Part 2: Building a Better ”Post-ODA World” – Pathways to Incorporate Gender Equality
One of the hottest discussions in international circles is: “what comes next for official development assistance?” While the many processes involve different players, questions and proposals, all miss a key piece: explicit engagement with feminist analysis, actors, lessons and solutions.
By Beth Woroniuk, Senior Fellow, Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative
Photo Credit: Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative
This two-part analysis examines why this oversight is a fatal flaw and proposes strategic pathways to address gender inequalities. Here’s Part 2. Part 1 can be found here. This analysis is aimed at those already engaged in post-ODA discussions and at feminist funding activists and champions looking for ways to engage in those discussions.
Part 1 of this analysis looked at the scope of the multiple post-official development assistance (ODA) conversations underway around the world. It noted the silence on gender equality concerns (including both goals and analysis) and outlined why this gap is a fundamental weakness in these discussions.
In Part 2 of this analysis, we now turn to how this omission can be rectified. What would it look like to incorporate gender equality issues into ongoing “post-ODA” conversations? A panel at Women Deliver 2026 launched this discussion. This two-part analysis takes the conversation further.
Here are four broad areas that provide opportunities and possibilities:
Emerging themes in the post-ODA discussions
Learning from the past
Feminist insights
Participants and process
Each area includes suggested pathways that provide entry points for champions — both within and beyond these discussions — to build crosswalks between the current ODA debates, feminist insights and gender equality goals. No doubt some participants in the current post-ODA discussions will view these pathways as a distraction. However, they offer opportunities to strengthen and enrich efforts to shape a renewed global financial architecture that meets the needs of all.
1. Emerging Themes in Post-ODA Discussions
Across the range of post-ODA conversations, several concepts surface repeatedly. There are multiple ways to bring feminist insights into these priorities, contributing key insights to the analysis and strengthening the building of what comes next.
Solidarity: One ODI publication suggests constructing “a new narrative around solidarity as a shared interest,” urging the maintenance of “a commitment to values in a transactional world.” With this narrative, it is quite possible to make commitments to human rights, including those of women and LGBTQIA+ people, as explicit and central goals of any post-ODA infrastructure.
Solidarity is a long-standing value in feminist movements. As one Syrian activist put it, "Solidarity is our only weapon.” Opening up the discussion to feminist experiences makes for possible fertile exchanges that can enrich the discussions and conceptions of solidarity and what it actually looks like in practice.
Locally-led development (LLD): According to the OECD, “LLD is now widely recognised as a framework that places local actors at the centre of shaping and driving their own development trajectories.” There are multiple commitments among ODA donors to increase funding going to local actors, yet implementation has proved challenging. Here, too, there are lessons from feminist funding experiences.
Women’s and feminist funds have built models to flow resources to local organizations. Most often these are core, flexible and (at times) longer-term commitments. The focus is on supporting the work and priorities as defined by the organizations themselves, not funder thematic priorities. These experiments in LLD provide concrete food for thought for more mainstream discussions.
Country leadership: The Future of Development Cooperation Coalition is leading a “process of engagement” to develop proposed core principles and related ways of working for a renewed development cooperation infrastructure. Key to their vision is the recognition of “countries as the stewards of their own development trajectories.” They have the “potential to significantly improve effective development cooperation by establishing relationships and partnerships based on mutual benefit, respect, and clearly articulated and transparent objectives.”
The voices and priorities of women’s rights and gender justice actors belong in these conversations. It is vital to ensure that country ownership is not conflated to government ownership. This is particularly important as we are seeing declining civil society space, less public debate and attacks on many feminist and LGBTQIA+ activists.
“It is vital to ensure that country ownership is not conflated to government ownership.”
Global public goods: One definition of global public goods is “institutions, mechanisms, and outcomes that provide quasi universal benefits, covering more than one group of countries, several population groups, and extending to both current and future generations.” Examples often include protecting climate, ending hunger, addressing cross-border pandemics and promoting peace. Increasingly, there is interest in framing development cooperation investments as supporting these types of goods or goals with a stress on mutual interest.
Here, too, there are relevant feminist insights that could be rolled into discussions. For example, discussions of global public goods often fail to recognize and value unpaid care work. They also do not consider how structural inequalities, including gender inequality, affect the ability of people to benefit from global public goods. For example, in many contexts, women and men will not benefit equally from increased digital infrastructure given social norms, economic inequalities and uneven educational access.
Innovative finance and mobilizing new sources of funding: There is much talk these days of innovative and blended finance often with different definitions and emphases. Mainstream conversations often focus on how to mobilize new forms of capital to help bridge the overall financing gap. Similar conversations have been happening in feminist circles. These discussions raise issues related to building new structures consistent with feminist values and call for new financial models. The concerns and insights from these discussions belong in mainstream thinking on innovative financing.
Pathway: Key concepts in post-ODA discussions provide many openings to insert feminist links and insights into the ideation processes. Feminist activism and funding entities have been experimenting with many of the themes in the post-ODA conversations and have lessons and contributions to offer.
