“Funding is critical to advance women’s health. We cannot move the needle on women’s health without money. Men must also be involved in that conversation in an equal way”.

A paucity of funding from private and government sources would be much less a problem if billions of dollars each year were not funding feminist perspectives on men. This funding leads to Women’s Studies without Men’s Studies; to studies about deadbeat dads, but not dead broke or dead-ended dads -- or moms who deny dads access to children, or make false accusations to obtain children.

We decided that in order to shift the power and to put resources in the hands of young feminists, we would need to turn the traditional funding model on its head. This meant that we would need to make space for feminist perspectives, methodologies, ideas and demands—as well as for our physical selves—in the philanthropic world.

If we have integrity about our desire to support men to express feelings, every institution and attitude between the sexes will require questioning and adjusting.

We had affirmative action programs to help women help themselves economically. Is it now time for affirmative action programs to do for men’s feelings what the government did for women’s economics?

No, not of the total budget. I mean, what is allocated to education in previous years, we have to add more to this. There was an increase, a large increase, to what is allocated to education. That has helped us in doing most of these things. But nevertheless, funding is still a challenge to us. Even with the increase, it is still very difficult for us to provide all those things we wanted. As a result of that we said, "we can't just fold our arms and say by the time we utilize what we have-." Let's find other ways of getting funding, because it is the greatest challenge. If you want quality things-you want the best things-it costs money.

Both men and women must step-up their efforts for equality, build on the foundation that has already been established, make the required investments, develop partnerships with the corporate sector and civil society, and hold individuals responsible for their actions.

When it comes to our work, funding! With more funds, we can do more.

The engagement of men and boys for gender equality and women’s rights promotion is really fundamental and needed. We need men to challenge gender stereotypes, to share equitably in family and household responsibilities, to be positive role models in their communities and their families.

We need to fund relationship language in our schools so that future parents will know how to communicate about whether they want children; to communicate with the children they have, and teach their children how to communicate with the world. Technical progress without social skills is a Tower of Babel.

What is needed is political will—men and women who are sensitive to and committed to promoting gender equality for the overall benefit of society."

community organizations, institutions, that have been doing this work in the city for many, many years, they need to be funded. They need to have—they need capacity to staff up and to start doing the kind of work, because they have the trust and because they have the experience and because they are here, they are local.

For any development to take place, there has to be gender equity.

I suggest the need for higher institutions to develop a pragmatic policy of accessing funds set ‎aside for the development of academic and non-academic staff.