Three intersecting global tendencies limit gender justice activists’ room for manoeuvre: gender backlash, changes in civic space, and democratic backsliding.
As evidenced by the Countering Backlash programme among others, gender backlash is happening in a context where feminists face shrinking or closing civic space, against a broader backdrop of democratic backsliding, from global to local level. This brief synthesises insights from interviews with gender justice activists living and working at the confluence of these tendencies. Their experiences and navigation strategies offer grounded perspectives and suggest some refinements in how governments, funders, and allies support them.