Gender Equality
In our societies, women and young girls face systemic inequality of opportunities, unequal access to power and decision-making, and are more exposed to gender-based violence.
Gender inequality stems from harmful narratives about gender roles that have become entrenched in society, creating a lens with which to limit the role of women and girls.
Ashoka facilitates collaboration across social entrepreneurs’ organizations, interviewing and convening social entrepreneurs to allow them to exchange ideas and to better understand the steps society needs to take to advance gender equity.
Manifesto to Change the Gender Narrative!
This manifesto claims that women constitute half of humanity and recognizes Gender Equality as the ultimate goal for a peaceful, fair, and healthy world, where everybody is provided with the same rights, opportunities, and resources in all areas of their lives.
A new narrative is needed to challenge the underlying systems of power that sexism, racism, ableism, heterosexism, and so many social categorization schemes are designed to sustain. Only gender equality and feminist values can achieve systemic change.
How social entrepreneurs tackle gender inequality following COVID-19?
Five key insights and recommendations from Ashoka Fellows and leading social innovators on how to advance gender equality:
- Help society understand the roots of gender inequality
- Dismantle patriarchal narratives
- Use an intersectional lens to address gender inequality
- Frame gender inequality as a cross-cutting issue
- Collaborate across sectors to advance gender equality
Gender Equal World Podcasts Series
A new narrative is needed to challenge the underlying systems of power that sexism, racism, ableism, heterosexism, and so many social categorization schemes are each and all designed to sustain.
We invite you today to listen to the first of three episodes of our podcast mini-series about equal gender dignity and join our efforts to change the narrative around gender.
Deep dive and how to join
Many organizations have worked to create fair playing systems for women and girls but even these models have their limits: any single organization will struggle to counteract complex and deeply ingrained problems like gender inequality.
Collaboration between individuals and organizations who are committed to bringing about positive social change and shifting a system together is key to tackling root causes of gender inequality and advance the path of a gender-equal world.
Together with 11 Europe-based social entrepreneurs, we released a knowledge report built from our collective analysis and highlighting 5 key recommendations changemakers can take to advance gender equity and thus enable gender equality.
We also wrote a Manifesto for a new Gender Narrative revealing the new needed narratives for women and girls to be recognized as half of humanity and thus to acknowledge gender equality as the ultimate goal for a peaceful, fair and healthy world.
If you can support us in spreading our learnings or share and scale our social entrepreneurs’ experiences, join the movement! Reach out to Giulia Sergi and Léna Borsoi.
This work is feeding into the larger framechanging work Ashoka is leading at the global level, find out more on: https://www.next-now.org/gender.
Meet the Initiative Lead
Lena Borsoi
Léna Borsoi co-created and co-leads collaborative initiatives gathering, respectively, Ashoka Health Fellows and Gender fellows who are are analyzing systemic issues in their region and joining forces to address them.
For several years, she has been researching and working on the nexus between leadership and impactful cross-sector collaborations, more particularly as a program manager for the Executive in Residence program, supporting collaboration between corporate leaders and social entrepreneurs.