Economic Justice

OVERVIEW

The structures of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, militarism, and colonialism underpin a global economic system that privileges “free” markets and exponential “growth,” and values private profit above people and the planet. An economy powered by fossil fuel extraction is directly responsible for the climate crisis, as well as for escalating social injustices and oppression, especially of women, girls, and gender-diverse people.

The dominant approach of neoliberalism—characterized by deregulation, privatization, and a withdrawal of the state from areas of social provision—has underpinned inequitable dynamics of the global economy since the 1980s. These practices continue a legacy of colonial injustices, through which countries of the Global North extract resources, labor, and revenue from countries of the Global South, which lose more money through debt servicing, illicit financial flows, and tax evasion than they receive in aid and climate finance. Such widespread revenue losses, as well as austerity measures imposed by international financial institutions, have caused governments to resort to cutting social services and to increasing consumption taxes that particularly burden low-income earners and women-led households.

GENDER AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE

Women and gender-diverse people face disproportionate consequences of neoliberalism. Due to their traditional societal roles, lower earnings, prevalence in informal employment, limited access to resources like land and social security, and involvement in subsistence agriculture, women are more likely to experience impoverishment. Furthermore, activities such as care work, community work, voluntary work, subsistence farming, food production for the family, maintaining seeds, and looking after land – which are often carried out by women, girls, and gender-diverse people – are considered “non-economic activities’’ by traditional economics.

FEMINIST ECONOMIC JUSTICE AND FEMINIST CLIMATE FINANCE

A systemic and structural transformation of our global economic systems finance flows is urgently required to radically transform our approach to economic growth, our systems of production and consumption, and the rules that govern our macroeconomic and multilateral systems.

For more than five decades, feminist economists have developed and presented analysis on unequal power relations, as well as the contribution of care work to our economies and societies —which mainstream and traditional economics often disregard or ignore. Our blueprint for feminist and economic justice aims to encapsulate a broad economic justice agenda towards an equitable, peaceful and healthy planet for all. It outlines paths to achieve structural transformation of international financial and trade architectures, to simultaneously eradicate poverty and guarantee ecological sustainability.

Building on the blueprint, our 2024 feminist analysis of critical trends towards feminist economic and climate justice highlights the significant gap between the contemporary global order and the vision put forward by the Feminist Action Nexus and our allies. To begin to determine how far away we are from this vision—and therefore how to begin to achieve it—this report assesses progress and challenges in seven key areas, corresponding to our key demands.

Spotlight: Feminist Climate Finance

Within this vision, “feminist climate finance” encompasses the multifaceted ways that climate finance will ultimately need to be transformed to align with our feminist values and fund feminist solutions. It is concerned with both how much money is flowing from the Global North to the Global South, as well as the quality and distribution of this finance.

Climate finance delivered within our current global architecture – one based on debt and austerity – will not allow us to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Despite the obligation to provide climate finance and the context of an escalating debt crisis in the Global South, much of climate finance is delivered as loans. Thus, climate finance pledges must go hand in hand with structural change, aligning finance flows with demands for feminist economic justice that moves from a system centered on extraction and unlimited growth to one centered on care and social protection. Learn more about feminist climate finance here.

WEDO IS CALLING FOR:

Transformation of the global and national economic systems to enable a just and equitable transition away from a fossil fuel economy and towards feminist and decolonial visions for care for people and planet.
Redistribution of wealth and resources through a progressive and equitable global tax system, to enable governments to mobilize domestic resources and invest in public service provision and climate action.
Ending the sovereign debt crisis and promoting debt justice – including by redirecting public resources from servicing predatory, illegitimate, and colonial loans towards climate action and gender-responsive public services to reduce and redistribute unpaid care work and fulfill the human rights of all.
Democratizing the global economic and financial architecture to promote global solidarity and collective ambition to address global crises.
Restructuring of the global trade system to enable local and small producers to thrive.
Ending corporate capture of multilateral spaces and restoring decision-making over global public goods and services to the people.
Ensuring all climate finance is gender-just, to implement feminist solutions to the climate crisis that prioritize immediate emissions cuts; a just and equitable transition and decent work for all; ecosystem-based approaches; and redressing loss and damage.
A halt to land grabs: Conversion of land for large-scale and/or industrial agriculture, biofuels, or other development highly impacts women, while also advancing biodiversity loss and climate change.
Countries to mainstream gender into their conservation agendas, National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPS), and implementation efforts.

RELATED GLOBAL POLICY PROCESSES

UN Climate Change

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international environmental treaty negotiated at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992, then entered into force on 21 March 1994. The UNFCCC objective is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

WEDO is part of, and a co-focal point for, the Women’s and Gender Constituency (WGC)—one of the official observer groups to the UNFCCC processes. In this role WEDO often provides technical expertise from a gender and justice perspective in a variety of ways, including through providing collective strategizing spaces; writing interventions and submissions; and providing capacity strengthening through the Women Delegates Fund. WEDO also actively follows the Green Climate Fund, created under the UNFCCC, and works to raise awareness about the links between climate and economic justice.

International Financial Institutions (World Bank and IMF)

Since their inception at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference—a process led by the colonial Global North and attended by only 44 countries—the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs, comprised of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) have held significant sway in global economic governance. Their colonial roots manifest in a democratic deficit in decision-making, leading to limited resource access for Global South countries and the imposition of strict austerity measures to impose control on public spending through loan conditionalities. These measures disproportionately impact low-income countries with little influence on decision-making—and within these countries, women and gender-diverse people in particular.

A feminist agenda for economic and climate justice challenges the BWIs—and their recently developed agendas for gender, climate, and internal reform—as directly contributing to the harm of people and planet. WEDO advocates for the BWIs to redress and transform this role as a fundamental precondition to a more democratic and feminist global economic governance structure.

Economic Justice

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