The Equality Institute

01/06/2026

Across South-East Asia, countries are exploring how efforts to prevent violence against women and girls may be leading to measurable progress at the national level.
Join & the Institute for a regional webinar on Making Progress in Prevention Possible, focused on national-level monitoring of violence prevention.
📅 9 June 2026
⏰ 10:00–11:45 AM (Bangkok time)
📍 Online
🔗 Register: https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0X3NC0

The webinar will strengthen expertise and capacity to monitor national efforts to prevent violence against women and girls, drawing on regional experience.
The event is organized by Women, in collaboration with the Institute, under auspices of the UN Joint Programme (UNJP) on GBV Prevention in Southeast Asia, implemented jointly with , and funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Regional Learning Webinar: “Making Progress in Prevention Possible: Strengthening National-Level Monitoring of Violence Against Women and Girls in Southeast Asia”. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

28/05/2026

Published in partnership with AWID, “Home As Liberation” by Fatima Qureshi is a reflection on grief, belonging, feminism and what it means to build home in a world shaped by borders, violence and displacement.

Writing from their experience as a q***r, first-generation South Asian immigrant with Pakistani-Turkish heritage, Fatima explores home not as a destination, but as something we create through resistance, care and collective struggle.

Fatima is a journalist, essayist and digital storyteller who has spent almost a decade working alongside refugee and asylum seeker communities, Muslim feminist activists and direct action coalitions to tell stories grounded in decolonisation and collective liberation. They are the Digital Communications and Partnerships Lead at AWID – a global feminist movement supporting organisations working to help feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements thrive and challenge systems of oppression.

Click here to read the full piece on Folding Chair
https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0WHKX0

19/05/2026

There is still, on average, a woman killed every week in Australia, and globally, rates of gender-based violence remain deeply concerning.

At times, it can feel overwhelming. But progress is rarely linear. Meaningful cultural change takes time, persistence, and conversations that challenge the status quo.

One point that has stayed with us from 's interview on our digital journal: Prevention work cannot simply focus on awareness, it must focus on better diagnosis.

Where is entitlement being formed?
Where is harm being minimised?
Which forms of masculinity are rewarded, protected, or excused?
And what would it take to change the conditions that make violence imaginable before it becomes inevitable?

As Tarang reminds us, the work ahead is not simply about raising awareness. It’s about asking better questions, understanding how harm is normalised, and changing the conditions that allow violence to persist.

From having conversations about masculinity and power, to the role of race, class, and social conditions in shaping violence, this discussion challenges us to move beyond simplified narratives and engage more honestly with complexity.

Read the full interview via the link in bio

14/05/2026

In his interview for our Prevention is Possible series, reframes what it means to be an 'ally' and outlines how – in the next phase of gender-based violence prevention work – men's allyship must move from being a matter of identity, to being grounded in practice and reflection.

“It means challenging contempt, sexual entitlement, misogynistic humour and the minimisation of controlling behaviour. It means not treating women’s fear as irrational when that fear has been socially produced through repeated experiences of harassment, dismissal and violence.”

Read full interview here : https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0RZZY0

12/05/2026

"The challenge is to hold both truths at once: boys and men are shaped by gender norms that can harm them, but they are also positioned within gender relations that can give them power over women. Prevention has to be able to speak to men’s humanity without recentring men’s hurt as the primary problem to be solved."

In the latest interview in our Prevention is Possible series, award-winning speaker, writer, and anti-family violence advocate, Tarang Chawla, articulates why misogynistic online content sticks (without reducing boys and men to caricatures), frames how responsible allyship must move from identity to practice and reflection, critiques mainstream gender violence discourse in a nuanced and thoughtful way (without dismissing feminism), and shifts the conversation from individual morality, toward systems, material conditions and social context.

Tarang is the co-founder of Not One More Niki – a grassroots non-profit working to end men’s violence against women – and he serves as Commissioner as the Victorian Multicultural Commission, where he works to bring the voices and lived experiences of culturally diverse people to policymakers. Throughout this conversation, he shares realisations and conversations that have changed the direction and depth of his work over the years, and speaks about the intellectual honesty that will be required for this next phase of violence prevention work.

Read the interview now, over on our digital journal, Folding Chair: https://www.equalityinstitute.org/prevention-is-possible-with-tarang/

08/05/2026

In the face of rising gender essentialism and rollbacks to reproductive feedoms, refusing the interpretation of childbearing and caregiving as duties we're obligated to perform, matters.

This Mother's Day, let's reframe: Motherhood is, and should always be, a choice.

