In association with Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF)
Global progress on gender equality and wider equalities is at risk of reversal at the same time as the development finance landscape is undergoing rapid transformation. Participants examined how shifts towards private capital mobilisation, new instruments, and domestic financing agendas create both opportunities and risks for gender equality, disability inclusion and LGBT+ rights.
A central conclusion was that the primary constraint is not a lack of financial instruments, but misaligned incentives, weak accountability and incomplete ecosystem infrastructure. Finance was repeatedly described as a system of power. Who decides, whose knowledge counts, and how risk and return are defined were seen as important as the volume of capital deployed.
Participants strongly converged around the need for a clearer collective narrative for gender and equalities that is simple, resonant and grounded in economic and societal values, supported by tailored sub narratives for governments, investors, development finance institutions and philanthropy. Developing shared language around social materiality was seen as critical to enabling both public and private actors to act.
There was broad agreement that public finance remains essential for scale, while private capital can play a complementary role where incentives and accountability are aligned. Innovative finance should complement, but cannot replace, declining official development assistance, particularly for rights-based work, movements and democracy building.
Discussions on gender-based violence (GBV) and violence against children (VAC) acted as a system-wide stress test. Participants emphasised the need to reframe prevention and response as material social, economic and security priorities while maintaining rights-based principles and retaining specificity, including the gendered and intersecting nature of violence.
Across the three days, participants identified a small set of practical priorities for the period ahead. These included strengthening the enabling environment that shapes how capital moves (standards, incentives, disclosure, taxonomies and public financial management), strengthening movement infrastructure and intermediaries, and building the translation capacity required to make equality legible in the languages used by finance ministries, DFIs, MDBs, investors, and corporate decision-makers.
Introduction and conference context
The conference brought together governments, philanthropy, investors, civil society, and multilateral institutions to explore how evolving financing systems can better advance gender equality, disability inclusion and LGBT+ rights.
Discussions were structured around two cross-cutting themes to drive more equitable outcomes:
- Structures, systems and political economy
- Emerging instruments and ways of working
- And two focus areas:
- Financing the reduction of gender-based violence
- Sustainable financing of women’s rights, disability and LGBT+ movements
The aim was not to promote a single model or instrument, but to surface practical lessons, tensions and entry points for collaboration across the ecosystem. Participants repeatedly returned to the need for clarity on objectives. Some approaches are designed to mobilise additional capital, while others are designed to make existing spend more effective, improve accountability, or change the rules and incentives that shape decisions. A shared challenge identified throughout was that these objectives are often conflated, creating confusion and weakening strategic impact.
The conference deliberately combined system-level discussions with concrete case studies to anchor learning. The four breakout case studies explored were: Gender-Responsive Budgeting and Fiscal Governance (International Budget Partnership), Ending Violence Against Children, the Skill Impact Bond, and the Equality Fund.