Feminist Advocacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: How to Make Feminist Movements Crisis-Proof
By Caroline Kioko
Feminism is defined as the political, economic and social equality of sexes. Feminist advocacy simply refers to the infusion of advocacy strategies with feminist values, perspective and analysis. It is inclusive of all people and speaks for all rights, notwithstanding class, age, race, religion and gender- a foundational pillar for most feminist movements. Feminist advocacy seeks to advance women’s rights and address the effects that laws, policies and governance processes have on all genders and in the process, advance gender equality.
In pre-Covid times, feminists in East, Horn and Southern Africa were very vocal in the fight against injustice and in dismantling systems of oppression, making them a voice to be reckoned with. These feminist movements have initiated commendable advocacy activities that have prompted state responses and support from individuals and entities beyond the expected social justice entities. Key examples include the marches against femicide and gender-based violence in Cape Town, Kampala and Nairobi, and the influence of the #weare52pc feminist collective on the two thirds gender rule in Kenya. What some call hashtag feminism has brought attention to many issues previously shrouded in silence such as sexual and gender-based violence across nations and on university campuses,that people have been silent about. Some examples are- #ShutItAllDownNamibia #TotalShutDown, #AMINext, #EndRape and #EndSARS.
These campaigns have taken on national, regional and even international dimensions and various feminists in some of those regions, have reiterated the importance of intersectionality and diversity in advocacy. Despite numerous successes, amongst the challenges they face arethe sustainability of movements and advocacy initiatives. They have recognised COVID-19 has amplified pre-existing challenges, including burnout and fatigue by feminists in the face of continued failure of response and intervention from relevant parties. This paper seeks to identify four critical ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic impacted feminist advocacy and propose strategies to ensure that feminist advocacy is not side-lined in future crises.
Feminist solidarity
Feminists in the East African region calling out injustices has opened them to attack by governments; cyberbullying has compromised their voice, their visibility and their ability to transform power relations. Solidarity with others is essential as it provides a safety net and further amplifies voices, creating a critical mass that can command attention. We have seen solidarity demonstrated through social media and physically by feminists who have travelled from their own countries to support strategies and activities in other countries in East Africa. A clear example of solidarity is the #freestellanyanzi campaign to secure the release of the Ugandan human rights and feminist activist jailed in 2017 for insulting the Ugandan president. The hashtag was picked up by feminists across East Africa and clarion calls for support and action originated from feminists outside of Uganda. During the Women’s March in Uganda, feminists travelled from Kenya, South Sudan and Ethiopia to support the march in Kampala. Yet in as much as solidarity has been picking up, various vocal voices have succumbed to cyberbullying and government sanctions.
Solidarity initiatives are susceptible to being overtaken by crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. During the early days of the pandemic, the focus was on quick and drastic interventions at local and international levels. Little to no airtime was given to feminist advocacy raising the alarm over inequalities inherent in those interventions and also on pre-existing inequalities. The stay-at-home measures, for example, left women and young girls vulnerable to domestic violence and abuse. Requests by feminists to governments to establish shelters, safe spaces and efficient reporting mechanisms bore little fruit: the loss of jobs and income made young girls and women more vulnerable to power dynamics around food and shelter. The loss of income also made it difficult for young girls and women to afford contraceptives and sanitary products. The challenges the world experienced during those early days and the measures intended to mitigate those challenges set back the gains feminists had made over the years.
Sexual reproductive health and gender-based violence
Sexual reproductive health rights (SRHR) have had a fragile base in most African states. COVID-19 has not only put a spotlight to the fragility of these rights, but also highlighted how little SRH rights are prioritised by governments in the region. Prior to the pandemic, feminists and activist organisations had been very vocal in challenging sexual violence, child or early marriages, female genital mutilation (FGM) and teenage pregnancies: in East, Horn and Southern Africa, we were making progress, albeit slow, in addressing these issues. However, with the entry of COVID 19, any focus on SRHR has diminished even as the statistics showing how dire the situation is, keep increasing. One illustration of this calamitous situation is the Kenya Health Information Management System (KHIS) report that notes 151,433 teen pregnancies in Kenya in the period between January and May 2020. The demand for SRH services did not decrease during the COVID-19 crisis: rather, people were put in a situation where they had no choice but to put their SRH rights on hold. National curfews and cessation of movement directives by governments have interfered with the access to and provision of essential reproductive health services both for users and providers. Teenage girls and young women are primarily affected by these directives.
