advance gender equality and improve the well-being of girls and women in all their intersecting identities.
The specific objectives were:
i) Catalyze Collective Action to Advance Gender Equality
ii) Hold Leaders Accountable
iii) Empower the Feminist Movement
iv)Reframe Who Leads
v)Create Space
The Theme for the WD 2023 Conference was Spaces, Solidarity, and Solutions. WD2023 enabled inclusive and co-created spaces that foster solidarity for sustainable solutions on gender equality.
METHODOLOGY
The WD2023 Conference program was co-created by grassroots advocates, civil society, governments, the private sector, multilateral organizations, philanthropies, and youth. The program was designed in partnership with hundreds of organizations spanning diverse sectors and areas of expertise with input from thousands of individuals during the Global Community Consultations.
The Pre-conferences
Before the Women Deliver 2023 Conference (WD2023) opening ceremony, there was a series of Pre-Conferences held over two days. These Pre-Conferences were designed to allow WD2023 delegates to explore specific topics in greater detail, as well as to connect and collaborate on shared priorities. Some of the pre-conferences included:
i) The Youth Pre-Conference which set the tone for WD2023: a Conference for youth, by youth, with youth on stage and leading critical conversations. This Pre-Conference welcomed youth attendees to Rwanda and WD2023 with dynamic, engaging, and interactive youth-led and youth-centered programming. The Youth Pre-Conference was a space for youth delegates to build solidarity and community, connect, and mobilize collective action at and beyond WD2023. Additionally, this Pre-Conference laid the foundation for youth attendees to leverage WD2023 to advance their advocacy by creating advocacy action plans and intentional relationship building.
ii)The Power Of Choice: Fostering Partnerships To Realize Bodily Autonomy
There is consensus that more investment and action are needed to accelerate progress towards improving gender equality, bodily autonomy, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and building resilience and resistance in the face of global pushback on women’s rights, including the recognition of the pivotal role that many women-led organizations (WLOs) play. UNFPA and partners hosted a Pre-Conference on Bodily Autonomy to underscore how critical it is for women and girls to claim their right to bodily autonomy, to have the power of choice, and to be able to access comprehensive and inclusive SRHR. A critical component included analyzing how the international community can better support WLOs, social movements, and feminists, and leverage their potential for the ICPD mandate. The session had a high-level segment for global advocacy and a second session aimed at developing recommendations to carry forward into the conference and beyond.
iii)Scaling up Actions to end preventable maternal deaths: Linkages with Family Planning, Bodily Autonomy and the Health Workforce
With under seven years left to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and progress on maternal mortality being highly uneven and even regressing in some contexts, bold steps are necessary. Evidence-based, funded strategies; global, regional, and country-level partnerships; and strong political will are critical. Our efforts to reduce maternal mortality are closely linked to women’s empowerment and involve a variety of strategies and interventions. This includes addressing unmet needs for family planning, providing access to integrated services such as comprehensive abortion care, and training healthcare workers. This session brought together civil society, policymakers, professional associations, UN organizations, and other stakeholders to discuss these linkages, examine challenges, explore successful interventions, and highlight solutions to accelerate the reduction of maternal mortality globally.
iv)Girls Deliver: Pre-Conference on Adolescent Girls
There are 1.8 billion adolescents and youth worldwide today — the largest cohort in history. Despite being the future, adolescents and youth, particularly girls and women, face significant challenges, and the ecosystem of stakeholders supporting adolescents and youth remains fragmented. This Pre-Conference convened global stakeholders representing a wide variety of perspectives on how to support adolescents and youth. The Pre-Conference also created a dedicated space for interactive, multi-sectoral conversations, while elevating the voices of adolescents and other stakeholders from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); fostering solidarity within the community, and driving evidence-based solutions. The event cultivated a multidimensional approach to adolescent well-being, co-created the next steps to build an integrated feminist ecosystem for adolescents at WD 2023 and beyond, and catalyzed action to advance gender equality.
v) Gender and the Climate Crisis
Climate change is the foremost crisis of the 21st century, with devastating environmental, economic, and social impacts. It affects everyone, but the impacts are unequal and the burden of climate change falls to those who have least contributed to it, particularly girls and women. Climate justice is not possible without systems change. This Pre-Conference brought together diverse climate actors who prioritize gender equality and take a climate justice, gender justice, intersectional, and human rights-based approach. Climate actors who don’t often come together had the opportunity to share research and analysis, discuss policy priorities and campaigns, center frontline experiences, and coordinate urgently needed action. Topics of discussion included climate finance, loss and damage, policy pathways, gender just transition, and transformative solutions.
vi)Catalyzing Global Action to end Female Genital Mutilation Or Cutting (Fgm/C)
The FGM/C Pre-Conference was a space of shared solidarity, bringing together activists and organizations working to end FGM/C across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and America. It promoted knowledge exchange, interregional collaboration, and global cooperation to catalyze collective action and movement building, design actionable commitments, and work toward substantive structural change.
