When women can decide for themselves whether or when to have children, they can plan for the future and begin to control their lives. Women and girls can complete their education and pursue a career. With access to reliable and affordable maternal and reproductive health care, women are more likely to give birth to healthy babies and raise strong families. 

Access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care and rights doesn’t just benefit women, it has significant positive impacts for all of society: 

• Healthy Children.  improved maternal nutrition and access to reproductive health services lead to higher birth weights, lower levels of child mortality, better child nutrition, and improved cognitive development.
• Family Financial Security. Improved reproductive health leads to increased household income and assets benefitting whole families.
• Economy.  Being able to time and space children leads to increased women’s participation in the labor force and increased education for children.

In the United States

The U.S is the only industrialized country without universal health coverage. If that’s news to you, let it sink in for a moment. The Affordable Care Act made a substantial improvement in coverage but there are still 8 million women of reproductive age who are uninsured. This is almost certainly one of the primary reasons why the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is more than three times the rate in most other high-income countries. And the number of women dying due to pregnancy or childbirth has only been increasing in the U.S. This is both heartbreaking and unacceptable. But it gets worse…Black women in this country are three times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than white and Hispanic women.  

Nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and these unintended pregnancies occur more often among low-income women, younger women aged 18-24, and women of color, who have more limited access to healthcare. Birth rates among teenagers is more of a success story – in the last three decades, teen birth rates have dropped by 77% owing in part to an increase in use of long-term contraceptive methods and teens having less sex.

Which brings us to a topic that is top of mind for many of us: the overturn of Roe vs. Wade. The implications  are far reaching – first and foremost is an attack on bodily autonomy for women. As of this writing, abortion is protected by state law in 21 states and the District of Columbia and is at risk of being severely limited or prohibited in 26 states. And the reduction in abortion access will have a significant, disproportionate impact on low-income women, women of color and particularly Black women who are burdened by a confluence of racism and inequity throughout our systems and society.

It is also important to recognize that poor and marginalized women in this country have never had reliable access to abortion services. Even before Roe vs. Wade was overturned, nearly 90% of  U.S counties did not have a clinic that offered these services. Women seeking a safe abortion have always needed time, money, and transportation. Our economic, health and social systems simply were not built to serve women who do not have all three.

In the Global South

Around the world, 60 million more women are using contraceptives to plan their families today than a decade ago. Yet there are still more than 200 million women and girls in low- and middle-income countries who want to avoid pregnancy and are not currently using a modern method of contraception. This contributes to the 121 million unintended pregnancies that occur each year. Nearly two thirds of these pregnancies end in abortion, even in countries that completely prohibit abortion. 

Unlike the U.S., maternal mortality has been dropping significantly globally, although it remains unacceptably high – 810 women die each day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. And when moms die, everyone in the family and community suffers: maternal mortality is directly tied to a reduction in financial security for a family, loss of education for children, early marriage of young girls, and child mortality for newborns.  

One in three women globally have faced physical or sexual violence, mostly by an intimate partner. Gender-based violence is both a human rights violation and a major barrier to women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.

These global figures hide vast and important differences, progress and challenges across and within regions, the analysis of which is beyond the scope of this brief.  

Our membership has shown an interest in and appetite for exploring systemic change within our themes. This is particularly appropriate for this focus area as solutions have often leaned toward the technical, yet key barriers to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights are often deeply political and social. Thus, here we will focus on supporting the creation and implementation of legal and regulatory frameworks, policies, practices, and social norms that will enable progress toward women’s full realization of their sexual and reproductive health and rights. There are many high quality, effective direct service delivery organizations playing an important role in creating access to care for women, but these will not be the focus of our funding in this theme.

Supporting systemic change will look different in different countries and contexts. We believe solutions are best identified and led by local organizations most familiar with the needs, actors and levers for change. An effective way for us to channel our funds for catalytic and context-specific impact is toward feminist movements and women’s funds that support these movements.

What are feminist movements? “Feminist movements are organizations, leaders, and networks working together to change power structures that reinforce gender and other inequalities,” as defined by a recent report from Shake the Table and Bridgespan on the topic. A growing body of research is showing that feminist movements play a vital role in driving systemic change that positively impacts women. For example, Argentina, Ireland, and Mexico achieved critical progress for reproductive rights thanks to feminist movements; women activists played a major role especially in Latin America, to subvert restrictions on abortion and support the widespread safe use of medication abortion; and feminist movements have had the most lasting impact on policy changes to address violence against women across 70 countries. These are but a few powerful examples of their impact!

Furthermore, the work of feminist movements tends to be intersectional, recognizing that issues like climate, health, gender equity are intertwined and progress can and should be advanced across issues. For example, women’s agency, defined as “their ability to define and act on goals, make decisions that matter to them, and participate in the economy and public life,”  has been found to be key to any other solution being effective. Women’s movements tend to counter intersecting threats across issue areas and enable women’s agency as well.

Despite being critical avenues for widespread progress, these leaders and movements are desperately under funded. Funding for gender equality has been on the rise for the past decade, but only 1% of that funding has reached women’s rights organizations. This is a key opportunity for Battery Powered to direct our resources in a meaningful and impactful way. 

So how does Battery Powered, a San Francisco-based giving circle of individual funders, reach and support locally rooted feminist movements, especially with a geographic scope as broad as we present here?  Women’s funds exist around the globe and are the primary channel through which feminist  movements, particularly in the Global South, get access to and funding from donors outside their country. We are interested in supporting values-aligned women’s funds that will regrant, support, and enable collaboration across locally rooted, feminist movements striving for systems change to advance women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights.