IWD 2026: For a feminist transformation of the financial system

International Women’s Day (IWD2026) calls for action to dismantle all barriers to equal justice for women and girls. The global financial system, built on gender-based inequality and oppression, is one area where civil society organisations are striving for gender justice. Recourse, together with allies around the world, holds international financial institutions accountable for their part in perpetuating gendered inequalities and harms, and pushes them to uphold women’s rights in both policy and practice.

This page provides a snapshot of advocacy work being carried out by civil society organisations in 2026, for a feminist transformation of the financial system.

Why we call for gender justice in the financial system

Gender-based oppression is an inherent aspect of the global financial system, which was built on patriarchy and colonialism, and continues to thrive on the exploitation of people and nature across the global south.

The resulting climate change, environmental destruction, rising sovereign debt and austerity disproportionately affect women and marginalised gender groups – particularly those at the sharp end of poverty. 

When IMF-imposed austerity hits a country, it is women who face the resulting triple burden when care, health and education services are cut – not only do they lose access to essential services and employment, they typically have to pick up the slack in the missing welfare provision.  

When an IFC-backed mega solar park fences in a village, it is women who are forced to walk miles further to collect food and fuel for the family, risking violence while the plant’s energy is sent to faraway cities. When an AIIB-funded fossil gas plant pollutes the air and water, it is women who lose their livelihoods and care for sick community members. 

The international financial institutions (IFIs) that prop up that financial architecture must acknowledge these gendered impacts and uphold the specific rights of women and girls – including rights to a dignified livelihood, a healthy environment, democratic participation, sovereignty and self-determination. 

That’s why, together with partners and feminist allies, Recourse works to put gender at the heart of IFI policies and practices.

Advocating for a feminist financial system 

Organisations like Latindadd, MENA Fem, and WEDO are leading that movement. 

Latindadd (the Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice) looks at the public debt crisis from a feminist economics perspective. They bring critical analysis and counter-narratives to IFI-led public debt instruments (debt sustainability analysis, fiscal rules, credit ratings, and the non-gender neutral use of funds from borrowing).

A transformation of the sovereign debt system would give countries the fiscal and policy space to invest in universal public services as well as climate-resilient development.

The feminist work of FARN is shaped by the deep social, economic and environmental setbacks unfolding in Argentina. Their analysis focuses on how IMF-driven structural reforms, fiscal cuts and deregulatory agendas — including rollbacks of environmental protections such as the Glacier Law — disproportionately impact women and gender-diverse communities. Through research, advocacy and alliance-building, the organisation seeks to resist austerity, expose the gendered impacts of extractivism and adjustment, and help re-build feminist, rights-based alternatives to the current economic model.

The MENA Fem Movement for Economic, Development and Ecological Justice also challenges debt-driven and austerity-based models that shrink public services and entrench gendered inequality, focussing on the Middle East and North Africa region. They work to confront the structural power of IFIs and the global economic system, connecting macroeconomic reform to women’s lived realities across the region – from unpaid care burdens to food, water, and energy insecurity.

This year, through research, organising, and the Rabat Roadmap, MENA Fem are pushing for debt cancellation, tax justice, grant-based climate finance, and democratic global economic governance. They will host an annual Feminist Economics school, an Arab Feminist Economics Circle convening, and a Feminist Alternatives Festival during the World Bank & IMF Annual Meetings in Thailand. 

WEDO (the Women’s Environment and Development Organization) brings the same feminist lens to climate finance, advocating for finance that advances gender equality. These proposals are articulated in its ‘five dimensions of feminist climate finance’ framework. This year, WEDO seeks to influence the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as it updates its Gender Action Plan, in particular relating to gender-transformative impact, accountability and transparency. 

Pushing for accountable and gender-sensitive IFIs

WEDO also brings civil society voices to the boardrooms of the multilateral development banks that partner with the GCF. This serves to protect the rights of project-affected people to equitably benefit from climate action and access redress in the case of harm. 

Recourse and organisations like Accountability Counsel do similar work to support affected communities in claiming their rights to remedy from IFIs. Recourse and local partners are currently supporting complainants in the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Argentina. 

In 2026, Accountability Counsel’s feminist advocacy centres on representing four survivors of child sexual abuse experienced while attending Bridge International Academies in Kenya, in complaints ongoing against the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). Across both processes, they are pressing these institutions to confront the accountability gap at the heart of development finance.

Civil society organisations worldwide are working together to push for stronger safeguards at the IFC as it reviews its globally influential Sustainability Framework this year. Just as we’ve pushed for a bank-wide gender policy at the AIIB and a gender safeguard at the ADB, we are calling for gender-sensitive policies and requirements to be mainstreamed throughout the IFC’s updated framework, so that women’s rights are never sidelined. 

The NGO Forum on ADB monitors whether multilateral development banks are meeting their gender commitments in energy investments – specifically the ADB and AIIB. Despite their stated gender policies, both institutions continue to support coal, gas, waste-to-energy, hydropower, nuclear, and CCUS (carbon capture) projects. Such large-scale developments lock in carbon, degrade ecosystems, and disrupt communities, with women bearing the disproportionate burden.

This year, NGO Forum is watching several MDB-backed energy projects closely, such as the Balakot hydropower project and Jamshoro coal-based thermal power plant in Pakistan, and the Meghnaghat gas facility and Aminbazar waste-to-energy (WTE) project in Bangladesh. These projects have caused local people to lose their land and livelihoods, while high emissions have compromised reproductive and respiratory health. 

Trend Asia is monitoring the proposed expansion of Tangguh LNG in Indonesia too. Since the project began, women have had to bear a double burden, being displaced from their homeland and suffering the destruction of their environment. Recourse joins Trend Asia and dozens of organisations in urging multilateral development banks and Japanese public finance institutions to refrain from backing the expansion plans.

Celebrating women at the forefront of the just transition

Instead, we advocate for a truly just transition towards sustainable, people-centred renewable energy sovereignty, with women as active stakeholders in decisions. 

Watts Up Africa, Don’t Gas Africa, and Africa Finance Watch are raising this demand from the Africa region. In 2026, these campaigns will challenge energy investments that trap women in cycles of unpaid care, energy poverty and disproportional climate change impacts. They will push for clean cooking solutions and decentralised renewables that shift power back to women and their communities. 

In Ghana, SYND (the Strategic Youth Network for Development) advocates for inclusive governance and the meaningful participation of youth and women in the management of Ghana’s natural resources. They employ a dual policy and community based approach, amplifying women’s voices in decision making spaces while strengthening grassroots leadership and accountability. 

SYND has led initiatives engaging the Independent Accountability Mechanisms of the World Bank and the African Development Bank on projects in Ghana. Through this work, they empower young women to understand and effectively use accountability frameworks to seek transparency and redress in large-scale development projects, including energy access initiatives such as Mission 300. 

Pursuing gender justice in climate and development finance has many layers – safeguarding against gendered harms, recognising women as active stakeholders in determining policy priorities, and seeing climate action as more than a way to protect our planet, but as a chance to transform our economies altogether. 

To get there we need more than technical fixes. We need to democratise economic decisions, put rights and care before profit and growth, deconstruct power dynamics, and build financial institutions that help put people in the driving seat of their development.

Banner image: Women’s power in India © RewaImages.com