WIDE+ is a Europe-based network of gender and feminist specialists, women’s rights advocates, activists, researchers and women’s rights and development organizations. It is an international non-profit association registered under Belgian Law. It works through interlinked strategies of policy analysis, movement building (enhancing capacity and enabling networking) and advocacy informed by a feminist perspective.

WIDE+ works through interlinked strategies of policy analysis, movement building (enhancing capacity and enabling networking) and advocacy informed by a feminist perspective.

WIDE+ is the only women’s rights network that advocates, raises awareness and builds a collective vision on Europe’s external policy, in particular trade and development policies, from a gender equality perspective. WIDE+ connects Europe’s external policies and global challenges with internal ones and promotes a feminist vision of policy learning from global experiences.

Whereas other women’s rights networks in Europe have a more specific focus or focus exclusively on European internal policy, WIDE+ is unique in its holistic focus on external policies, through placing them in a larger global development context and linking it with the challenges they face in Europe.

WIDE+’s capacities and expertise were built in more than 25 years of experience in close cooperation with women’s rights organizations in the global South, with European institutions and with UN agencies. WIDE+ replaces the previous network WIDE that was dissolved in 2011. Carrying the history of WIDE, the new network is perfectly placed as an indispensable player in influencing and transforming European Union (EU) and global economic and social policies.

One of the core strengths of WIDE+ is its scope, activism and diversity of its network. WIDE+ has members in many EU states and its membership is diverse: it encompasses women’s rights organizations, development NGOs, national and regional networks of such organizations, as well as gender specialists, women’s rights advocates and activists. Organizations, networks and individuals contribute directly with their specific strengths to WIDE+ as members.