3 questions to Lucie Daniel, Advocacy and Research Manager at Equipop, member of the Women 7 secretariat

Interview with Lucie Daniel, Advocacy and Research Manager at Equipop, member of the Women 7 secretariat

Focus 2030: Since 2017, Women 7 has been acting as the official engagement group for the G7, bringing together feminist organizations to formulate recommendations for heads of state and government. How is the W7 that you coordinate structured, and what are its methods of action under the current presidency?

Lucie Daniel: During France’s last presidency of the G7 in 2019, collective mobilization paid off, pushing France toward feminist diplomacy and the creation of a fund to support feminist organizations. This fund (FSOF), now managed by the AFD, has since provided financial support to nearly 1,500 associations around the world that have spearheaded collective mobilization, accompanied legislative changes, and deployed significant, even vital, actions around the world: prevention of gender-based and sexual violence, access to justice, and the fight against climate change.

This year, as France takes over the presidency of the G7, feminist mobilization is back! 260 organizations from more than 60 countries have joined the W7 2026. All G7 countries are represented, and more than half of the members are from countries in the Global South, demonstrating the strong desire of international feminist civil society to make its voice heard. The collective is coordinated by Equipop, CARE France, Le Planning Familial, PLAN International France, and the Fund for Women in the Mediterranean.

Despite the absence of a dedicated Gender track this year, several entry points have been identified to advance the W7’s demands. Backlash, masculinism, and the funding of feminist associations are among the areas that will structure the W7’s work. Other topics will also be addressed, such as the links between Gender and Climate Justice or Women, Peace, and Security issues. The aim is both to secure commitments to women’s rights and gender equality, and to promote and adopt feminist approaches, which are essential to addressing the challenges facing the international community today. To this end, the W7 is developing collective advocacy actions, participating in G7 meetings (ministerial meetings, sherpas, etc.) and using various events or processes directly or indirectly linked to the French G7 presidency (Commission on the Status of Women, One Health Summit, Paris Peace Forum, etc.).

For its 2027 presidency, France has chosen the theme of major “global imbalances.” For decades, feminist activists and researchers have developed analytical frameworks and solutions to address these imbalances, highlighting, for example, the links between a masculinist culture, the rise of the far right and populism, the brutalization of international relations, and geopolitical crises.

Above all, the W7 points to a major factor of imbalance that must not be overlooked: the backlash against the rights of girls, women, and LGBTQIA+ people. This organized, planned, and well-funded phenomenon is supported by anti-rights movements and conservative political parties, with the complicity of part of the private sector and Big Tech. This trend, beyond its impact on women’s rights and gender equality, is a major democratic warning sign. This is the main message of the W7 in its Declaration, which will be made public in March and shared, in particular, with Emmanuel Macron.

Finally, the G7 is a time for high-level political meetings, which exposes heads of state. For the W7, it will therefore also be a matter of reminding them of their various commitments to gender equality, mobilizing the media, and informing the general public about these issues.

Focus 2030: The G7 countries account for a major share of international funding for gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and more broadly, development policies. In 2022-2023, they allocated US$6.2 billion in bilateral ODA to gender equality as a primary objective (4.0% of their bilateral ODA) and US$66.4 billion when gender equality was a significant objective (42.6%). In this context, what is the concrete impact of the decline in ODA from G7 countries on women’s rights, particularly in terms of sexual and reproductive health and rights, and on feminist organizations?

Lucie Daniel: Women’s rights, and the feminist organizations that defend them, are under attack from all sides. This is nothing new, but the backlash we are facing today is unprecedented in several respects, in terms of its speed, brutality, and scale. The Trump administration’s measures have sent shockwaves around the world. The dismantling of USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, and the extension of the Global Gag Rule have had serious consequences for women’s rights and health. To understand the extent of these consequences, it is important to note that the United States has been the largest contributor to many UN agencies, such as the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which work to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of women and girls around the world. Diplomatic offensives against gender equality have also intensified at the UN and have been the first step in a broader agenda against multilateralism and international law.

In this particularly hostile context, feminist associations are facing further cuts in funding from European donors. European institutions and many member states, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, and France, have significantly cut their official development assistance budgets. These cuts deprive women of access to essential care, such as treatment for sexual violence or access to abortion.

In addition to women’s rights, our democracies are at stake. Wherever civil society organizations, particularly feminist associations, are attacked or weakened, civic space closes, countervailing powers recede, and authoritarian regimes thrive.

Focus 2030: In a context marked by setbacks in gender equality and women’s rights in several G7 countries, and even openly hostile positions, particularly in the United States, what is the W7’s position? To what extent is gender equality taken into account by the G7? What are its priorities and recommendations this year, and what lessons have you learned from previous G7 summits in terms of progress towards gender equality?

Lucie Daniel: The G7 has always been an ambivalent decision-making forum. On the one hand, its legitimacy is questionable compared to UN forums. On the other hand, it is a forum where gender equality initiatives have emerged, such as the creation of the “Biarritz Partnership” or the creation of the FOSF, mentioned above.

Today, there is an added layer of complexity: recent policies in some G7 member states are seriously undermining gender equality, human rights, multilateralism, and democratic principles. Ignoring this reactionary offensive will not make it go away; on the contrary, it will become more deeply and permanently entrenched, further exacerbating “global imbalances.”

According to the W7, the minimum objective is to leave no room for backsliding within the G7. It should also be noted that the 5th Conference of Feminist and Gender Equality Diplomacy will be held in Madrid ten days before the G7 summit. Germany, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom, representing the majority of G7 members, signed the political declaration of the 4th conference in Paris in October 2025.

The French presidency of the G7 must therefore be a moment of important clarification. States that turn a blind eye to the backlash must break their silence, and those that have committed to fighting it must demonstrate their commitment by redoubling their efforts. In both cases, the W7 calls on these states to pursue four uncompromising priorities before the US presidency takes over in 2027:

• Affirm that the backlash against the rights of women and girls in all their diversity, as well as LGBTQIA+ communities more broadly, creates a major global imbalance for democracies.
• Explicitly recognize the fundamental role of civil society organizations, particularly feminist associations and civil society, in responding to global imbalances and defending democracy.
• Make the political choice to direct substantial public financial resources towards supporting these associations at a time when such funding is at an all-time low. In concrete terms, this means providing direct, flexible, multi-year financial resources to feminist organizations in G7 countries and beyond, particularly local groups led by the Global South. It also means mobilizing private foundations, businesses, and financial institutions, which can be powerful actors in financing gender equality and associations.
• Use the driving force of states to bring together and amplify the mobilization of various actors (other institutions, civil society, public opinion and the media, the private sector).

It is often in places of power, and especially those where feminists are not expected, that their presence and action are crucial to ensure, at the very least, that decisions taken do not harm women, or even to turn the tables. In 2019, the creation of broad alliances between organizations from the international solidarity movement, the feminist ecosystem, researchers, and journalists was an important lever for success. By influencing the institutional process itself, but also on the sidelines through the #FeministCount campaign, the W7 managed to shift the lines, despite the very restrictive framework of the G7.

This year, the context is even more difficult, of course. That is why mobilization must be all the stronger, and why the call to join the W7 this year is particularly broad: all organizations that wish to do so can join the movement by signing this call.