That very first choice in the queue – whether or not to become a mother at all – is vital. It's a choice everyone deserves to make for themselves. But the next choice, and the next choice, and the next one, are vital too – each made inside a long series of choices that can feel relentlessly overwhelming to traverse.

Within the context of modern day patriarchy and the proliferation of misogyny we're witnessing globally, motherhood can also become a form of activism.

There's a long history of mothers using their choice to create change, often (though not always) in service of social progress, public health, peace, and human rights. Motherhood as grassroots activism. Petitioning, protesting, boycotting, and advocating, to better the lives of children, families and communities.

Of course, there are intersections of privilege and power that can be used for better or worse, and mothers get it wrong, too. Intentionally or accidentally, they can cause harm and be active participants in enforcing systems designed to remove or abuse safety, agency and autonomy.

Even through this, the importance of having the freedom to choose remains. By actively choosing motherhood (or not) we rewrite the expectations imposed on us by a patriarchal past and present, and open up the possibility of a feminist future.

This Mother's Day, we're celebrating the power of choice, and motherhood as activism.

08/05/2026

Amidst ongoing global conflict, genocide and oppression, this compelling reminder of the responsibility of artists and creatives to make meaningful work, is as timely as ever, from our September 2025 conversation with Randa Abdel-Fattah:

'At a time of intense censorship and repression, the duty of artists to resist, raise the ceiling, and make defiant, subversive art, is greater.'

You can read the full interview at: https://www.equalityinstitute.org/art-is-inherently-rebellious-a-conversation-with-randa-abdel-fattah/

30/04/2026

This week, our team was fortunate to attend Women Deliver 2026, in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia, for five days of connecting, listening, learning (and scheming) with our feminist partners and co-conspirators from all around the globe.

In a time of poly-crises, coordinated backlash, and significant funding cuts, it has been reinvigorating and inspiring to share space and stand in solidarity with those fighting for gender justice, climate justice, decolonial approaches, and inclusion.

And for us at EQI, it has been extra special that this global conference is hosted by the Oceania region, under the leadership of Pacific and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

Throughout the conference, we had the immense privilege to witness, and co-host, events both powerful and vital, including the pre-conference session, 'Resourcing the Global Movement' (check out our previous post!) and last night's, 'Stories That Shift Power & Culture' – centring arts and storytelling in the movement, and making space for hope and imagination.

Thank you to Women Deliver and all of our partners for a truly incomparable conference experience!

28/04/2026

Running in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia this week, with thousands attending from around the world, the 2026 Conference centres the leadership, knowledge, and resistance of feminists, activists, and First Nations leaders across the Oceanic Pacific, a region at the forefront of climate justice, gender equality, and decolonisation.

On Sunday, we co-hosted 's pre-conference session, ‘Resourcing the Global Movement,’ alongside , , , and – to shine a light on sexual and gender-based violence.

Gathering together 350 activists, funders, and stakeholders for a day-long convening on resourcing and expanding the global movement to end sexual and gender-based violence, we came away feeling galvanised.

With hundreds of sessions running over the course of the conference, we can't wait to share our highlights from the week with you.

And, if you're at this week, come and say hi!

You'll find us at booth E18, right next to the Climate & Gender Hub.

23/04/2026

St. Croix is among the smallest islands in the Caribbean, a thin strip of land that unspools like thread into the fluorescent turquoise sea. It is 500 times smaller than Cuba and 42 times smaller than Puerto Rico. Despite this diminutive size, St. Croix was the fourth-largest sugar-producing island in the Caribbean during the 19th century.

By 1820, Danish colonisers had clear-cut many of the old-growth forests that had blanketed the island, replacing them with more than 200 sugar plantations that relied on the labor of enslaved Africans. To produce such enormous sugar outputs, Danish colonisers maintained a regime of terror and brutality, forcing enslaved people to work without breaks in the sweltering heat, harvesting, cutting, and processing the spike-covered sugar plant.

The Critical Ecology Lab () is an environmental start-up and people’s think tank attempting to map these centuries of injustice through The Ecological Scars of Plantation Slavery initiative – a visionary research project, which seeks to reveal how hundreds of years of violence against both enslaved people and the Earth has diminished the ability of St. Croix to respond to the climate crisis today.

On our digital journal Folding Chair, award-winning journalist Colleen Hamilton () speaks with Critical Ecology Lab founder, Dr. Suzanne Pierre, about the ways leading this independent research has offered the opportunity to tell a different story, rooted in the lived experience of colonised people whose experiences were often invalidated or ignored.

Read, Unearthing Climate Colonialism on St. Croix, over on Folding Chair at the link in bio.

Words by Colleen Hamilton. Photos by Sophia Ramirez.