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Issues we work on

Grassroots Feminisms

An array of feminist movements are insisting women, trans, and gender non-conforming people’s rights cannot be isolated from other inequalities like race, class, and colonialism. And they are building vibrant alternatives to sustain life and win liberation, proving that those most targeted by patriarchal policies must be the ones who outline their replacements.

Impact Overview

Around the world, the far right has targeted women, trans, and gender non-conforming people in its quest to implement a regressive world vision. Even under the status quo, these communities bear the greatest burden from poverty, environmental destruction, and colonialism.

But a multiplicity of movements, activists, and community leaders are organizing against these “systems of death” and fighting for a vision that affirms life.

Grassroots International supports local feminist organizing that has global visions. Feminists are confronting epidemics of gender-based violence and femicides rooted in colonialism and enforced poverty. Peasant, Indigenous, and rural-based women, trans and gender nonconforming peoples are bringing their needs – and demands – into broader struggles for liberation and justice. The global spaces and movements we support are crucial for spreading this work and learnings across geographies.

Work we’re accompanying:

  • Global processes of convergence among diverse grassroots feminist movements to connect, exchange, and develop shared frameworks, strategies, and popular education tools
  • Intersectional campaigns against gender-based violence, linking violence carried out in homes and structural violence connected to colonialism, patriarchy, and racism
  • Resistance by women against oil and gas companies poisoning their communities in the Niger Delta
  • Organizing by peasant and other rural women across West Africa to protect their seeds and livelihoods against corporate agriculture
  • The development and spread of “peasant popular feminism” by transnational peasant organizers
  • The strengthening of a global feminist and anti-capitalist movement of women, trans, and gender nonconforming peoples

Just as the personal is political, grassroots feminists are taking the local global. They are tackling the various forms of oppression and violence women, trans, and gender nonconforming people face to free us all.

While more corporate forms of feminism seek equality for women and LGBT+ people within the existing system, grassroots feminisms aim to transform structures that keep people impoverished and shackled to cycles of violence.

Why feminisms and not feminism? Because social movements recognize that there are multiple forms of grassroots feminism: feminisms that are pushing peasant and rural movements from the inside; Indigenous feminisms rooted in long-standing anti-patriarchal practices; Black and Afro-descendant feminisms that have introduced intersectionality and combat white supremacy in all its forms.

The tactics, strategies, and politics of these grassroots feminisms are unique, but they share some commonalities. Many are imagining and building a feminist economy – one that recognizes care work is just as important as labor outside the home, and that protects the environment. Many are challenging violence in its multiple forms – interpersonal; military; economic. And many are vocal that feminism must be inclusive of trans people and those who do not conform to the socially imposed gender binary.

Grassroots International supports movements of women, trans and gender nonconforming people from Puerto Rico to Nigeria to Honduras and beyond. And we support global platforms for linking these struggles together for society-wide transformation.

Explore our Partners

  • Brazil

Levante Popular da Juventude (Popular Youth Uprising, LPJ)

  • Brazil

Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF)

  • Puerto Rico

Colectivo Ilé

  • Puerto Rico

Coordinadora Paz para la Mujer

  • Puerto Rico

Colectiva Feminista en Construcción

  • Global

World March of Women

  • Middle East

Accompanying grassroots feminisms in the Middle East

  • Mesoamerica

Sector de Mujeres

  • Mesoamerica

Consejo para el Desarrollo Integral de la Mujer Campesina/Council for the Integral Development of the Peasant Woman (CODIMCA)

  • West Africa

Kebetkache Women’s Development and Resource Centre (Kebetkache)

  • West Africa

Association des Jeunes Agriculteurs de Casamance (Casamance Agricultural Youth Association, AJAC-Lukaal)

  • West Africa

Coordination des Associations et ONG Féminines du Mali (Coordination of Women’s Associations and NGOs of Mali, CAFO)

  • West Africa

Fédération des Organisations de Producteurs du Burkina Faso/ National Federation of Producer Organizations of Burkina Faso (FENOP)

  • West Africa

Nous Sommes la Solution (We Are the Solution, NSS/WAS)

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