Rights, shares and claims: realising women’s rights in South Asia, working paper: resource mapping for women’s human rights work in India

"Leading activists, researchers and feminist scholars working on women's rights in India are of the view that resources for women's rights work are on the wane. One of the obvious reasons is the withdrawal of funds by progressive donors, as well as the re-positioning of portfolios by several donors. Many new donors have also captured women's rights within a very narrow and limited definition of violence against women, HIV or trafficking etc., with women's rights being reduced to a small piece within the larger gamut of human rights work, making the struggle for funds more difficult. Findings from the survey reveal that the issues for which funding is most difficult to obtain are infrastructure, salaries, Violence Against Women, capacity building of women's groups, equipment, administrative costs, and honorariums.