Announcing our Feminist Advisory Group

At the International Budget Partnership, we are pleased to announce today the launch of a Feminist Advisory Group to strengthen our focus and fortify our understanding of gender and intersectionality as we formulate our in-country and organizational strategies.

Members include distinguished feminists from the Global South with strong expertise in fiscal policy. They will help us to interrogate our practices and apply an intersectional lens to better understand how fiscal policies and systems are experienced by communities that are marginalized in differentiated ways.

The Feminist Advisory Group includes:

Jennifer Grant, IBP – Co-chair

Priyanka Samy, India – Co-chair

Awa Penda Ndiaye, Senegal

Crystal Simeoni, Kenya

Lebohang Liepollo Pheko, South Africa

Lyn Ossome, Kenya

Sandra Hamid, Indonesia

Jennifer Grant, our Director of International Programs and international human rights specialist, will co-chair the group with Priyanka Samy, an experienced Dalit feminist from India who will also serve as our coach on gender and intersectionality. Focal points in each country office (Nigeria, Senegal, Indonesia, and South Africa) will also help integrate this approach in our country programs and build our organizational capacity over the long-term.

“The Feminist Advisory Group will help us leverage feminist theory and practice as a powerful tool to achieve systems-change across our programs and policies,” said Grant. “Our hope is that they will serve as a catalyst for profound transformation, ensuring that decisions we take not only include a feminist perspective, but are driven by it. We have a lot of learning to do, and we are here to be challenged, to change, and ultimately, to champion a future where systems work equitably for everyone.”

(Press CC to view subtitles in English)

Our Board Chair Sofía Sprechmann Sineiro, Secretary General at CARE International, and a lifelong champion for gender equity, called the Feminist Advisory Group a crucial step toward weaving gender parity into the very fabric of IBP’s work:

“I am thrilled to see IBP take this step forward to learn from these inspiring fiscal feminists about what it will take to make public resources work for everyone, including women and other people who are historically excluded. I cannot wait to see how their contributions enrich the organization’s thinking and understanding of how public resource systems need to be transformed to ensure they deliver for all.”

Samy has extensive experience engaging with the feminist and social justice movements in India and advancing historically marginalized women’s agency, voice and leadership at the grassroots. She highlighted the following:

“With this move, IBP has demonstrated it is intentional about strengthening its ongoing efforts to mainstream gender and intersectionality in all of its policies and programs. It underscores a deep understanding that true systems-change, aimed at dismantling persistent barriers to gender equality requires more than surface-level actions. It demands a foundational shift and an in-depth reimagining of our approach to program design and strategy implementation. This is a pioneering moment for the organization, and I look forward to this transformative journey.”

The group will formally complete the first phase of its analysis by July 2024, at which point we will seek to integrate their insights into a roadmap for our work long-term.

Announcing our Feminist Advisory Group

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