Learning Resources

WLP makes available manuals, books, films, legislation, and other resources for women’s rights advocates in over 20 languages. Click here to browse and download resources in our LEARNING CENTER.

WLP Curriculum Leading to Choices
Leading to Choices is WLP's foundational training manual on participatory leadership.

Training Manuals

WLP develops human rights training manuals requested by our partners or women’s rights advocates in the field. Our process normally begins with a partner or group of partners describing to WLP what resources they need for their constituencies. From their descriptions, we create draft curriculum with lesson plans and instructions on how to organize the trainings. The initial draft, which also includes a theoretical discussion or article on the human rights topic, is tested by the partners. Our partners’ feedback is integrated into the final product, which is translated into new languages and tested again in other communities. The revision process is repeated as needed so that the manuals are responsive to local expectations and relevant to local practices. In this way, hundreds of participants are involved in shaping our content and lesson strategies. All of our published manuals can be downloaded for free in our Learning Center. Learn more about our publications and manuals.

Documentary Films & Screening Toolkits

WLP creates documentary films about current women’s right topics that are frequently used in our workshops and public awareness-raising events. The films have been shown on local television, in schools, and at festivals around the world. Produced in over half a dozen languages, our documentaries showcase the stories and perspectives of leading women’s rights advocates from the Global South, many of whom are from our partner organizations. Our documentaries ask important questions about women’s mobilization, the risk of backlash, and the role of human rights in securing peace and progress for women today. The films are available for free in our Learning Center, and on YouTube and Vimeo. See the full list of WLP's documentary films.

Virtual film screenings are a great way to spark discussion about today’s most pressing issues and possible solutions. WLP develops film screening toolkits to accompany documentaries to encourage further dialogue about the issues at hand. These toolkits include a step by step guide on how to host your own online screening, social media tools to spread the word about your screening, and more in-depth content on the important themes covered in the film. Check out the It's Up to Us toolkit here and the toolkit for Equality: Its All in the Family here

Multimedia facilitators curriculum
A workshop facilitator explains the uses of WLP's Multimedia Facilitators' Curriculum at a Training of Trainers Institute in Tajikistan.

Resources for Trainers

WLP’s resources for trainers are helpful to any teacher or workshop facilitator seeking an instruction methodology that is participatory and empowering. Nearly every WLP manual includes guidance on how to facilitate workshop sessions. WLP’s Learning Center has available for download these and other materials such as training techniques and sample workshop agendas. 

For trainers who wish to combine lessons from different WLP curricula and adapt them for specific audiences, several examples of customized lesson plans used by experienced WLP trainers also are available in our Learning Center.

Book Translations

WLP’s Translation Series makes available to a wider readership consequential literature from women’s rights movements in the Global South. WLP brings scholarship and personal accounts of political mobilization from the Muslim world to new audiences. We have translated Persian content (Iranian Women's One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality) into Arabic, English, and Russian, Arabic content (Guide to Equality in the Family in the Maghreb) into Persian and English, and Turkish content (Violence without Borders) into English.

Violence without Borders is available on Amazon.com. Iranian Women's One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality and Guide to Equality in the Family in the Maghreb are available for free in our Learning Center. 

Preserving Women's History

WLP maintains a collection of recordings that include unique conversations with women leaders from the Global North and South, media interviews, documentary films, conferences, training workshops, and other events. Since May 2014, we have collaborated with the Internet Archive to create a public, online repository for WLP’s digital collections. For this project, we developed a cataloguing system, and reviewed and edited hundreds of resources on a variety of biographical and historical subjects relating to activist women, pivotal advocacy campaigns, global women's conferences, and WLP's impact on women's leadership and organizing. Read more about our Preserving Women's History.

Oral Histories of the Global Women's Movement

WLP has collected hundreds of hours of diverse, multilingual materials and recordings pertaining to the global movements for peace, democracy, and women’s human rights with the goal of preserving the stories and lessons of women’s rights activists from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America who have left their mark on the struggle for women’s advancement. Our Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement contains extensive interviews with prominent and grassroots women’s rights activists who discuss formative events in their personal lives and their eye-witness accounts of history in the making. Read more about our Oral History Project.

Multi-country Corpus of Laws

The Corpus of Laws is WLP's collection of laws and legal instruments, including constitutions, family laws, penal codes, and gender-based violence prevention laws, from our partner countries and other selected countries in which women's rights activists are pushing for legal changes. Our particular focus is on laws concerning women and the family across Muslim-majority societies.

Originally launched in 2012, our database contains over 100 legal instruments from 25 countries, available in Arabic, English, French, and other languages. Our collection of laws and legal resources is a partnership-wide, ongoing initiative. Anyone can access WLP’s Corpus of Laws in our Learning Center.

Feminist Research

WLP is uniquely situated to produce and promote feminist scholarship from the Global South that can influence feminist theory and activism across the globe. WLP supports scholars, from graduate students to renowned academics, by giving them access to our feminist contacts in the Global South who are conducting critical scholarship and advocacy. We have brought the work of Global South scholars to the attention of researchers, research institutions, and academic publishers in the Global North and South. 

In addition, WLP itself conducts qualitative and quantitative research on laws, policies, and practices impacting the rights, freedoms, and security of women. We document women’s stories, recording their lived experiences, leadership, and accomplishments. And, we train individuals and NGOs to conduct their own research and develop their own archives of women’s experience. WLP disseminates our research and analyses through white papers, published books, our digital resources, and symposia on feminist issues. 

Our research is used to empower women to make better choices, support gender mainstreaming initiatives, stimulate policy dialogue, and inform decision-makers. WLP partners also use our research in their training programs.