Funding Leadership Opportunities for Women (FLOW 2) was a grant instrument of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), providing funding opportunities to civil society organisations (CSOs). It ran from 2016–2020 and invested a total of Euro 93 million to support CSOs to contribute to sustainable improvement in women’s rights and opportunities. To achieve this, the programme aimed to kick-start structural transformation in gender relations in institutions at the levels of the household, community, economy and governance, and to work towards a better enabling environment of standards, laws and policies.
The core model of the programme was one in which direct partners or consortia provided funding and/or capacity-strengthening support to national and subnational level nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and CSOs to implement programmes in the three focus areas of combating violence against women (CVAW), participation by women in politics and public administration (PWPPA) and women’s economic participation and self-reliance (WEPSR). The evaluation covered the full scope of the ten programmes under FLOW 2 and included two in-depth country case studies in Kenya and Lebanon. The evaluation took an overall gender responsive and explicitly feminist approach, centralising an examination of the issues of power at the core of gender inequalities. In its analysis and interpretation of data it focussed on an understanding of women’s rights and structural gender relations, and prioritised questions that can advance knowledge on how to progress gender equality and women’s empowerment.
