Women's Justice Initiative
WJI is building a more equitable world for Maya women and girls by combating gender inequality and violence against women and girls. Through an innovative community-based approach, WJI is improving the lives of women and girls by increasing their access to justice and improving their ability to exercise their rights to live free from violence.
Organizational contacts & locations
Mission, vision & values
WJI's mission is to improve the lives of indigenous Guatemalan women and girls through education, access to legal services and gender-based violence prevention.
WJI envisions a Guatemala in which women and girls are active leaders in their communities and are free from gender-based violence; have access to culturally respectful legal services, have knowledge of their legal rights and can safely assert these rights.
Products, services, and programs
The Legal Services program provides free legal services directly to women in need by bringing lawyers and paralegals to their communities and by providing bilingual Mayan-Spanish resources. WJI’s mobile legal outreach ensures that the most marginalized women, who may not be able to leave their homes or communities, can access legal support and counseling. In doing so, WJI greatly expands women’s access to justice.
WJI’s four comprehensive programs combine service delivery with rights education and justice system capacity building. WJI staff works directly with participants to enhance their knowledge of their rights and the skills necessary to protect those rights, while also collaborating with leaders, government, and justice system actors at the community and municipal level to improve the institutional response to cases of VAWG. Starting in 2020, WJI began to pilot its methodology in other regions of Guatemala and Mesoamerica, proving the feasibility of implementing its adapted programming in new ethnolinguistic contexts. WJI now looks towards combating VAWG among indigenous and Afro-descendent populations of the region.
Women’s Rights Education Program
A legal literacy and empowerment course that teaches women about their rights and provides them with the tools to better protect their rights and improve their lives. The program includes capacity building workshops focused on leadership, decision-making, and communication.
Community Advocates Program
A two-year leadership course to develop women’s capacity as grassroots paralegals and drivers of female empowerment. During monthly workshops participants learn about human rights and the prevention of violence against women and girls (VAWG), and receive training on public speaking, data collection, and community-based advocacy. Advocates work with local leaders to develop community-based referral systems and protocols for responding to and preventing VAWG.
Legal Services Program
WJI provides free legal services directly to rural indigenous women, by bringing lawyers and paralegals to their communities and offering bilingual Maya Kaqchikel-Spanish resources. The team advises clients on issues ranging from domestic violence to family law and property rights, ensuring women in remote communities have access to legal counsel.
Strengthening Institutions
The Legal Services team works with government institutions and justice operators to improve responses to VAWG, establishing referral networks and training key service providers to strengthen the justice system.
Adolescent Girls Program
WJI teaches girls the skills to assert their rights, delay marriage, and achieve their personal goals. Workshops with parents and important stakeholders focus on the implementation of community-based protection mechanisms.
WJI's staff are nearly all Mayan-Kaqchikel women from the communities WJI serves, and 100% of WJI's services and programs are provided in Kaqchikel, the local Mayan language.
Organizational detail
WJI tackles gender inequality and violence against women and girls (VAWG) in rural communities through its four programs: Women’s Rights Education, Legal Services, Community Advocates, and Adolescent Girls. WJI’s programs work at the individual, family, community, and municipal levels to transform the norms and attitudes that consider VAWG acceptable.
WJI contributes to national efforts to combat VAWG by responding to chronic gaps in existing services in rural areas and linking its community interventions to the national response. Guatemala faces some of the highest levels of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and impunity in the world. The high incidence of VAWG today is heavily linked to the legacy of violence created by Guatemala's armed conflict, and widespread impunity and deeply-rooted machismo have further compounded the vulnerability of indigenous women in rural Guatemala. Gender inequality is pervasive with only 3.2% of the municipalities run by women (CEPAL, 2022); in 2021 over 64,000 girls and adolescents aged 10-19 gave birth, including over 1,800 girls ages 10-14 (UNFPA, 2022); and the second-lowest ranking of gender parity in politics of all 35 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean as of 2020 (Equal Measures 2030, 2023). 30% of Guatemalan women are married before age 18 (Girls Not Brides, 2023).
Throughout the country, 1 in 5 women suffer from intimate partner violence and many cases are not reported (UN Women, 2022). Moreover, in 98% of cases, the perpetrators remain unpunished (Musalo & Bookey, 2014). VAWG is one of the most oppressive forms of gender inequality and stands as a fundamental barrier to equal participation of women and men in social, economic, and political spheres. Rural, indigenous women are disproportionately impacted by violence due to social isolation, weak public institutions, and limited access to resources. The Public Office for the Defense of Indigenous Women’s Rights in Guatemala has estimated that over one third of indigenous women who live with a man experience domestic violence, with young women facing an even higher rate.
