Coalition and Co‑Creation Approach with Women’s Rights Organizations
This brief draws on evidence and learning from across the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa (SCIA) portfolio to examine how coalition-building and co-creation with WROs have worked in practice, highlight the value these partnerships can bring, and distill practical lessons for designing future coalition-based initiatives and equitable partnerships.
Efforts to recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work are fundamentally linked to gender equality. Women’s rights organizations (WROs) bring expertise in gender equality and women’s economic rights, as well as knowledge of women’s lived realities, relationships with communities, and experience translating these priorities into advocacy and policy engagement. Meaningfully involving WROs in care initiatives can therefore help ensure that research, policies, and programs respond to women’s priorities and address the gender inequalities that shape unpaid care work.
The Scaling Care Innovations in Africa (SCIA) program, co-funded by the International Development Research Centre and Global Affairs Canada, was designed with WRO participation as a core feature of its approach. Partnership with a WRO was a mandatory requirement under the SCIA call for proposals, ensuring that WROs were embedded in every project coalition from the outset. Across its 19 projects in 15 countries, these coalitions brought together WROs, research organizations, governments, and other actors to combine complementary expertise and connect evidence, implementation, and advocacy. The SCIA program also invested dedicated resources in co-creation, enabling coalition partners to jointly refine projects, clarify roles, and build shared ownership before implementation.
This brief draws on evidence and learning from across the SCIA portfolio to examine how coalition-building and co-creation with WROs have worked in practice, highlight the value these partnerships can bring, and distill practical lessons for designing future coalition-based initiatives and equitable partnerships. Experience across the SCIA portfolio demonstrates both the value of this approach and the importance of how WRO participation is structured in practice. Including a WRO as a coalition partner does not automatically result in meaningful participation or equitable partnership: governance arrangements, decision-making power, resources, role clarity, and relationships all shape how effectively coalitions operate.