vii)Strengthening Care Policies and Intersectional Movements For Care Justice
Ongoing conflicts and crises have spurred the urgent need for action and political will to support a resilient care economy. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility, inadequacy, and injustice of the global childcare, eldercare, and disability care infrastructures. This has been exacerbated by more frequent climate emergencies and conflicts. Women’s disproportionate share of unpaid care responsibilities increased significantly due to school and daycare closures, heightened eldercare and disability care needs, lockdowns, and other disruptions. As a result, women were forced to reduce their work hours or drop out of the labor force entirely to meet care demands. Many girls have not returned to school due to increased caregiving domestic responsibilities, and early marriage. Despite these ongoing challenges, the care economy remains underinvested and understudied. The Women Deliver Pre-Conference on the Care Economy was a collaboration across a consortium of partners. This Pre-Conference elevated regional perspectives on care while specifically focusing on concrete, tangible actions for change and lifting intersectional movements for care justice.
vii)Preventing And Responding To Violence Against Women: From Evidence To Action
Globally nearly 1 in 3 women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, mainly by an intimate partner. Violence against women is preventable. The Generation Equality Forum’s Gender-Based Violence Action Coalition has prioritized scaling up evidence-based prevention. This pre-conference workshop highlighted what commitments, evidence, tools, and practical experiences from the field can be applied to inspire global and local actions to prevent violence against women. The session was a mix of interactive panel discussions, presentations, and participatory activities. Panelists included Government representatives, feminist civil society leading prevention in communities, UN, and multi-lateral agency representatives. Participants learned what policymakers can do to prevent violence against women. They also learned about interventions from the field that have worked to prevent violence against women; and will have access to available data, evidence, and tools to support their advocacy, programming, and monitoring and evaluation of prevention.
viii)Fem The Future: Philanthropy for Gender Justice
In this session, Philanthropists from around the world exchanged ideas about intersectional feminist activism and how it is transforming global philanthropic policy and practice. They shared stories of their collective journey; explored how we can better walk the talk; and chart out new strategies to stand in solidarity and partnership with feminist movements, young leaders, and women’s funds. There were firsthand insights from peer funders shifting gears to integrate feminist strategy and grantmaking practices. This session combined: hard self-reflection on the contradictions of structural power dynamics in our global economy and society; some myth-busting (e.g., “absorptive capacity” and lack of measures for systems change); offering alternative approaches and tactics; a workshop space and enabled participants to leave both humbled and energized by new insights; and specific steps to take to “fem the future.”
ix)Global Parliamentary Alliance (GPA) Forum
The European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) convened the Global Parliamentary Alliance (GPA) Forum on behalf of the Global Parliamentary Alliance for Health, Rights and Development, and with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). This closed-door, invite-only forum brought together about 55 Parliamentarians from across the globe working on improving access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It presented a unique opportunity to inspire action and mobilize political will on the most critical issues surrounding the rights, health, empowerment, mobilization, and well-being of women and girls, to develop strategies and sharpen programs that improve these aspects.
The Women Deliver Plenary Stage brought together the most powerful voices of the feminist community in all its diversity. They shared a stage to inspire, drive dialogue, and mobilize the collective into action to achieve true equality, rights, and dignity for girls and women everywhere.
The Culture Night
Culture is a longstanding tradition at Women Deliver Conferences and a way for the Host Country to showcase its traditions and culture. The Government of Rwanda welcomed delegates to Kigali to share an evening of food and entertainment. Culture Night took place after the Opening Ceremony on 17 July.
The Plenary Sessions
The plenary stage featured ten critical conversations to advance gender equality and cover the following topics.
i) Gender Equality in the era of multiple crises
This plenary offered a moment to take stock of the state of gender equality in the past few years in the context of compounding global crises. It examined the intersectional impacts of global crises on gender equality in light of what we have achieved, where progress is most needed, and the actions we have to take to propel systemic change.
ii) The state of Gender Equality in the African Region
Bringing together political, economic, and social leaders, this plenary focused on the status of gender equality and parity in Africa, specifically emphasizing the Maputo Protocol. The session acknowledged achievements, celebrated progress, and fostered discussions on overcoming challenges in the region, providing a platform for action-oriented dialogue.
iii) Sexual and Reproductive Health And Rights
This plenary provided a platform for discussing urgent challenges in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), specifically the right to bodily autonomy and the global impact of abortion restrictions. Panelists explored consequences for public health, gender equality, and climate, aiming for sustained progress toward universal decision-making rights.
iv) Accountability of Gender Equality Commitments
This was a discussion on accountability mechanisms in achieving gender equality commitments and providing a forum for civil society organizations, youth, and grassroots activists to hold leaders accountable, explore gaps, and propose solutions.
