The power of standing together for women’s economic rights
By Alexandra Webber
Solidarity and the collective fight-back
Women’s economic rights are under siege. We’re seeing devastating cuts to aid, a growing backlash to gender equality, and the continuing rise of neoliberal systems that prioritise profit over all else. We’ve never needed the collective power and resistance of feminist movements more.
The challenges faced are interlinked, and actions at the top have a knock-on effect. For example, when the World Bank encourages states to privatise public services to raise funds to pay back their debts, these services become profit- rather than people-driven. Then, as we highlight in our Beijing +30 report, because women shoulder a much larger care burden, the lack of quality services can force them to take work flexible enough to fit around their care needs—but without proper workplace protections. This leaves them vulnerable to abuse and harassment.
Those invested in keeping the status quo—like international finance institutions and multinational corporations—are powerful, and fighting back can feel fruitless and fatiguing. But theirs is not the only way. At a time when gender-inclusive economies are more important than ever, feminist economics reimagines systems and societies in ways that promote equality between women, men, and people of all genders.
”Mainstream economic perspectives generally focus on market value, recognising only work that is done for money. They also tend to be based around the realities of men’s lives and criticised as ‘gender blind’. In contrast, feminist economics sees gender relations as vital to how economies work, for example, calling for women’s unpaid care burden to be recognised and valued.”
Solidarity at IAFFE
Last month, Womankind attended the International Association of Feminist Economics (IAFFE) annual conference. Our aims were to boost our knowledge of the latest developments in women’s economic rights and feed our partners’ priorities into collective strategies for combatting injustice. Progressive, anti-racist and—as the name suggests—feminist, IAFFE (which took place in Amherst, Massachusetts and online) is an important space. A mix of academics and activists delved into the key issues of the day, including valuing care, promoting tax justice, and reform of the international finance system. United by the conference theme of solidarity, there was also room for uncomfortable but needed conversations—like how allies to groups facing inequality can speak up and show up without centring ourselves.
Care—it’s not all about the money
Those advocating for women’s economic rights often argue about the financial value of care work—and with good reason. Economies are built on women’s unpaid labour and the World Economic Forum estimates that—if it was compensated—it would amount to 9 per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Annually, that’s around 11 trillion dollars! But care is so much more—a human right that everyone deserves which adds hugely to our wellbeing. We all may need care at some point—whether because of age, disability, or illness. As panellists highlighted throughout the conference, we need care systems that consider individuals’ varied and intersecting needs, and which allow those doing the care to have full lives and sufficient rest outside it.
Collective solutions for interconnected problems
”Economic injustice does not exist in a vacuum. And so, we need a feminist, collective response which recognises its inextricable ties to other threats to gender equality, like gender-based violence and climate crisis. Crucially, this response must share lessons across movements and centre the voices of those most affected in solutions. Consequently, Womankind had much to contribute at IAFFE, including our partner-informed calls, and details of partners’ cross-movement collaborations. For example, Mitini Nepal contributed LBTQIA+ women’s experiences to the corporate justice movement at the AWID forum.”
For those of us based in the Global North, solidarity could mean using our platform and positionality to call for change from our governments. For example, IAFFE participants working on the care agenda criticised the resistance from Global North nations to systems centring care at the recent International Financing for Development conference. At Womankind, we’ll continue to speak up and speak out against decisions—like the UK aid cut—which jeapordise gender equality, and call for advances in how the UK and others promote women’s economic rights globally, including supporting:
- Debt relief and cancellation—to redress enduring inequalities rooted in colonialism.
- Reform of the International Finance Institutions—until the debt is cancelled, we call for reformed loan conditionalities which don’t encourage states to rely on privatisation.
- Progressive taxation to fund publicly owned and run services.
- States’ ratification and implementation of International Labor Organization Convention 190—to stop abuse and harassment at work.
- A UN Binding Treaty to stop corporations harming people and the planet.
Underpinning all of this, we continue to champion the strengthening of feminist movements across the Global South, including through flexible funding and authentic sharing of power. We must stand together to challenge unjust systems so that women and people of all genders can claim their economic rights.
Alexandra Webber is Policy and Advocacy Manager, Women’s Economic Rights and UK Advocacy at Womankind Worldwide. She recently attended the IAFFE conference sharing views and perspectives on just economic systems that value women’s rights.
