Women's Fund Asia

Women’s Fund Asia (WFA) is a regional women’s fund working across 22 countries in South, South East and East Asia with a vision of a just, gender-equal, and democratic region where women, girls, trans, and intersex people’s participation, leadership and enjoyment of human rights is ensured and irrevocable. Our mission is to nurture and lead feminist philanthropy in the region; to effectively mobilise resources to support individuals, groups, and networks by enabling their sustainability; and to strengthen partner capacities, leadership, advocacy, and networks in the field.

In 2024, WFA celebrated its 20 years of resourcing feminist activism in the region. WFA's journey started in 2004, when it was first registered as South Asia Women's Fund working in five countries in South Asia. In 2016, WFA undertook a regional expansion, increasing our mandate to 18 countries and now to 22 countries and territories across South, Southeast and East Asia. 

WFA, has established itself as one of the leading funders in the region that provides responsive, long-term, flexible and core support to feminist activists, groups, organisations, networks and movements led by women and girls; advances strategic resource justice advocacy to influence aid and philanthropy and claim resources; and facilitates and creates opportunities for linking and learning, networking and advocacy and for capacity- strengthening for feminist activists from the region at the national, regional and global level. 

Over the years, since our inception, we have supported over 1600 grants with over USD 30 million in the region. Ensuring increased accessibility and inclusion in its grantmaking work, WFA ensures its grantmaking calls are available in 14 Asian languages.

Organisational Strategies 

Our work closes the resource gap by creating sustainable, flexible resources and opportunities essential to supporting the leadership of all WGTI people in bringing progressive change from within their communities. WFA fully recognises that interventions happen at multiple levels, and are cross- cutting and intersectional. WFA’s programming includes multi-level grant-making, linking and learning, and influencing aid and philanthropy, and institutional strengthening. 

1. Feminist and participatory grantmaking: WFA supports WGTI groups and organisations that are constantly challenging underlying norms that lead to systemic barriers against marginalised people. The grants focus on filling the funding gaps faced by women, girls, trans, and intersex activists and groups, and work within the context of closing civil society space. WFA’s grant-making strategy, funds according to six key thematic areas that have emerged during the last 20 years based on learnings from the fields and exchanges with the partners. These include: 

• Autonomy, Decisions, and Sexual Rights: We support the promotion of the right to sexuality,  decision-making, and bodily autonomy of women and girls.
• Access to Justice: We support groups and individuals working on increasing women and girls' access to justice, including raising legal awareness among communities,  creating pathways and mechanisms for survivors to access lawyers and the judicial system, training  women paralegals, supporting women lawyers, and others. 
• Movement and Labour: We support women and girls’ right to safe  migration, economic justice, and labour rights, with a particular focus on women working in  vulnerable, informal, and stigmatised sectors such as garment factories, tea plantations,  domestic work, and migrant labour. 
• Environmental Justice: We recognise the need for feminist leadership in resource management,  disaster risk reduction and resilience, addressing climate change, and sustainable development. We  support work aimed at securing women and girls rights over natural  resources across a diversity of constituencies, including women with disabilities, women farmers,  garment factory workers, and indigenous and Adivasi women.  
• Strengthening Feminist Voices: Supporting and strengthening grassroots feminist leadership  has always been a priority for us.  
• Crisis and New Contexts: We resource activists and groups led by women and girls as they respond to ongoing and new challenges faced by their communities, and  uphold their human rights and build their resilience during emergencies and crises.

Grantee partners work on a diverse set of intersectional issues that include: stigma and discrimination; access to state entitlements and social programmes; inclusivity, safety and accessibility of digital platforms; access to natural resources and land; access to sexual and reproductive health services; gender-based violence; bodily autonomy; accountability to the Beijing Platform For Action (BPFA); and Generation Equality Forum (GEF) commitments. The strategies used by grantee partners include awareness raising, capacity building, mobilising feminist activists and groups, evidence generation for advocacy, policy reviews, online and offline campaigns, engaging stakeholders in national and global spaces, and amplifying the outcomes of the review process. 

Resource Justice Advocacy : this strategy aims to influence aid and philanthropy to claim resources for feminist movements in Asia by building and strengthening a diverse, collaborative and strong resource architecture in the feminist funding ecosystem. This is to ensure that women’s, girls , trans and intersex rights movements have access to sustainable and flexible resources. As part  of several critical global networks, alliances, strategic consortiums and partnerships, such as Prospera International Network of Women’s Funds; Alliance for Feminist Movements; Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains; Human Rights Funders Network; Feminist Alchemy Network; Funder Learning and Action Community (FLAC),

WFA has been  able to centre the agendas of feminist movements of Asia in key regional and global advocacy spaces. WFA continues to be in critical leadership roles in these spaces to be able to influence and shape critical conversations, narratives and agendas on funding for feminist movements in Asia.

Linking and Learning : The third strategy of Linking and Learning, aims  to bolster feminist movements, partnerships and power. This is done by creating spaces to strengthen feminist skills and knowledge, and foster cross movement collaboration, and regional dialogues for feminist movements rooted in Asia, through community exchange, knowledge production and amplifying feminist movement voices and agendas at key policy or decision making spaces to advance resource and gender justice. WFA provides two types of support under the L&L grantmaking programme; Travel grants for advocacy and capacity development; and Convening space grants for organising collaborative events.  WFA prioritises these grants for marginalised groups and individuals working at intersections of gender justice and disability rights and climate change, indigenous and rural women, and labour, in key policy-making spaces like - Commission of the Status of Women (CSW), Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) sessions, Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) sessions, and Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) among others where these constituencies continue to be under-represented; and opportunities for movement-building and knowledge sharing, particularly at the regional level. 

WFA recognises institutional strengthening, especially financial resilience, as a critical part of its mandate of strengthening feminist movements in the region especially in the highly restrictive current context. Our fourth strategic objective of institutional strengthening seeks to grow and tend to our own feminist capacities, communities and innovations. Our trainings  provide the  partners an opportunity to learn about financial management, good governance and compliance, so that they are able to learn different tools, techniques and skills in financial management, control and compliance and strengthen their internal governance systems to be able to comply with both the requirements of WFA and the respective governments of their countries.