Strategies

WIDE+  works through interlinked strategies of analysis and capacity building (feminist literacy), (innovative) movement building and advocacy informed by a feminist perspective.

WIDE+ promotes – along with our members, feminists across Europe and many partners in the global South – an alternative feminist vision that lays the foundation for ‘a new global cake, instead of demanding a bigger piece of a rotten cake’, to quote the famous feminist Devaki Jain.

WIDE+ Strategies of Intervention

Strengthen feminist network building:

• Creating strategic catalyst and reflective spaces for feminisms (webinars, meetings and Forum);
• Enable new partnerships and collaborations and deepen current partnerships (outreach and events);
• Coordinate current and new collaborations and interlinkages (working groups and alliances)

Methodologies: transnational thematic and ad-hoc working groups; taking part and building coalitions and collaborations: online and face to face strategic meetings, including a large feminist forum in Europe, making feminist activism visible through media, social media and artivism, coordination through working groups, other partnerships and coalition building, supporting national and grassroots feminist organizations and initiatives, show solidarity with women’s marches and initiatives on the street, make diversity in feminisms visible.     

Having impact on policies (outreach, advocacy, and lobby):

• Invest in strengthening, initiating, and maintaining collaborations in the network and with alliances or in partnership.
• Engage in direct advocacy and lobby towards European Decision makers.
• Make the work and perspective of women and gender non-conforming person in the global South, Eastern Europe, and migrants visible, especially towards European policy makers.

Methodologies: transnational thematic and ad-hoc working groups; taking part and building coalitions and collaborations: online and face to face expert sessions, representing our recommendation in public policy processes, conferences, online EU consultations. Engage in lobby at EU level and where relevant and possible in EU member states through members, coordination through working groups, collecting data from grassroots groups to develop concrete recommendations to EU policy makers, inform national women’s rights civil society and others on the latest developments of policy processes at EU level and ways to engage with policies.

Building the capacities of feminists and other relevant stakeholders

• Create knowledge not only on the dynamics behind inequalities, but also on possible solutions, lessons learned and best practices, with a focus on addressing issues that are strategic but not well covered within the feminist networks in Europe.
• Allow for learning through popular education tools, thus translating knowledge in papers into more interactive forms of information.

Methodologies: capacity building and knowledge building on strategic topics where there is limited feminist analysis available from a European perspective, development of briefing, factsheets, position papers, research, surveys, toolkits and media formats (video, podcast, webinar) to made analysis, tools for skills building and knowledge available to a wider audience; use social media and other communication to raise awareness and spread information; use transnational capacity building and exchange to expand and create new knowledge to be accessed by target groups.

Ensuring WIDE+ financial and organizational sustainability & keep its strong ethical and horizontal governance model in place.

Methodologies: effective financial and day-to-day management of the network, monitoring and evaluation, review and incorporating changes in operation and governance of networks, the use or formal tools for financial collaboration with partners and members, ongoing reflection on feminist leadership principles and how it is implemented in the WIDE+ network.

WIDE+ Strategic Action Plan 2025-2028

WIDE+’s vision and mission for the coming years is to put a framework of rights, intersectional and inclusive equality and social justice as well as reproduction/care at the centre of the economy, based on a socio-economic model that is not aiming for as much production growth as possible but for a care or well-being economy in which people live within planetary boundaries. This includes a political model that is rooted in democracy, transparency and inclusion. In this context our programmatic focus is promoting feminist economic approaches connected to an analysis of power relations in a broader political context of global relations and challenges for democracy and civil society participation.

PROGRAMMATIC FOCUS between 2025-2027

In this context our programmatic focus is promoting feminist economic approaches connected to an analysis of power relations in a broader political context of global relations and challenges for democracy and civil society participation. In particular:

1. To keep enabling European coalition building of migrant feminists and migrant feminist perspectives.
2. Promote Feminist narratives and coalitions across Europe in line with our mission and vision and programmatic focus. Facilitate collaboration and support on current topics of concern, in particular: militarism and peace, transnational feminist solidarity and impact of EU policies.
3. Addressing intersectional discrimination in Artificial Intelligence, in particular in labour issues.
4. Promoting feminist alternatives in trade policy.
5. Raising awareness on gender and climate justice.
6. Developing and bringing together feminist economic literacy and providing it in training focusing on methodologies and topics.

There are several crosscutting issues:

=> Promote action with an intersectional feminist approach, enabling diversity in our activism.
=> Analyse with an intersectional lens unpacking complex patterns and narratives of discrimination intersecting with gender discrimination. In this context migration is also a crosscutting issue.
=> Creating space for shared analysis and exchange on counter democratic challenges for people and civil society, in particular barriers to democratic participation and the decrease of public spaces in speech and resources.
=> Promoting reflections on feminist responses to ultra-conservative backlashes and geopolitical developments.

WE-EMPOWER representatives at the European Parliament during the first transnational training, 21-22 March 2023