In the communities in which WJI works, our baseline data indicates that nearly 75% of the target population has experienced some form of gender-based violence, which is viewed as both normal and acceptable in rural communities. Indigenous women in rural Guatemala rarely report violence or seek help due to the lack of accessible social and legal services. Government institutions are concentrated in Guatemala’s cities and their services rarely reach rural areas. Many indigenous women, especially survivors of violence, do not have the freedom to leave their homes and their children to seek services and even fewer can afford transportation to urban areas.
In the communities in which WJI works, at least 91% of the population is indigenous and over 75% live in poverty. These barriers are reflected in the low rates of women seeking services; in the communities where WJI works, only 7% of program participants had received legal services prior to learning from WJI, and 39% of participants did not know where they could go if they were suffering from violence. Of the women who are able to leave their communities to seek assistance, many face discrimination due to their ethnicity, in addition to the challenge of navigating a system that does not offer bilingual services.
Since 2013, WJI’s clients have sought services in Kaqchikel, the local Mayan language, demonstrating the importance of language accessibility. As a result of poor educational opportunities, indigenous women also have a weaker understanding of the law and their rights than men in their communities; in the municipalities in which WJI works, around 20% of women are illiterate, compared to only 13% of men. Before WJI began implementing its programs, 64% of women participants did not have an understanding of human rights. In these same communities, 25% of households report that the man is the principal decision-maker. Only 20% of women are legal homeowners, compared to 68% of men. These disparities often entrap women in cycles of violence and poverty and prevent them from fully exercising their rights.
Impact, adaptations & objectives
WJI has served over 50,000 individuals since 2011, benefitting over 150,000 women, men and children. More than 10,000 women and girls have directly participated in WJI’s Programs.
- 4,052 women represented by WJI in legal cases, 67% of whom are survivors of violence.
- 4,800 women have gained increased knowledge of their rights in the Women’s Rights Education Program.
- 108 Community Advocates have graduated and 48 are currently in training. Community Advocates gained leadership skills and knowledge to multiply WJI’s work.
- 1,134 girls have improved their skills and knowledge enabling them to delay marriage and achieve their goals.
- More than 4,600 mothers, fathers, community leaders, judicial operators, police officers and government officials have been trained in VAWG response and prevention.
WJI’s legal empowerment methodology has been fully implemented in 73 communities in the municipalities of Patzún, Tecpán, San Juan Comalapa, San Martín Jilotepeque and San José Poaquil. In 2023, WJI will expand into the North sector of Tecpán and Santa Apolonia.
Following participation in WJI’s educational programs,
- 98% of women report having greater knowledge of their rights and only 2% believe it is acceptable for a man to abuse his wife (a decrease from 16% prior to participation),
- Adolescent girls renewed their commitment to delay marriage, with less than 3% of program participants under of the age of 18 entering a union (compared to Guatemala’s national average of 30%).
- Women who participated in WJI’s programming demonstrate an increased use of services through WJI’s Legal Services team who conduct mobile outreach and use municipal clinics to provide legal services, offered in the local Maya language.
- At the municipal level, WJI conducts training with service providers and community actors which improves relationships with the justice sector and enhances their response to survivors of violence, 67% of participating communities report implementing community action plans and establishing community-based referral networks.
WJI measures the effectiveness of our work through a comprehensive impact and learning approach. To ensure we are meeting our intended impact, WJI specifically tracks the following metrics:
Knowledge and Attitudes: WJI measures participants’ knowledge related to women’s rights and attitudes related to VAWG, and how they shift after participation in our programs. For example, using baseline and endline survey data, WJI tracks the percentage of participants that do not believe it is justified for a man to abuse his partner under any circumstance and the percentage of female participants who are able to identify at least two places to seek help for VAWG (among other metrics). Baseline and endline comparisons help us to measure the effectiveness of WJI’s programs in changing attitudes and increasing knowledge of rights.
Access to Justice and Utilization of Services: WJI’s programs aim to give women the tools to both know and assert their rights. To measure the effectiveness of this approach, WJI tracks the number of women who seek legal services after participating in WJI’s legal literacy course. For example, in previous communities, 42% of participants sought legal aid after completing WJI’s legal literacy course, an increase from 4% at baseline. WJI also measures the overall number of legal services clients, cases resolved, and judicial decisions in order to track increased access to justice.
Improved Systemic Response: To measure the effectiveness of our work with service providers and the justice system, WJI measures the number of referrals for legal services that come from the service providers and justice system actors after their participation in trainings with WJI. Referrals help demonstrate an improved response to victims of VAWG, as service providers now know where to direct women when they need help.
In addition to the metrics above, WJI sets goals for program outputs, such as number of participants and the quantity of services provided. To ensure that we are meeting our goals for each community, WJI tracks graduation rates from our programs, retention rate, number of workshops and legal services provided. At a basic level, this helps us track our implementation across communities, and ensure challenges are addressed.
