Women Gaining Ground (WGG) is a five-year project led by CREA, IWRAW Asia Pacific, and Akili Dada, with support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project started in 2021 with the aim to eliminate sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) while advancing women’s leadership and political participation. It places particular focus on young women, women with disabilities, and those from socially excluded communities, ensuring their voices are strengthened and represented in decision-making spaces.
Now in its final year in 2025, the 20 youth-led groups of WGG across Bangladesh, have continued their work based on the issues that they identified earlier in the project . These groups include young people from indigenous communities, ethnic and religious minorities, climate-affected areas, gender-diverse groups, rural and urban young women, and women with disabilities. After being capacitated in political awareness and participation, and feminist transformative leadership to eliminate SGBV, these young leaders carried out small research activities in their own communities and used the findings to shape their advocacy.
Throughout the year, the young leaders have been working on a range of issues: the effects of eco-tourism in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, access to SRHR information in Dalit Community, everyday SGBV related to the gaps in marriage and divorce registration, and the value of indigenous knowledge on climate adaptation in CHT and coastal regions, advocacy for eradicating systematic discrimination against gender diverse communities.
Most of their engagement has been with non-state duty bearers and local actors, strengthening their links with local service providers and community leaders to make their advocacy more practical.Together, these young leaders are now advancing inclusive, locally rooted movements for gender equality, human rights, climate justice, and social transformation.
