Advancing Gender Equality Through Transnational Solidarity at WD2026
By Gretchen Gasteier, Women Deliver’s Director for Convenings, and Louisa Wall, Women Deliver’s Oceanic Pacific Mobilization Advisor for WD2026.
Women Deliver 2026 will take place on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung as the Traditional Owners of the Birrarung Yarra River Valley and Melbourne’s central business district, and honor their enduring custodianship of land, waters, culture, and community. We recognize their leadership and partnership as co-hosts of WD2026.
This International Women’s Day, under the theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls,” we are reminded of what this moment demands: coming together across borders to challenge the systems that stand in the way of equal rights and justice — especially at a time when hard-won rights are under coordinated attack.
Around the world, we are witnessing the rise of fascist and far-right forces. The backlash against bodily autonomy and gender justice has intensified, civic space continues to narrow, and institutions once seen as safeguards now feel increasingly fragile. This moment does not call for incremental reform. It requires shifting power and resources, strengthening political accountability, and ensuring institutions deliver.
It also requires practicing solidarity rooted in gender equality — placing decision-making in the hands of national leaders, domestic civil society, and girls, women, and gender-diverse people from the Global Majority. At Women Deliver, this principle of collaboration guides our response to the overlapping global crises we face.
But what do we mean by solidarity? Some scholars have described it as working across borders grounded in care and trust, forging allyship to demand equal rights and justice.
Collective action rooted in solidarity recognizes a shared responsibility for one another’s lives, particularly when conventional pathways for justice and rights have been blocked. It’s not symbolic unity or tokenistic inclusion, but a political practice enacted through policy choices, resource allocation, and accountability.
Across borders, this takes the form of transnational solidarity: shared struggle and collective agenda-setting that centers the leadership and knowledge of communities most affected by gender inequality across the Global Majority. To be meaningful, it must challenge unequal power, reflect different lived realities, share leadership across regions, and include the voices of all who identify as girls and women — unequivocally including trans and nonbinary people, and other gender-diverse individuals.
If solidarity is a political practice, then it must be enacted. This International Women’s Day, we reaffirm our commitment to putting that solidarity into action at the Women Deliver 2026 Conference (WD2026), where shared strategy must translate not just into commitments made in the moment, but into measurable outcomes.
Enacting Solidarity Across Borders: The Women Deliver Conferences
Women Deliver Conferences have long turned transnational solidarity into action. Since 2007, we have convened more than 30,000 advocates, decision-makers, and movement leaders from over 170 countries, helping shape international agendas and drive real-world impact. That impact is tangible: placing maternal health firmly on the global development agenda in 2007; mobilizing over $1 billion in gender equity investments in 2019; and, in 2023, contributing to the Kigali Call to Action, uniting governments, multilateral institutions, and feminist movements to advance bodily autonomy and reproductive rights by 2030, with women-led organizations at the center.
From April 27–30 in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia, WD2026 will build on this legacy of cross-border action — advancing it through a regional hosting model that centers inclusive leadership, strengthens regional coordination, and amplifies high-level advocacy across the Oceanic Pacific. Hosting on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country underscores that transnational solidarity must be grounded in First Nations Indigenous sovereignty, local leadership, and respect for Traditional Custodians, while creating space for Pacific Island states and territories to shape global gender equality agendas as equal political actors.
Central to this model is the WD2026 Global Coordination Group (CG) brings together partners from civil society, governments, multilateral agencies, youth-led movements, philanthropy, and the private sector. Together, they shape the Conference’s direction and priorities and mobilize wider networks to ensure broad, representative participation.
WD2026’s co-creation model centers the local to shape the global. WD2026 will center regional priorities and local leadership, recognizing that the histories of resistance led by First Nations communities offer valuable lessons for movements worldwide. The knowledge carried by generations of leaders and activists in the region will shape the Conference itself and the commitments we carry forward long after we’ve returned home.
Shaping a Shared Roadmap
Transnational solidarity is reflected not only in how WD2026 is organized, but in the commitments and institutional shifts it seeks to advance. Over the past five months, Feminist Playbook consultations have brought together voices across continents, movements, and sectors. A consistent message has emerged: progress depends on strengthening national leadership, clarifying responsibility, and ensuring governments fulfill their human rights obligations — which, in the Oceanic Pacific context, means advancing climate justice and sustainable ocean governance as central to gender equality, given the disproportionate impacts of climate change on women, girls, and gender-diverse communities across Small Island Developing States.
Furthermore, participants emphasized that international solidarity must reinforce — not override — domestic priorities. Financial and decision-making power should not remain concentrated among a small group of governments, philanthropic funders, and multilateral institutions from the Global Minority. Instead, resources must reinforce nationally defined priorities, safeguard civic space, and meaningfully resource and protect domestic civil society so they can hold governments accountable and shape public policy.
In practice, this means:
- Affirming states’ binding obligations under international law to uphold human rights and deliver essential services.
- Protecting and resourcing domestic civil society to hold governments accountable on behalf of their constituents, such as girls, women, and gender-diverse people.
- Aligning international financing and influence with nationally defined priorities.
- Ensuring that those most affected shape policy design, implementation, and oversight.
WD2026 and Beyond
The Feminist Playbook will come to life at the Women Deliver 2026 Conference, where it will be debated, refined, and formally adopted as a shared expression of our collective principles and direction. Emerging from months of global consultations and dialogue, the Playbook will guide our shared commitments beyond the Conference.
This International Women’s Day, we rally not only for equal rights and justice, but for the cross-border partnerships that make that sustained effort possible. WD2026 marks a milestone in building that solidarity in action — moving us toward liberation rooted in courage and hope, and toward systems grounded in care and accountability.
Hosting in Narrm creates new opportunities for leaders across the Oceanic Pacific to shape global agendas from their own contexts. But solidarity does not end within conference walls. It lives in the partnerships we sustain and the accountability we uphold long after April 2026. Join us as we carry this work forward.
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