To track all of this information, WJI relies on a robust monitoring and evaluation system. Prior to implementation of our programs in a community, WJI conducts community mapping to collect demographic information about Maya-Kaqchikel women and girls ages 10 to 65 in the target community, utilizing the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) indicators. These assessments allow us to address each community’s unique needs and to track our programs across communities and families.
At the start of each program, WJI conducts surveys to collect quantitative baseline data and compares this information to end-line data to measure program impact. WJI complements these activities with qualitative data collection, including focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with project participants to evaluate their knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding VAWG, women’s rights, and gender equality. In 2019, WJI conducted an external evaluation of its work to rigorously and independently evaluate the impact of its programs. WJI will continue to conduct external evaluations to assess its impact and ensure its work is adequately and effectively responding to the needs of the women and girls it serves.
WJI is transforming its approach to measure impact, facilitate learning, and evaluate its programs. WJI’s goal is to shift traditional paradigms about who collects data, what information is most critical to collect, and how information about our programs and impact is used. WJI is working to cultivate lasting relationships with partner communities that are characterized by engagement, collaboration, and co-creation. WJI communicates with field staff and community members to establish locally relevant indicators. We talk to women working with us, ask what they want to see or achieve in their lives in the following years and align that information with WJI’s goals and programming, grounding our impact and learning in the community.
Size and/or structure
WJI was founded in 2011 to address gender inequality and VAWG in indigenous communities in Guatemala. WJI piloted its first program, Women’s Rights Education, in one community with 15 participants. Between 2012 and 2015, WJI expanded into more communities and developed three complementary programs: Legal Services, Community Advocates, and the Adolescent Girls Program. In 2015, WJI was awarded a highly competitive three-year grant from the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, which facilitated its geographic expansion. Since then, WJI has expanded into Tecpán, San Juan Comalapa, San Martín Jilotepeque, and San José Poaquil through grants awarded by the United Nations Democracy Fund, Tinker Foundation, and a special COVID grant from the UN Trust Fund, all of which allowed WJI to test its work to scale and adapt its methodology. WJI now works in 73 communities in five municipalities.
Key offerings
WJI’s programming is designed and led by Maya Kaqchikel women. WJI’s staff, who are majority Maya-Kaqchikel and from the communities WJI serves, hold a profound understanding of the local cultural context. WJI relies on this local expertise, along with extensive needs assessments, to design culturally responsive and effective programs. WJI has a horizontal structure, in which all staff are involved in the strategic decision-making process and programmatic decisions are informed by the needs of participants. 100% of WJI’s services are offered in Kaqchikel.
Location
WJI continuously learns from its beneficiaries and incorporates their feedback into program development. Prior to entering any community, WJI meets with key community stakeholders, including traditional indigenous leaders, to discuss program plans, challenges, and opportunities. Once permission is granted to work in the community, WJI conducts community mapping to collect initial demographic information about Maya-Kaqchikel women and girls. This demographic data is used to tailor program activities and to ensure they are responsive and appropriate to the needs of women and girls in that particular community context. WJI complements these activities with surveys, focus group discussions, and semi-structured interviews with project participants to better understand their knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding VAWG, women’s rights, and gender equality.
Growth
Within the next 12 months, WJI will begin an expansion to a sixth municipality, Santa Apolonia, along with the North sector of Tecpán, and implement its comprehensive programming in 12 new communities by 2024.
An Impact and Learning Culture
We communicate with field staff and community members to establish locally relevant indicators of success. We talk to women working with us, ask what they want to see or achieve in their lives in the following years and align that information with WJI’s goals and programming. Then, we introduce these indicators to donors proactively when starting a project, knowing they are grounded in the community.
Growth
WJI will expand its VAWG prevention and response services, doubling its reach in the Kaqchikel region. Over the long term, WJI plans to continue replicating its programs in other municipalities through sustainable partnerships with Municipal Women’s Offices and to continue filling the gap for bilingual legal services in rural indigenous communities, reaching ten municipalities by 2027.
Quality
WJI will be a model in prevention and response to VAWG by providing technical assistance to community-based organizations in Mesoamerica. WJI’s partner organizations and collaborators have expressed a desire for the organization to expand into other departments of Guatemala that experience high levels of VAWG, impunity, and forced migration. WJI is recognized as a leader at the national level in implementing community-based solutions to addressing VAWG, as its services remain in high demand beyond the municipalities in which it currently works.
Impacto
WJI has financial stability, an expert team committed to its vision, and an equitable, supportive, and transparent work environment. WJI is working to improve its organizational capacity as the team expands and the organization expands into new areas of Guatemala.