Together Women Rise awarded a Transformation Partnership Grant in the amount of $100,000 per year for two years (2022 and 2023) to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Together Women Rise is supporting ICRW’s work to affect change through rigorous research uncovering the causes and costs of gender inequity and informing solutions.
The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is one of the world’s premier research institutes focused on tackling challenges facing women and girls worldwide. For nearly five decades, ICRW has been uncovering deep-rooted structural inequities and creating systems change in communities, institutions, and governments. ICRW believes that the closer we get to the source of these inequities, shed light on them, and find out how best to disrupt them, the closer we get to fostering and sustaining gender equity worldwide.
How ICRW Advances Systems Change
ICRW affects change through rigorous research uncovering the causes and costs of gender inequity and informing solutions. ICRW advances systems change by implementing programs that help young people, their families, and communities adopt new, more equitable gender norms through the following initiatives:
- direct, evidence-informed policy advocacy to drive gender equity into law;
- training organizations, businesses, and governments to design, integrate, and optimize programs, practices, and policies that advance gender equity;
- advising Fortune 1000 companies and global organizations to create institutional and social change related to gender equity with customizable services;
- bringing together partners who provide the diverse expertise and perspectives necessary.
Examples of ICRW’s Systems Change Work in India:
Gender Equity Movement in Schools (GEMS): The GEMs curriculum has proven to increase gender-equitable attitudes and decrease students’ tolerance for violent behavior. With over one in three women globally experiencing intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives, these attitude shifts are essential.
Parivartan: Parivartan, meaning “transformation”, is a sports mentoring program, which uses a role model approach and integrated teaching-learning opportunities that engage adolescents to discuss and reflect on gender attitudes and behaviors and encourage them to question prevailing gendered practices and the use of violence.
Plan-It Girls adopts an ecosystem approach to build agency and gender equality at the local level, leveraging a catalytic personal advancement curriculum tailored for girls attending Grades 9 and 11 at government schools in Delhi (urban context) and two districts of Jharkhand (rural context). The intervention recognizes that a shift in gender norms is necessary to support girls’ aspirations, acquisition of skills, breaking of gender stereotypes, and reduction of resistance to girls’ success.