Feminist health promotion in practice: Analysis of a UK voluntary sector women-centred project and partnership working towards empowerment

Background/Objectives
This paper discusses a voluntary sector strategic partnership and delivery project involving eleven women-centred organisations who worked together to support the most vulnerable women and girls across a city in the north of England 2017-2021, aiming to 1. Improve and extend access to services and support; 2. Provide a holistic response to meet complex needs; 3. Empower women and girls. This paper details the project and partnership model and illustrate the importance of feminist health promotion as a tool for change.
Methods
This article draws upon a three year longitudinal qualitative evaluation, underpinned by a feminist methodology. Our evaluation placed the project staff, partners, stakeholders and service users at the centre of qualitative data collection, drawing upon a co-produced Theory of Change approach and associated framework analysis to assess the extent to which the project and partnerships aims had been met. Our sample includes 34 service users and 54 professionals (19 of which are repeat interviews) with data gathered between 2017-2020.
Results
Data from our evaluation shows a successful project model supporting vulnerable women in a holistic and empowering way to ensure that their complex needs were met. Our evaluation data also highlights the successes and challenges of a complex partnership aiming to advocate for women on a strategic local level. There were several positive outcomes resulting from partnership work to collectively advocate and raise awareness of the issues affecting women and girls, despite internal challenges.
Discussion
Feminist health promotion requires further analysis as a mechanism to achieve emancipatory innovation. Our data uncovers the hidden dichotomy between external success, such as achieving the delivery outcomes, and internal partnership politics, which are underexplored in the literature. Despite these challenges, our evidence shows that this project and partnership was a successful gendered intervention that had positive empowering impacts on many of those involved.