Faith Voices Advancing Gender Justice
At the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69), Faith to Action Network stood alongside a global coalition of compassionate and courageous religious actors to reaffirm a powerful message: faith and gender equality are not in conflict they are deeply intertwined.
Why We Showed Up
For millennia, religious actors have driven social transformation from delivering health and education services to resolving family law issues and supporting peacebuilding. Today, in a rapidly evolving world, religious actors increasingly engage in national and international policy spaces to promote justice, rights, and dignity for all.
Faith to Action Network, a Southern-led and Southern-owned interfaith platform, brings diverse grassroots perspectives to global forums. At CSW69, we joined our partners to ensure that the lived realities and voices of women and faith leaders from Africa and Asia were heard at the highest levels.
Key Themes We Elevated
Throughout CSW69, our delegation co-hosted and contributed to more than a dozen events. Our contributions spanned issues at the heart of our work:
- Ending child marriage: Highlighting how religious leaders can be allies in changing harmful norms.
- Empowering women of faith: Calling for inclusion and leadership of women within faith spaces and decision-making bodies.
- Interfaith collaboration: Demonstrating how shared values across religions can support gender equality.
- Faith and family law reform: Sharing success stories from Palestine, where theological engagement led to gender-equal family law.
- Humanitarian response: Promoting faith-sensitive approaches to support displaced women.
- Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB): Emphasizing how FoRB and gender justice can and must reinforce each other.
A Unique Approach to Advocacy
Our advocacy and communication efforts at the Commission on the Status of Women were made possible through collaboration, as shown by the many allies and friends we worked with to co-host or contribute to events. We supported these engagements through concept development, communication, facilitation, speaking and moderation roles.
Our strategic alliances in advocacy with our partners including JISRA coalition, UN Multi-Faith Advisory Council, PaRD, and numerous civil society actors, we amplified the voice of our members, increasing diversity of perspectives and opinions, strengthening legitimacy, opening closed doors, increasing influence and reach in global policy spaces.
Through these partnerships, our JISRA delegation brought together 25 participants from Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, UK, and USA. Though some delegates were denied visas, their insights still informed our collective voice. We emphasized intersectionality, intergenerational collaboration, and practical theology to drive progress on Sustainable Development Goal 5 (Gender Equality).
Is it easier to convince people about women’s rights using legal jargon or through the Quran and Bible they already trust? Nagwa Botros, Faith to Action Network, MENA Region Advisor
The work doesn’t end at CSW. Our mission is to continue empowering local faith actors, especially women and youth, to shape just societies. We call on allies’ religious actors, governmental, and multilateral to walk with us in this shared journey of transformation.
Watch interviews with our delegates here Faith Voices: Gender Justice & Leadership at CSW69
