Global military spending is on the rise, while civil society actors who are defending democracy and social justice on the frontlines are receiving less and less funding. Feminist funding offers a promising way out: how feminist funds are leading the way in the Global South and why Germany urgently needs to follow suit.
While military spending and investment in weapons and defense systems are rising worldwide, human rights defenders, environmental activists, and feminists are being deprived of funding. A narrow concept of security that focuses on protection from external and internal physical threats fails to recognize that sustainable peace and democracy can only be maintained through investment in critical civil society. Even before the closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and cuts in the development cooperation budgets of many countries, only 0.13 percent of total official development assistance (ODA) and 0.4 percent of total gender-specific aid went to women's organizations, according to the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID). The situation is no better in Germany. According to a survey conducted by the Association of German Foundations in collaboration with Phineo, only 18 percent of the nearly 200 foundations surveyed said they were committed to promoting girls or women. Yet it is often precisely these actors who are at the forefront of building, developing, and defending democracy.
The concept of feminist funding could be an important part of the solution to counteract the global anti-democratic backlash. It is geared toward acute needs and local expertise and secures civil society structures where they are under attack. At its core, it is about supporting actors directly, flexibly, with minimal bureaucracy, and over several years, and transforming the power imbalance between funders and recipients. While other countries such as the Netherlands and Canada are already cautiously moving in this direction, and feminist funds such as Prospera and the Dalan Fund are already doing pioneering work, there is little awareness of this new funding method in Germany. Given the rapid downward spiral we are currently observing in terms of human and civil rights in Germany and elsewhere, this innovative approach could become a game changer.
Taking Stock: Is the Backlash Real?
At the end of 2025, the backlash that feminists have been long warning about it here. Democracies and fundamental rights are under attack all over the world. After the super election year of 2024, authoritarian and anti-democratic actors were able to further establish themselves in parliaments and governments in. Misogynist and anti-queer policies are often a core element of their programs and rhetoric.
In the Queering Democracies Report, Outright International notes that in at least 51 of the 61 countries surveyed, "political candidates used anti-LGBTQI* rhetoric as a campaign tool," demonized so-called "gender ideology," and portrayed LGBTQI* people as "foreign agents."
Well-Funded Culture War From the Right
Right-wing actors are fueling a culture war that not only further divides societies but also actively promotes the dismantling of equality. Hard-won rights of women and minorities are often the first to be targeted. For example, the report Laws on Us by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) World 2024 notes that despite the continuing global trend toward decriminalization of consensual same-sex sexual acts, large parts of Africa and some parts of Asia are experiencing a disturbing regression. They are moving in the opposite direction.
While prison sentences or the death penalty for homosexuality have recently been (re)introduced in Uganda, Iraq, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, and Senegal, countries such as Russia, Belarus, Jordan, Georgia, and Namibia have introduced new laws against so-called "promotion of homosexuality" or "gender ideology."
Attacks on Women and Queer People Are Attacks on Democracy
The TransRights Map by Transgender Europe (TGEU) also shows an unprecedented trend reversal for Europe and Central Asia: for the first time in the 13-year history of the survey, setbacks in the human rights of trans* people in Europe and Central Asia now clearly outweigh progress. This indicates not only massive restrictions on the human rights of LGBTQI* people, but above all a crisis of democracy. This is not only a cultural step backwards, but a strategic attack on fundamental freedoms, equality, democracy, and Europe itself.
It can be assumed that the restriction of LGBTQI* rights and the erosion of civil rights and democratic institutions reinforce each other. A study by the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA School of Law, examined data from 175 countries from 1981 to 2020 and concluded that in places where governments use anti-LGBTQI* rhetoric or take anti-LGBTQI* measures, other forms of democratic regression, such as restrictions on independent media or restrictions on freedom of assembly, are likely.
Downward Trend in Public Funding for Civil Society
Instead of strengthening funding for women's rights and feminist work to combat the backlash where it finds its gateway, many states are making massive cuts to their education, culture, and development programs. Coupled with the scaling back of feminist approaches in foreign and development policy, this is already having a visible impact on the basic existential needs of women and minorities worldwide after just a few months. In Germany, too, important funding programs, such as Demokratie leben! (Live Democracy!) and cultural funding in Berlin, are being cut back or made conditional on ideological screening. The consequences for the resilience of democracies and sustainable peace work can only be guessed at this stage.
Women’s Rights Organizations Are Fighting for Survival
The consequences for women's rights work and feminist movements worldwide are particularly devastating. According to a UN Women study from May 2025, 90 percent of the women's rights organizations surveyed are affected by the cuts, and 47 percent say they will have to close within the next six months or have already closed. While human and women's rights work, which is already chronically underfunded and hampered by strict funding guidelines, is fighting for survival, Europe’s anti-gender movement is thriving. According to the new "Next Wave" report by the European Parliamentary Forum on Reproductive Rights in the summer of 2025 the approximately €700 million that flowed into Europe's anti-gender movement between 2009 and 2018 has more than doubled in the last five years alone and now stands at €1.18 billion. Not only is funding for anti-democratic projects increasing, it is also often much more flexible and less bureaucratic.
Making Funding Feminist
So how can we strengthen and secure feminist and women's rights work in the face of global backlash? How can we protect existing funds, while building new, participatory, and more flexible funding methods?
It is worth taking a look at the Global South, where feminist movements have been developing and implementing alternative funding pools based on the principle of feminist funding for several years now. Even before the major wave of cuts in 2025, there was too little money available for feminist and progressive civil society, and the little money that did reach the grassroots was tied to complicated reporting requirements and short project cycles.
Feminist funding is a financing practice based on distributive justice and critique of power. It deals very closely with the power that comes with funding, with the question of how this power can be shared in the process of awarding grants, and how financing can contribute to changing systems of injustice. It strengthens civil society where it is under the most pressure and builds sustainable structures without prescribing exactly what those structures should look like.
Distributing Funds Where Crises and Transformation Arise
Feminist funding is part of a recent wave of experimental visions of how funding can better respond to the crises facing people and the planet by focusing on the needs and demands of the movements working to counter them.
At the first Funding for Feminist Futures conference last October in Madrid, the Walking the Talk consortium invited leading feminist funding sources, such as the Equality Fund from Canada and Leading from the South, a Global South-led consortium. Representatives from development ministries were also present to discuss the potential of feminist funding practices in times of geopolitical crises and environmental disasters. The recommendations developed are clear: core funding instead of project funding, the development of emergency funds for women's and queer rights work, and a focus on participatory networks instead of individual organizations.
Redefining Risk
The massive cuts and hurdles for women's and queer rights organizations are attacks on the safety of our democracies. Providing these actors with sufficient, flexible funding that is adapted to their realities can make democracies more resilient. It promotes social justice and thus reduces or prevents real- security risks such as racist, sexist, or antiqueer violence, terrorism, and violent conflicts in the long term.
Above all, this involves redefining risk. Instead of asking what risk foundations or ministries are taking when they support a young feminist-led network for several years without extensive reporting requirements, the question should be: What do we risk if we do not finance this essential democratic work? We must understand the failure to fund gender equality as a strategic risk for all of us, not as a nice-to-have in good times.
