For International Women’s Day, journalist Frank van Lierde converses with Anne Kwakkenbos, Cordaid’s Gender Expert, who reflects on the impact of rising conservatism and budget cuts on the global gender equality movement. ‘Over the past century, we’ve made tremendous progress. Now, we’re moving backward.’
‘Yes, these are scary times to be a feminist’, Kwakkenbos acknowledges, particularly in countries where gender equality advocates face imprisonment or even death. She highlights how rising far-right movements in the US and Europe, but also Russia and China, are successfully advancing traditionalist and anti-feminist narratives and agendas beyond their borders, notably on the African continent.
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In this podcast interview, Anne Kwakkenbos delves into other pressing gender equality issues. Reflecting on Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s assertion that ‘gender as it functions today is a grave injustice’ and the emotionality of Trump, Vance and Zelensky in the grotesque scene at the Oval Office last week, she unpacks how today’s reactionary geopolitics shape the language and actions of decision-makers. In some contexts, even the word ‘women’ is erased from official discourse, evoking eerie echoes of Orwell’s 1984.
Kwakkenbos discusses Cordaid’s gender policy and its ambition to be gender transformative across all its operations. As a relentless advocate, Kwakkenbos collaborates with activists and allies from Afghanistan to South Sudan, Western Africa to Northern Iraq, and The Hague to New York. The podcast prominently features these diverse contexts.
Despite acknowledging the challenges, Kwakkenbos refuses to succumb to despair. ‘Who am I to give up hope when millions of women continue to fight for equality?’ she says. Or, as Ayshka Najib, a young climate activist based in the UAE, told the international community last September: ‘It is extremely terrifying to be a feminist today… But to be hopeless is to be privileged.’
CSW69 and the Beijing Declaration
The year 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint ever for gender equality. It advances ‘the goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of all humanity.’
This year’s session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), taking place from March 10 to 21 in New York, will focus primarily on implementing the Beijing Declaration. At CSW, Anne Kwakkenbos will call for more attention to the humanitarian crisis in Eastern Congo, emphasising the urgent need to support its people, especially Congolese women.
For insights into the progress made since the Beijing Declaration of 1995, the Gender Snapshot 2024 highlights the latest data and evidence. The findings make one thing clear: the world is falling short of its commitments to women and girls.