2. Learning from Past ODA Initiatives and Practice
As the new global financial architecture is being discussed, it’s important to bring the lessons from past ODA investments into new models. Rethinking ODA is an opportunity to review what has been learned regarding gender equality ODA specifically and financing for gender equality more generally.
Until recently, bilateral allocable gender equality ODA had seen consistent growth, while gender equality specific funding remained stuck at around four per cent. However, these trends are now under threat. From 2023 to 2024, bilateral allocable ODA with gender equality objectives dropped by 13 per cent.
One of the themes raised over and over by activists is the importance of funding for women’s rights organizations and movements. They highlight the need to both increase the volume of funding and improve the conditions and requirements of that funding. Although ODA funding for these organizations is a small portion of overall ODA flows, it has played an important role.
Why does funding for women’s rights organizations belong in the post-ODA conversations? There is growing evidence on the importance of strong, independent women’s rights organizations for peace, democracy and other development goals. A key piece of ensuring these movements can do their work is funding and support. Women’s and feminist funds are one example of ODA funding mechanisms that direct resources to diverse women’s rights organizations that are often not reached by traditional channels.
Pathway: Bring financing for gender equality and funding for women’s rights organizations more specifically into post-ODA discussions. Build on what is working in current ODA initiatives and look for new and innovative options.
3. Feminist Insights
There are multiple insights from feminist economics that could support the deliberations on where next for development cooperation. For example, there are critiques of GDP as a measure of progress given its failure to value unpaid care work and natural resources. Furthermore, GDP fails to capture how national income is distributed. iIt is therefore possible to have high GDP growth alongside increased inequality, calling into question GDP as a reliable measure of national well-being.
Pathway: Bring feminist insights into “beyond GDP discussions,” including valuing care work, nature, community, democracy, human rights and even “happiness.”
Feminists and LGBTQIA+ activists are also very aware of the importance of understanding and tracking the multiple ways money moves. Alarm bells have been ringing for several years now on the scope and influence of money funding anti rights/anti-gender actors. While funding flows are difficult to track, evidence from Europe provides a sense of the trend: between 2019 and 2023, funding equivalent to 1.18 billion USD supported anti-gender actors.
Pathway: Ensure discussions on global financial architecture address the risks of money flowing to anti-rights/anti-democracy actors. Not all financial flows are supporting global public goods.
4. Participants and Processes
Despite the many post-ODA discussions taking place, it is striking how few feminist activists and organizations are engaged both at the local and global levels. One possible explanation is that these organizations, including those already equipped with the in-house technical knowledge needed to meaningfully engage on this topic, are themselves under pressure: facing attacks,, funding losses, time constraints and an expanding range of urgent issues (e.g., gender-based violence, climate change, shrinking civic space, attacks on reproductive rights). As a result, many have little bandwidth to participate in these discussions. Furthermore, discussions of ODA and global finance more broadly often involve a specific vocabulary and technical expertise creating a greater barrier for entry.
If these discussions generate solutions that will benefit all people, including those from groups that don’t normally participate in discussions on the international financial architecture, then it will be important to look for ways to build new processes that support greater, meaningful participation.
Pathway: Broaden participation in post-ODA discussions to include feminist and LGBTQIA+ activists, especially those working with populations often excluded from these discussions. Recognize that funding is required to support this participation, especially now, given the cuts being experienced by many women’s and LGBTQIA+ organizations.
Pathway: Look for new processes and ways of working that engage previously excluded participants. Broader participation mechanisms and forums would yield constructive insights and options.
Conclusion
This list of possible pathways is just an initial offering. Without a doubt, there are many additional ways the post-ODA discussion can be enriched and strengthened by a more concerted and explicit engagement with gender analysis, insights and lessons from past experience and the meaningful participation of feminist activists and analysts. Restructuring the global financial architecture has been part of the agenda of women’s rights activists for years. If actors in the post-ODA word discussions continue to overlook and exclude these perspectives, the final outcomes will be all the weaker. There is a danger that critical fault lines in the current structure will continue into what is built next.
“Restructuring the global financial architecture has been part of the agenda of women’s rights activists for years. If actors in the post-ODA word discussions continue to overlook and exclude these perspectives, the final outcomes will be all the weaker. There is a danger that critical fault lines in the current structure will continue into what is built next.”
Further Reading
Analysis: Part 1 — “Post-ODA” Discussions Are Missing a Vital Element: Gender Equality Goals and Analysis
Panel Summary: Feminist Funding in a Post-ODA Era: Reimagining Aid’s Architecture
Policy Recommendations: Preliminary Report — Financing for Gender Equality at Upcoming International Conferences: Exploring Options
Opinion: To make the business case for gender equality, time for a fresh framing in Devex
Analysis: Feminist Foreign Policy and Development Finance for Gender Equality: Momentum Under Threat
Primary Author and Contact
Beth Woroniuk, Senior Fellow, Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative
For any inquiries, please contact beth@ffpcollaborative.orgor general@ffpcollaborative.org.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Spogmay Ahmed (Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative), Rachel Jacobson (Alliance for Feminist Movements), Jill Montilla (Equipop) and Lilly Nicholls for their inputs and suggestions.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by members of the Visiting Fellows Program are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative.