This timely six-year programme of work will create much needed new knowledge to identify opportunities for women’s rights organisations and other gender justice defenders to counter backlash and address the erosion of gender objectives within development. It will carry out engaged research, generate new thinking, and build capacity across networks and strategic partnerships with women’s and other human rights organisations, activists, academics and policymakers, regionally and globally.

Focused on the central objective ‘to enhance the understanding, capacities and opportunities needed for women’s rights organisations and other gender justice defenders to counter backlash and address the erosion of gender objectives within development’, the programme will deliver two key sets of results:

• Increased access to and use of gender equality research focused on backlash

• Enhanced methods and capacity development for gender equality efforts.

The project will co-create and communicate evidence and methods on backlash, the erosion of gender policies and new opportunities for feminist action.