Many women and young people were suddenly deprived of freedom of movement by curfews and lock-downs and the sudden loss of sources of income. it became increasingly tricky to pay a visit to family planning or SRH clinics discretely or to have privileged access to a choice of contraceptive methods. The result was unwanted pregnancies and an increase in the vulnerability to Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS. As a case of double jeopardy, COVID-19 further affected the supply chain and distribution of antiretroviral treatments for people living with HIV/AIDS. This may have cost the lives of girls and women who may have contracted the virus during the COVID-19 restrictions.
The unequal burden – trying to balance work targets and care work expectations.
In the recent past, campaigns and advocacy on unpaid care work for women had begun to resonate with a good number of people. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has been at a disproportionately high cost for women; the increase in domestic duties, taking care of children, taking up home schooling, looking after those who fall sick and the loss of income witnessed as an effect of COVID-19 measures have caused domestic tensions and contributed to household strains mostly experienced by women.
Feminist advocacy on unpaid care work has continuously called for government recognition of care work and given policy recommendations on addressing unpaid care work and lessening the burden on women. Such recommendations include enhancing support to working parents through paid leave, increasing investments in social and physical infrastructure, introducing and/or expanding family and child benefits and promoting and realising universal provision of quality care services. The recommendations have broadened further to include recommendations on labour market policies such as supporting (re-)integration of unpaid carers into the labour force, offering flexible work arrangements with options of home-based work and improving workplace hours to allow more time for self-care.
COVID-19 has negatively impacted the advocacy on these recommendations in various ways. First, the reprioritisation of all government machinery to COVID-19 interventions has left no room for new advocacy interventions. It does not help that the interventions are not intersectional and do not take into consideration the gender perspective/analysis of the situation. Secondly, the lack of well thought-out structures in the labour force has seen employers pushing for home-based work with no analysis of how the various genders might be impacted during the COVID-19 crisis: Few employers provided for home-based options such as providing for a flexible working schedule. , this negatively impacted women who had to balance their work with the increased demand for care work at home. Delayed interventions in addressing the disproportionate and the unequal burden may result in women dropping out of either the paid work or the unpaid work. Those who keep trying to balance both might probably miss out on self-care, negatively affecting their mental and physical health.
The operational impact of Covid-19 on feminist advocacy
Advocacy work, and particularly advocacy that speaks to value change, like feminist advocacy, requires human resource, shared or common knowledge, partners and financial resources to succeed. Feminist movements have been through a variety of social, operational and organisational transformations in recent decades. In the evolution of feminist movements, feminists have had to contend with continuous attempts to appropriate their structures and ideas by the state departments and established NGO’s. The term NGO-isation was coined as a result of the appropriation attempts. The term has been used to refer to NGOs defining the agenda of feminist advocacy and appropriating movements in the name of structuring. NGO-isation is mostly influenced by the NGO’s interests and the interest of the funders and not necessarily the constituency; this has led to the dwindling of the power and visibility of many feminist movements and/or feminist advocacy ideas. On many occasions, when feminist ideas are co-opted by NGOs or donor organisations, they lose their authenticity and potential simply because most NGOs shape their agenda to align with the political context for relevance.
NGO-isation has resulted in the building of institutions, establishing organisational and operational structures and processes. The structuring has helped align with the donors funding criterion and opened opportunities for financial support on advocacy work. As good as this is, NGO-isation has also, over time, weakened movement-building capacity because of the emphasis on developing structures and searching for financial resources. The institutionalisation divested feminist movements of their original politics and transformative agenda. The stringent legal and regulatory donor requirements automatically lock out feminist movements, groups and individuals that are not registered and structured. The argument on accountability and transparency for donor resources, though relevant, prompts a further argument on accountability to the constituencies of feminists.
