Drawing on research and interviews from Melbourne, this article explores who gets heard in global gender debates — and why real transformation requires shifting power, not just widening participation.
The Women Deliver 2026 conference in Melbourne convened 6,123 participants from 189 countries, speaking 246 languages. These figures reflect the scale and urgency of global gender equality efforts.
Yet beyond participation, this analysis reveals a more complex picture of inclusion, power, and persistent structural gaps. Our author shares her insights from desk research and informant interviews on the ground. Moving beyond surface-level reflection and combining empirical insight with feminist humanitarian literature and practitioner perspectives, this article highlights the tension between the conference as a space of possibility and its grounding in unequal global systems.
The Politics of Presence: Reading Participation Critically
While the conference showcased global diversity, participation patterns reflected deeper inequalities. With approximately 44% attendance from the Oceanic region and about 20% from Africa, 15% Asia and 3% from Latin America representation remained uneven. Scholars in gender and development have long argued that such disparities are not incidental but reflect structural barriers including funding inequities, restrictive visa regimes, and geopolitical hierarchies (Lafrenière et al., 2019; Reality of Aid, 2023). Key informant discussions during the conference reinforced this point. Several participants noted that many grassroots actors—particularly refugee women and those from active conflict zones such as Sudan or Palestine, were absent. This absence aligns with broader critiques that global convenings often privilege those already positioned within transnational advocacy networks. As feminist literature highlights, exclusion from such spaces risks reinforcing epistemic injustice, where certain voices are systematically marginalised in knowledge production (Alliance Magazine, 2022).
Thus, while numerical participation may suggest inclusivity, a deeper analysis reveals what might be described as “structured absence.” In other words, although participants may be physically present and statistically counted, they can still remain excluded from meaningful power, influence, visibility, and decision-making processes because of the ways in which institutions and systems are organised. Here, “absence” does not refer to literal exclusion from the room; rather, it signifies an institutionally produced form of invisibility and silencing. This notion is increasingly explored within feminist scholarship, particularly in critiques of participation, representation, and power within humanitarian and development spaces.
From Gender-Responsive to Gender-Transformative Change
Across plenaries and side events, there was a strong call to move from gender-responsive to gender-transformative approaches. This distinction is well established: gender-responsive interventions address immediate needs, while transformative approaches seek to dismantle structural inequalities (WRC, 2021; Government of Canada, 2017). The Melbourne Declaration, shaped through consultations with over 650 contributors at this year’s Women Deliver Conference, reflects this ambition. It calls for accountability, solidarity, and confronting unjust economic systems. However, insights from both the desk review and informant interviews suggest a persistent implementation gap.
As highlighted in feminist critiques of humanitarian systems, gender has often been reduced to a technical category, “mainstreamed” but stripped of its political edge (WRC, 2021) . My own observations at the conference echoed this: while language around transformation was prominent, discussions frequently returned to technical solutions, metrics, frameworks, and funding mechanisms, without sufficiently addressing underlying power relations.
Reframing Risk: Whose Risk Counts?
A central analytical lens emerging from both the literature and conference discussions is the concept of risk. Traditional humanitarian frameworks define risk in institutional terms—financial, reputational, and operational. However, feminist perspectives argue that this framing obscures the risks faced by communities and movements themselves (ICVA, 2020; O’Neal-Dunham, 2024). Through key informant exchanges, particularly with actors from the Feminist Humanitarian Network (FHN), it became clear that women-led organisations continue to be perceived as “risky” investments. Yet evidence suggests the opposite: the real risk lies in failing to fund these organisations, leading to weakened movements and setbacks in gender equality (Nolan et al., 2025) . This insight aligns with my own experience presenting the new report “Extractive By Design”, by FHN, in cooperation with Heinrich Böll Foundation, during the conference. Participants consistently highlighted how donor practices prioritise institutional protection over community safety and sustainability. The expectation that women’s organisations remain “neutral” in crisis settings further compounds this issue. As scholars argue, neutrality in contexts of structural injustice can reinforce existing power imbalances rather than challenge them (Krishnan, 2025).
Intersectionality: Between Rhetoric and Practice
Intersectionality was widely referenced at Women Deliver 2026, yet its operationalisation remains uneven. Discussions acknowledged the need to include queer communities, youth, and those in hostile legal environments. However, both informant interviews and my observations suggest that these perspectives are not consistently integrated into programme design or funding priorities. This gap is particularly significant given the rise of coordinated anti-gender movements globally (Vene Klasen, 2024). Feminist scholarship emphasises that gender equality cannot be achieved without addressing intersecting forms of marginalisation. As the literature review highlights, failure to adopt an intersectional lens risks reproducing exclusion and undermining long-term impact . Additionally, emerging debates around data and evidence were prominent. Informants raised concerns about what constitutes “impact,” who defines it, and how data is used. In contexts where communities face criminalisation or stigma, data collection can itself generate risk. This underscores the need for ethical, context-sensitive approaches to evidence generation.
Localisation and the “Ecosystem” Question
The concept of a new development “ecosystem” was a recurring theme at the conference. It emphasises shifting power to local actors, decentralising funding, and fostering collaborative networks. However, both literature and practitioner insights reveal that this remains more aspirational than realised. Localisation debates highlight that while rhetoric has shifted, funding structures remain concentrated in the Global North (Wolff, 2024; Reality of Aid, 2023). My conversations with participants confirmed that many grassroots organisations struggle to interpret evolving donor priorities, which are often communicated through complex and changing language. Young Pacific women at the conference articulated this tension powerfully, noting that systems continue to treat them as beneficiaries rather than equal partners. Their call for genuine participation reflects longstanding feminist demands for agency and power redistribution.
Conclusion: From Gathering to Transformation
Women Deliver 2026 was a space of both inspiration and contradiction. It brought together a global community committed to gender justice, yet also reflected the inequalities embedded within that community.
Three key takeaways emerge from this analysis:
- First, risk must be reframed to prioritise communities and movements rather than institutional interests.
- Second, power must genuinely shift, ensuring that local actors are not only included but leading.
- Third, intersectionality must move from rhetoric to practice, shaping both programme design and funding decisions.
Ultimately, the conference underscored a critical point: global convenings must do more than gather voices, they must transform the systems that determine whose voices are heard.
If the ecosystem of gender equality is indeed evolving, then those most affected by that change must not remain on its margins. They must be at its centre, defining, shaping, and leading the path forward.
