According to a survey carried out by the Association of German Foundations (BDS), less than one in five respondent foundations finance or implement projects that support gender justice and only 15 per cent of that proportion include gender justice or gender equality as the main focus of their work.

In the survey ‘Mind the Gap’ only 21 per cent think about gender differences in their grantmaking. Internally, in none of the 183 foundations who responded are women in a majority in the decision-making bodies. In 71 per cent of cases, they were in a minority, in the remaining 29 per cent, there were no women at all. On a brighter note, 46 per cent of respondents want to receive support to enable them to apply more gender-just approaches to their internal structures and their grantmaking and operational work.

The survey was carried out by BDS and non-profit consultancy, PHINEO, in March 2019. The findings were published in the Autumn edition of BDS’s in-house magazine, Stiftungswelt.