Why aren’t we funding women?
Funding priorities don’t just tell us what we care about. They also show what falls through the gaps.
Late last year, Fundsorter reviewed nearly 2,000 contestable grant opportunities across 37 broad categories and published a snapshot of what funders explicitly prioritise across the motu (you can see the live data here). One result stood out: less than 1% of funds specifically mentioned family or sexual violence. This is not a rounding error. It’s a signal that some of our most persistent harms are still not named in funding criteria.
And the harms are persistent. In Aotearoa New Zealand, around one in three women experience sexual assault in their lifetime, and around one in three women experience physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner. It is widely under-reported, with only 8% of incidents reported to Police. The economic costs are substantial: BERL estimated the total cost of sexual violence in 2020 at $6.9 billion.
At the same time, the context for women’s economic security keeps shifting. The national gender pay gap (based on median hourly earnings) fell to 5.2% in the June 2025 quarter, down from 8.2% a year earlier. But in 2025, the Equal Pay Amendment Act changed the pay equity claims process and discontinued current claims, surfacing debate about how progress is protected and measured.
Clare Foundation and Fundsorter are now partnering to understand how (and whether) funding for women and girls is prioritised in Aotearoa, how explicitly that happens, and what motivates or discourages funders from investing in this kaupapa. We want to understand the stories, barriers and assumptions that underpin the data. Our definition of “women and girls” is intentionally inclusive of trans and gender diverse people.
If you work in any kind of grant-making organisation, in any role, please take our shortsurvey. It should take a few minutes:
No identifying details are collected unless you choose to opt in to follow-up. The findings will feed into a public, practice-oriented report due for release in 2026.