Dr. Victoria Hargrove

I have spent more than two decades at the intersection of women's rights advocacy and international development policy. I have briefed congressional staff on IVAWA, sat with survivors in safe houses in Lagos and Nairobi, reviewed data from every major international study on violence against women produced since the Beijing Platform for Action, and written about all of it — for policy journals, advocacy organisations, and now for Women Thrive.

Women Thrive is my attempt to put everything I know in one place — not for academics or policymakers, but for researchers, advocates, survivors, and anyone who wants to understand what is actually happening to women in the world, and why, and what can be done about it.

Areas of Focus

Background

My career began in international development research, working on gender-disaggregated data collection in Sub-Saharan Africa. I spent the better part of a decade as a policy researcher — producing evidence for organisations including the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and contributing to programmes funded by the US State Department, UN Women, and the Gates Foundation.

From there, I moved into advocacy — working on Capitol Hill and with coalitions pushing for legislation that would embed women's rights into US domestic and foreign policy. I was part of the broader coalition that spent years advocating for the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), building the evidence base and coordinating the policy arguments that eventually produced the Obama administration's 2012 executive order establishing the US Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally.

My writing has appeared in international policy journals and contributed to reports cited in congressional testimony and UN policy documents. I founded Women Thrive as an independent journal — drawing on the legacy of Women Thrive Worldwide's two decades of advocacy work — to make this research and analysis accessible beyond the policy community.

About Women Thrive

Women Thrive is an independent advocacy journal and resource hub. It builds on the work of Women Thrive Worldwide — the Washington DC-based NGO that spent 20+ years at the forefront of IVAWA advocacy, Gates Foundation partnerships, and global women's rights coalitions. Women Thrive Worldwide was founded in the late 1990s and led by president Ritu Sharma, whose book Teach a Woman to Fish: Overcoming Poverty Around the Globe remains a foundational text in women-centred development thinking.

Women Thrive today covers violence against women, world hunger, food security, women's economic empowerment, and the policy fights that shape how governments and international institutions respond to these issues. All statistics are sourced from peer-reviewed research and primary international data sources — WHO, UN Women, FAO, World Bank, and the US Department of Justice.

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