With this reality in mind, most support and funding came from regional and international NGOs. The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically destabilised the sources of funding resulting in a gap in advocacy. This gap was followed by a reallocation of resources to directly respond to COVID-19 and support the efforts of local governments in places where they were not doing enough. While laudable, the reallocation compromised the advocacy for rights and policy proposals that for sustainable social justice. The effects of these compromises are government interventions that do very little to address the inequalities in societies, the consequences of which will be seen in the years post-COVID 19.
The need to reclaim the politics of feminist organising and movement building is such an essential step since it indicates a reconnection with the roots of feminist ideology and agenda-building that is imperative at this particular period.
Conclusion
Feminist advocacy seeks to advance women’s rights and address the effects that laws, policies and governance processes have on all genders and in the process advance gender equality. This statement speaks to change in policy and practise locally, regionally and internationally. Service delivery and immediate provision of needs for all genders are vital, and equality in the provision of the resources provides an opportunity for all genders to fulfil their potential. This is the ideal situation. However, this is not always the reality in our patriarchal societies. Feminist advocacy looks beyond service delivery to the root causes of the disadvantages that the marginalised genders face. Feminist advocacy seeks to address those disadvantages in a sustainable way that allows for the bridging of inequalities. The contextual situation, however, keeps evolving and every time there is a national, regional or international crisis or the semblance thereof, the advocacy on gender equality goes out of the window. The result is a rolling back of the gains made over the years and a stalling of the progress of ongoing advocacy initiatives.
Feminists, activists and civil society organisations must focus on challenging the power dynamics necessary to address the root causes of inequalities in the society. Focusing on root causes will allow for structured interventions that can be sustained and are not prone to rollbacks. Joint efforts with all relevant parties, including donors and government officials, are necessary to help focus on transformative social initiatives and ensure accountability not just for the resources but also to the constituencies that they represent. The need to hold the government – the party responsible for service delivery – accountable is also critical. The continuous attempts by NGOs to replicate/step in to assist governments at the detriment of policy interventions and advocacy to uphold human rights is unsustainable.
COVID-19 has clearly illustrated the dangers of service delivery that is not intersectional. The pandemic has further illuminated the gaps in our policies and laws that lead to increased inequalities. Efforts to address those gaps should be prioritised, otherwise the consequences of the inequalities will be felt for many years post-COVID-19. The pandemic has also put the sustainability of feminist movements in the spotlight. Diversity in feminist movements should be essential; this provides an opportunity for different ideas and eyes to influence the processes that seek to strengthen advocacy strategy development in the movements.
Caroline Kioko is an experienced human rights lawyer who specialises in Public International Law and Human Rights Law. She has also worked in gender democracy and governance. She is skilled in Gender inclusivity and Mainstreaming, Program management, International Law and Policy Analysis. She is an accredited professional mediator and has a keen interest in the development and application of civil, political and social rights in Africa. Caroline has authored several articles on sexual minority rights, feminism and women rights. She is the co-editor of the book ‘Challenging Patriarchy: The Role of Patriarchy in the Roll-back of Democracy’. Caroline currently works for the Heinrich Böll Foundation-Nairobi Office as the Programme Coordinator on Gender Democracy in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia/Somaliland.
Caroline Kioko is an experienced human rights lawyer who specialises in Public International Law and Human Rights Law. She has also worked in gender democracy and governance. She is skilled in Gender inclusivity and Mainstreaming, Program management, International Law and Policy Analysis. She is an accredited professional mediator and has a keen interest in the development and application of civil, political and social rights in Africa. Caroline has authored several articles on sexual minority rights, feminism and women rights. She is the co-editor of the book ‘Challenging Patriarchy: The Role of Patriarchy in the Roll-back of Democracy’. Caroline currently works for the Heinrich Böll Foundation-Nairobi Office as the Programme Coordinator on Gender Democracy in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia/Somaliland.