Who Are W4GF?

Who are W4GF?

Women4GF brings together women’s rights advocates, especially women living with HIV, and directly affected by TB and malaria — to advance gender equality through the Global Fund. Women4GF mobilizes women in all their diversity to ensure that the world’s most important finance mechanism for the HIV, TB and malaria supports programmes that meet the rights and needs of women and girls.

We are not an organisation – rather we are building a movement. The first phase of organising has been supported by the Global Fund secretariat and facilitated by ASAP, through projects commenced with the ATHENA network.

Women4GF is mobilizing activists, especially from community organizations in implementing countries, to make sure that the Global Fund’s Gender Equality Strategy (GES) is put into action, and achieves real impacts. Women4GF is a space to mobilize more action so that the Global Fund resources go where they are most needed and where they will change lives. We need to finance gender transformative programmes, to meet the needs and rights of women and girls in all their diversity. Women4GF is designed to make sure that diverse voices are central to the conversation about what the Global Fund does, and where the money is spent, to have the greatest impact on our world and our communities.

The Global Fund is in an exciting phase of transformation. Women4GF works to ensure that gender equality is central to these transitions, and that women participate fully in key decisions, in particular now that the Global Fund has agreed a new funding model (NFM) that delivers finance through new, targeted approaches.

The Gender Equality Strategy commits the Global Fund to supporting gender-sensitive – ideally gender-transformative – programmes that address the underlying vulnerabilities faced by women, girls and especially key affected women, especially transgender women, sex workers, and drug users. The GES is designed to ensure that Global Fund resources support programmes that meet diverse gendered needs. This means adjusting the systems, policies and approaches so that at country and global levels there is meaningful participation of diverse women in Global Fund processes, to have the greatest impact on HIV, TB and malaria, and to know what this impact is by making sure that results are disaggregated by age and gender.

Those of us who started this idea share a hope to live in a world where no woman or girl is marginalised and all women – in all their diversity – are able to access the services and treatment they need.

This website (www.women4gf.org) and a Facebook page have been developed to secure an interactive space for women, girls, Trans* and men who support gender equality and want to engage with the Global Fund to make sure that programmes on HIV, TB and malaria are gender transformative.