Women’s voluntary and community organisations are a cornerstone for sustainable and stable communities, and are crucial to the advancement of equality and women’s rights.

Despite the advances made, there is ample evidence that women in the UK continue to experience widespread discrimination, inequality and social exclusion. Issues of importance to women are often absent in social, economic or political agendas at local, regional and national levels.

As a result, women’s voluntary and community organisations are often excluded from decision-making and find it difficult to access charitable, statutory and corporate sources of funding, fuelling a worsening funding crisis across the sector as a whole. This highlights the importance of WRC’s role in supporting women’s organisations through:

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Ensuring women's voluntary and community organisations have the necessary skills and information to sustain and develop their organisations and services.

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Enabling partnership working between women's organisations.

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Gathering evidence to make a robust case for the sustainability of the women's sector.

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Engaging with decision-makers at all levels to ensure issues relevant to the women's sector and their service users are taken into account.

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Influencing funders and decision-makers to ensure that the women's sector has fair access to sustainable funding.

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Providing voice and leadership for the women's sector. 

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Our achievements over the last five years include:

• Securing a £4,000,000 investment from the Mayor of London for women and girls in London at greater risk of violence and abuse due to the cost-of-living crisis. This was a result of our strategic advocacy in coordination with the 2nd Tier CEO Group. 
• Launching a petition on behalf of the women's sector asking for a specialist fund for women as part of our Speaking Up for Women campaign. Currently we have over 1000 signatures. 
• Partnering with the London Mayor's office through the GLA to host the Mayor's first ever Women's Policy Summit, which featured on London TV regional news. 
• Organising conferences, training and other events, attracting over 400 people over the last year. 
• Hosting a national women's sector leadership conference attended by 138 women from the sector and wider women's rights movement. 
• Publishing research on women's voluntary and community organisations, the funding going into the sector, the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and COVID-19 on women and women's organisations in the UK, as well as on how the family courts system is working for women, amongst other things. 
• Continuously working to co-ordinate and sustain the London VAWG Consortium; the first ever specialist entity made up of 27 violence against women and girls organisations. Since its inception, the Consortium has delivered £32.6 million of services to over 25,000 women and girls each year. 
• Continuing to lead the CEDAW shadow reporting process for which we were commended by a committee member at the last examination in Geneva. 
• Continuing to lead on leadership in the sector through our Feminist Leadership Training and Network for Black Women Leaders programmes. 
• Launching our online shop of independent women sellers.
• Working with MOPAC on updating and strengthening their vetting code of practice for police office, resulting in new disciplinary measures being brought in to make it easier to dismiss police officers who fail vetting and are found guilty of misconduct. 

More about the difference we make