Towards a Gender-Just Society

Social justice and gender justice are inseparable. In addition, the core values of social democracy – freedom, justice, and solidarity – cannot be fully realized without equity between the genders. This requires removing all barriers that prevent individuals from participating equally in the economy, politics, and society due to their gender. However, removing obstacles is not enough. We must actively support people in realizing their potential and overcoming the injustices they face in an unequal system. Moreover, any approach aiming to create gender justice must take an intersectional perspective. This means not only accounting for all different dimensions of someone’s identity, but also for the way these different dimensions intersect and the specific, individual needs this creates.

To support the struggle for gender justice in Ethiopia, FES promotes the substantive political representation of people facing gender-based discrimination. We do this through initiatives that amplify the voices of people in their diversity and give them the tools to successfully make their own voices heard. For example, FES – together with its partners from different feminist organizations – has played a key role in ensuring gender perspectives are included in the National Dialogue agenda. Another critical area of our work is advancing gender-transformative workers’ rights. Together with partners, such as trade unions, feminist organizations, and other NGOs, we inform and train people about their economic and labor rights and organize events to help unions address feminist matters and combat issues like workplace sexual harassment. Finally, FES also actively promotes    alliances between partners from different areas, so that they can jointly fight for gender justice.

When it comes to our work methodology, we use gender analysis in all our activities and for policy discussions and dialogues in order to mainstream gender. This means applying a gender-transformative approach to everything we do and encouraging other institutions to adopt the same strategy.  And last but not least, we implement and apply a strict anti-sexual and gender-based harassment policy within FES and for our activities and partnerships.

FES is committed to the vision of a gender-just Ethiopia. We firmly believe that without gender justice there is no social justice, and we will continue working towards this goal through all our projects and partnerships.