by Megan Clement

You can read this newsletter online here: https://lesglorieuses.fr/goodbye-for-now

Dear subscribers,

The Impact newsletter is approaching its annual summer break. As we do every year, we will take a pause in August to recharge our batteries.

But there is a difference this time around — as things stand, we do not have the funding to return in September. So this edition of the Impact newsletter could be the last.

Since 2021, our team has brought the latest in feminist news from around the world to your inbox, from the victories of the ‘green wave’ abortion activists of Latin America, to those countering the reproductive rights backlash in the US, the women advocating for an end to gender-based violence in Kenya and the Afghan women standing up to the Taliban. We’ve told you the stories of the trans people fighting for their rights to exist and thrive in the UK, the queer couples defying Japan’s same-sex marriage ban and the Indigenous women marching for climate action in Brazil. And we have fearlessly tracked the rise of the far-right around the world — including here in France — and its consequences for women, gender-diverse and queer people.

We would love to keep doing this work. But at the start of the year, our major funder, the Gates Foundation, informed us that they would no longer support our essential, bilingual journalism on gender inequality.

We are far from the only outlet to have lost funding for feminist reporting due to a shift in a funder’s priorities. That does not make it any easier for us to pause publishing at a time of widespread attacks on the rights of women and gender-diverse people, from Washington DC to Kampala to Budapest. There is still so much to do.

There is some good news. The Evidence, our monthly supplement on research into gender inequality, written by Josephine Lethbridge and supported by Sage, will continue — you’ll receive the latest edition next week. In September, The Evidence newsletter will move from the final Monday of the month to the final Wednesday. You can also subscribe to Les Glorieuses for a weekly dose of feminist arts and culture (in French, for now).

We also suggest you subscribe to and support the following publications, all of which champion feminist reporting. In French: La Deferlante, PoPol Media, Voxe, « L » by Libération and Pour tous·tes by Mediapart. In English: The Fuller Project, The Persistent, Zan Times, Nadja Media and Solidaritas. In Spanish: Volcánicas. 

This might not be the end of Impact forever. If we raise enough funds to relaunch your favourite feminist newsletter, you’ll be the first to know. But either way, I will be moving on from my role as editor.

So I want to take this opportunity to thank you for being part of our community; for four wonderful years of celebrating feminist victories and fighting back against the defeats together. 

Thank you to everyone who subscribed to Impact, to everyone who read and shared our work, and especially to those who wrote to me with their opinions — good or bad — about our journalism. Thank you to everyone who attended our events and donated to support this project. 

Thank you to the dream team who have helped bring you this weekly dispatch of feminist journalism in French and English: Agustina Ordoqui and Anna Pujol-Mazzini. Thank you to the founder of Impact and of Gloria Media, Rebecca Amsellem.

And thank you to every activist, writer, researcher, photographer and illustrator who contributed to Impact over the years, from all corners of the world. 

It has been an honour to bring you this newsletter, and I will miss you all.

Megan Clement