Difference She Makes

Legal institutions fail to support the policy and practice changes needed to achieve equity for women in the justice system due to structural barriers, from informal gatekeeping and unsafe workplaces, to hidden biases and backlash.  

We needed to shift perceptions from token inclusion to institutional accountability

In a landscape of highly polarized narratives around gender, we required a unifying, transformative counter-narrative. Our strategy was grounded in a pivotal insight: placing women in leadership across law and justice creates a profound, inclusive ripple effect for society that extends far beyond the courtroom impacting everything from climate justice and economic equity to ensuring fairer, more accessible justice for all.

Aimed at bringing visibility to how women are reimagining systems from within, while addressing the cultural barriers that continue to limit equity in practice.

Through cultural narratives, public storytelling, and strategic communication, the campaign seeks to dismantle commonly held myths that gender equity has already been achieved. It addresses structural and cultural barriers that continue to hold women back, such as:
Transformation over Tokenism
Institutional accountability over individual burden
Transparent systems over exclusive power networks

The campaign used strategic local partnerships and culturally relevant entry points to reach audiences across a multi-platform approach.

Sparking the movement
We sparked the movement with short and long-form creative content built on data and stories of women already reshaping justice — in courtrooms, parliaments, and communities. This resulted in over 70 women coming forward to lend their voice to the campaign, and 1,000+ newsletter sign-ups in 24 hours, with 26% joining the movement through organic reach alone.

Growing the movement
We grew the movement and reached new audiences by partnering with culturally relevant voices and on-ground partners. With Legally Clueless, we produced a six-part podcast series surfacing powerful stories of women in law, generating 215,000+ YouTube views with strong completion rates, and 430,000+ social video views as the content travelled via amplifiers like I Said What I Said in Nigeria. Alongside this, Drunken Lectures anchored a series of on-ground events in Kenya, putting the campaign’s message directly in front of live audiences.

Trusted messengers extended #DifferenceSheMakes into high-trust circles, with legal leaders and public figures carrying the message in their own words to audiences who already saw them as credible. We also engaged media through off- and online convenings and launched a media-lawyer fellowship, driving 40+ media mentions and a potential reach of 10+ million across Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.

Expanding and sustaining the movement
Underpinning the cultural engagement was a robust advocacy strategy. Through a continent-wide partnership with Nalafem, we delivered a series of “Off the Record, On the Table” convenings — 1,000+ participants across 13 events (450+ in-person, 550+ online) — built around intergenerational dialogue and storytelling. The output was a co-created Pan-African Feminist Declaration on Strengthening Access to Justice for Women and Girls, endorsed by feminists from 35 countries, which we then platformed at CSW70 — including a keynote from Chief Justice Martha Koome and attendance from H.E. Ambassador Mohamed Edreas, with 250+ people joining the conversation on and offline.