Looming cuts! Feminist centers call for transparency and financial security in the budget

Space2groW
18 hours ago
2 min read

Looming cuts! Feminist centers are calling for transparency and financial security in the Berlin Senate Administration’s budget.

2024/25 Draft Budget:

In the new draft budget of the Berlin Senate Department for Labor, Social Affairs, Gender Equality, Integration, Diversity, and Anti-Discrimination, feminist centers are no longer listed individually as they were previously, but rather under the umbrella category “Women’s centers with special objectives, Women’s Organizations, and Empowerment Projects.”This creates enormous uncertainty for individual projects, as there is no longer any transparency, and project organizers do not know what budgets they can plan and work with, or whether their funding will be reduced or cut entirely.

This is because the relevant budget is short by approximately 840,000 euros, which amounts to cuts of about 20 percent.

These cuts render the projects unable to function, as their work can no longer be carried out.

Feminist centers and empowerment projects have been calling for urgently needed funding increases—amounting to an additional 5.5 million euros—for years.

“The work of feminist projects is an essential component of implementing the Istanbul Convention. Cutting funding for feminist centers and projects means incurring many times the resulting costs elsewhere, since we carry out indispensable—and, at best, intersectional—awareness-raising, educational, counseling, empowerment, and other preventive work in line with the Istanbul Convention!”

The BFN's Working Group of Feminist Centers has announced further protests against the lack of transparency in the draft budget and against the planned cuts.

Under the slogan “Securing Funding for Feminist Projects,” they were able to successfully prevent massive budget cuts and the cancellation of projects as early as 2021.

#femprojektesichern

Sign Projects

Begine - Treffpunkt und Kultur für Frauen e.V.[http://www.begine.de/]

EWA e.V. Frauenzentrum[http://www.ewa-frauenzentrum.de/]

FFBIZ - Das feministische Archiv[http://www.ffbiz.de/]

Frauenkreise / Space2groW

Frauenzentrum Mathilde e.V.[http://www.frauenzentrum-matilde.de/]

Frauenzentrum Paula Panke e.V.[http://www.paula-panke.de/]

Frauenzentrum Schokofabrik e.V.[http://www.schokofabrik.de/]

Frau und Beruf e.V.[http://www.frauundberuf-berlin.de/]

FRIEDA-Frauenzentrum e.V.[http://www.frieda-frauenzentrum.de/]

HYDRA e.V. Treffpunkt und Beratung für Prostituierte[https://www.hydra-berlin.de/impressum]