iv) Connecting Climate Justice and Gender Justice
This plenary connected climate justice and gender justice, emphasizing the disproportionate impact of climate change on vulnerable girls and women. It brought together diverse stakeholders to prioritize their inclusion in climate action, amplifying grassroots voices and sharing recommendations for collective action towards climate justice.
vi) Feminist Policies
This plenary explored systemic alternatives and feminist policies that challenge existing paradigms and reimagine a feminist future. Feminist thought leaders, policymakers, and activists explored innovative policy approaches that promote equity, economic justice, and sustainable peace.
vii)Countering global Anti-Rights Movements
This plenary session addressed the global rollback of rights and the challenges faced by feminists due to anti-gender and anti-rights movements. Delegates gained insights into these movements and collectively strategized to safeguard rights and mobilize resources.
viii)Decolonization
This plenary explored the progress and challenges of decolonizing the international development and gender sector. Experts and leaders discussed solutions, accountability, and the importance of anti-racism in our work. The session aims to drive change and promote a new model for a more equitable and inclusive approach.
ix) Movement Building
Inclusive movements are vital to achieving global gender equality. This plenary was a space led by grassroots feminists and activists who are building intersectional and intergenerational activities.
x) Sustaining Feminist Movements
Movements and Change Require Resources. This Plenary explored the need for a feminist approach to funding, highlighting the lack of support for grassroots feminist activists. It aimed to shift power dynamics, address inequalities, and amplify the voices of marginalized groups through novel funding strategies and partnerships.
The Concurrent sessions
There were also Concurrent sessions held during the WD2023. They were moderated discussions and interactive workshops that allowed participants to delve into critical issues, gain knowledge from expert speakers, and learn and enhance their advocacy skills. The Topics that were covered during the conference included; Accountability, Care Economy/Unpaid Care, Climate Action, Data-driven advocacy, Digital Rights, Disability Rights, Decolonization, Economic Justice and Rights, Education, Feminist Funding, Gender-Based Violence, Health Systems and Workforce, LGBTQI+ Rights, Male Engagement, Maternal Newborn and Child Health, Meaningful Youth Engagement and Leadership, Menstrual Health, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Skills-Building Workshops At-A-Glance, Developing accountability frameworks, Questioning our biases, Conducting and using gender-inclusive research, How to be an ally, Engaging with your local government, Incorporating feminist leadership at your workplace, Telling your organization’s story, Resource Mobilization and Using theatre for social change.
Partner Side Events
Throughout WD2023, 100+ side events were hosted by WD2023 partners and sponsors. Organizing the partner side events was a fantastic way to engage with Conference participants, share knowledge and evidence, conduct workshops, host receptions, and more!
The Arts & Film Festival
For three unforgettable days, the festival was a hub for creativity, innovation, and thought-provoking conversation, as artists from all over the world came together to showcase their artwork, shared powerful stories, and explored the lives and well-being of girls and women worldwide, including via art displays, performances, and film screenings.
The Solidarity Space
The Solidarity Space was designed for self-organized, self-facilitated, semi-structured dialogues that enabled communities to network, discuss common goals and priorities, and identify ways to strengthen solidarity and advance collective action. The Solidarity Space was designed for delegates from specific regions, communities, and sectors to connect.
The Youth Zone
The Youth Zone was a space for youth attendees, by youth attendees. In the Youth Zone, young people had the opportunity to network and participate in interactive programming toward strengthening existing intergenerational partnerships and energizing youth and feminist movements for collective action and accountability.
The Wellbeing Space
The Wellbeing Space was open to all delegates with programming focused on rest, reflection, and collective care. Caring for ourselves and each other is essential to sustaining our movement.
Exhibition Space
The Women Deliver 2023 Conference provided exhibitors the opportunity to showcase their organization’s work, share knowledge and solutions, and network with delegates from around the world.
The Virtual Conference
Delegates who were unable to attend the WD2023 conference in person were able to join the dialogue online. The virtual conference was able to bring over 200,000 delegates from around the world.
The Global Dialogue
The Global Dialogue provided an opportunity for advocates to design and lead workshops, hold discussions, and network on key issues they want to be addressed in the lead-up to the Women Deliver Conference. Events took place in communities around the world and virtually.
Generation Equality Impact Fest
The Generation Equality Impact Fest, hosted by UN Women, was an opportunity for current and new stakeholders and commitment-makers to share existing commitments, generate ideas for new commitments, and discuss new ways of expanding and energizing Generation Equality. It is hoped that the conversations, new ideas, networking, and partnerships for Generation Equality seeded at Women Deliver will result in new commitments and other announcements at the September 2023 Midpoint Moment. The day included a high-level opening session; sessions on catalytic impact and accountability and underserved and underfunded areas of commitment that can be reinvigorated; and a session for newcomers to Generation Equality.