Founded in Bogotá in 1982, Corporación Casa de la Mujer has trained ~90,000 Colombian women in rights awareness across 20 regions, strengthened 1,000 women’s organisations, and co-drafted Law 1257/2008 on violence against women over four decades of feminist advocacy.
~90,000
Women trained/advised (1982-present)
~1,000
Women's organisations strengthened (1982-present)
20 of 32
Departments reached
3 (Laws 294/1996, 1257/2008, 1448/2011)
National laws co-drafted
Details
Maturity
Established
Promoter
Corporación Casa de la Mujer
Period
1982–present
Keywords
civil society, legal advocacy, gender equality
Context
Colombia's Corporacion Casa de la Mujer was founded in Bogota in 1982 by feminist lawyers and activists responding to the legal invisibility of women in a society marked by armed conflict and widespread gender-based violence. Over four decades it has grown into one of Latin America's most prominent women's rights organisations, combining legal services, political advocacy and popular education.
Objectives
The organisation works to strengthen Colombian women's autonomy, rights recognition and political participation, and to build the organisational capacity of women's groups across the country.
Activities
Casa de la Mujer provides direct legal assistance to survivors of physical and sexual violence and to families of femicide victims, leads coalition work through the National Roundtable on Women, and played a key role in drafting Laws 294/1996 (family violence), 1257/2008 (non-violence against women) and 1448/2011 (victims' reparation and land restitution).
Results
The organisation has trained and advised approximately 90,000 Colombian women across different ethnic backgrounds, geographic regions, and sexual and cultural identities, and has contributed to the organisational capacity of approximately 1,000 women's organisations across 20 of Colombia's 32 departments.
Conclusions
UN Women Colombia recognises Casa de la Mujer as a pivotal contributor to the national women's rights architecture, and a 2020 OECD assessment situates Colombia as a frontrunner in the Latin American and Caribbean gender-equality legal framework, crediting civil-society organisations like Casa de la Mujer. However, no independent cost-effectiveness evaluation or systematic outcome measurement of training impact has been published.
Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Feminist lawyers and activists providing legal services and advocacy, Coalition leadership via the National Roundtable on Women
Conditions for success
Sustained civil-society coalition work across departments
Direct legal-services delivery paired with legislative advocacy
Where it fits
Governance type
civil-society organisation
Scale
national (20 of 32 departments)
Income level
upper-middle income
Commonly funded by
Philanthropic / foundation funding
Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.
Do you run this practice?
Claim it —
verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.
Data sources
Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.
In 1995, South African civil-society organisations and women MPs launched the world's first parliamentary gender-responsive budget analysis, contributing to VAT …
Morocco (2002) launched the Arab world's first gender-responsive budgeting programme, scaling to 27+ ministries and institutionalised in the 2014 Organic …