Overview of Part 2

by Natalie Raaber

Panelists included: Radhika Balakrishnan, Executive Director of CWGL, Hameda Deedat, Researcher at Gender and Economic Reforms in Africa, Emily Sikazwe, Executive Director of Women for Change for Zambia at Social Watch, Gul Unal, Assistant Professor of Economics at Bard College, and Marina Durano, Coordinator at Political Economy of Globalization, DAWN, WWG-FfD.

While much was said, the following were the key points:

• Crises are not new for many countries in the world. Instead, much of the global South has faced a perpetual set of crises, comprised of continuous food, care, climate, water, and energy emergencies.

• This crisis – like all others – has not come out of thin air. It was caused by changes in the regulatory system in the US and other countries that allowed the financial system to expand unsustainably.

• Alternatives to this model of growth have been there all along – particularly because grassroots communities have been feeling the impacts of crises for years. They know how to adapt.

• Often times, women have to exchange one set of patriarchal relationships (in the home, for example) for another (in the workplace). There is a fundamental need to break this cycle and change the patriarchal nature of societies.

• There is also a need for more efforts to bridge the gap between those who are advocating for women’s rights and the women for whom they are advocating.

• Collaboration between women policy makers, economists, civil society activist and women themselves must be strengthened.

• We can use human rights norms and obligations to assess economic policy and ensure that it is created in a participatory way and results in the promotion of human rights. We can also use human rights norms to hold the World Bank and the IMF accountable.

• Cash transfers, for example, can help…nut sustainable livelihoods are what we are after.

• The point was made that developing countries do, in fact, have some degree of fiscal policy space/choices – despite restrictions placed by international financial institutions – and can choose (or not) to increase public expenditure and focus on social security. There needs to be political will – and a range of voices in the debate.

• The question of where we should be as a global women’s movement – in which spaces and at which tables – was raised. Where do we intervene and how do we intervene? How do push for new ways of doing things? The UN? The World Bank? At the G-8? National Government? Other spaces?

Overview of Part 1

by Natalie Raaber

Joanne Sandler, Deputy Executive Director of UNIFEM, opened the discussion by underscoring the infuriating fact that if the powerful global players (wealthy governments, banks, international financial institutions, and multinationals amongst others) had listened to what feminists and other progressive social movements had been saying for decades – namely that the present model of growth and development is unsustainable and deeply flawed – this crisis would never have occurred.

Ceclia Alemany (AWID) presented a cross-regional analysis of the impact on women and women’s rights, based on a series of briefs AWID had commissioned. She highlighted the systemic, multi-dimensional, and structural nature of the crisis, and reiterated the fact that women’s rights activists and others had denounced the underlying model leading to the crisis decades before the collapse, while proposing alternative frameworks and visions.

The impact of the crisis on women and women’s rights was examined in relation to 1) poverty and inequality, 2) food sovereignty, 3) work, unemployment, and care, 4) migration and remittances, 5) violence against women, and 6) women’s organizations.

Next, Letty Chiwara, Global Programmes Manager at UNIFEM, spoke about aid in the context of conflict and post-conflict countries, which represents one of the many aspects in the broader discussion on financing for gender equality and development. Letty emphasized that women play a key role in post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building, but highlighted the continuous and pervasive failure to engage women substantively in formal discussions around financing for development in post conflict situations. This, in itself, is a huge cost! Furthermore, the processes used in post-conflict reconstruction lack transparency, thus making it difficult for women’s rights activists – and others - to participate.

Letty also discussed the fact that while there is a lot of attention and money focused on reconstruction and peacebuilding processes, gender equality is often not articulated – or funded. There is a pressing need to cost gender equality and women’s rights priorities – so that these priorities – while indeed present in some national plans – are placed in the budget. Aid needs to be gender equitable – and delivered in line with human rights and women’s rights obligations.

Carmen Ledo, an economist and professor from Bolivia, shed more light on this issue and elaborated on the systematic approach Bolivia is taking to cost gender equality. She noted that huge multi-dimensional and multi-sectoral gender inequalities combined with rapid urban population growth have generated increased inequalities. Costing is crucial to influence financing and policies.

Providing some background on Bolivia, Caremn explained the detrimental impact Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) have had on Bolivia’s employment situation:

1.The quality of employment has deteriorated. Two thirds of Bolivian workers are active in an "informal" sector: increased part-time jobs, non-payment for work done, below-minimum wages, higher job instability and "un-social hours" (night work, weekend work and many working hours a day);

2.The activity in this sector is characterized by small enterprises, with low productivity;

3.Three quarters of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is generated in the main cities (La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz).

Carmen then went on to discuss the costing exercise, explaining that costing helps to map out all necessary resources and identify where existing funds are located (especially extra budgetary funds). This can be used to support gender equality and women’s rights policies.

Diane Elson, Professor at the Department of Sociology and Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex and member of the IAFFE, was the last speaker in the morning session. She discussed the need for feminists to engage in macroeconomic policy and examine whether it is line with international human rights obligations.

She discussed the gender impact of the reduction of public expenditure (often forced upon developing countries borrowing from the IMF in order to reduce deficits) and the specific implication this has for women. She called for stimulus packages that respond to this crisis to be gender equitable and support women.

Lack of fiscal space for some developing governments to implement counter-cyclical policies was emphasized to be particularly troubling. She highlighted recent work that showed that deficit spending is not necessarily a bad thing in the context of an economic recession.

She called for gender equitable deficit-financed public investment, gender equitable economic growth, gender equitable fiscal reform, and gender equitable public finance.

Elson also noted the importance of women’s rights activists to be at the table with economists!

Some of the key points that were raised in the ensuing discussion include:

• The excessive reliance on formal economic models in policy-making is unnecessary. Instead, we need to look at the work grassroots women and men do – they have already created a legitimate model and we should construct paradigm based on the experience of people directly affected by economic policies.

• Deficits must have limits; the question is where to draw those limits. But to make this judgment, we must first understand that the answer during a recession is different from the answer during periods of growth.

• Even countries that are growing – like Brazil in South America – do not have money to spend nationally due to high levels of debt repayment. Brazil’s debt repayment comprised over half of the federal budget in 2009.

• Unpaid care work continues to be marginalized; particularly in conflict and post-conflict situations – as well as in relation to HIV/AIDs. This must be counted!

• If stimulus money is going towards efforts of employment creation in the formal sector – and women comprise a large majority in the informal sector – what obstacle does this pose to a gender equitable recovery? Addressing the public policy implications is a huge challenge.

• Beware of false efficiency – where government becomes more “efficient’ or “streamlined” by actually transferring the costs to women via their unpaid care work.

• How can we make sure expansion of resources works for women? Even if resources are available, this does not ensure that they will be used to advance gender-equality goals.

by Natalie Raaber

What has the impact of the most recent crisis been on women and women’s rights? On March 2, 2010, from 2:00-3:30pm EST, AWID, Social Watch and Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) convened “Eyes on Gender: Regional Perspectives on the Impact of the Financial Crisis.” This session brought together gender equality/women’s rights advocates from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia to speak to, investigate, and analyze the impact of the systemic crisis on women from a regional, national and local perspective.

Some of the key points raised included:

• Today, there remains little doubt that the neo-liberal model of growth and development has failed. The crisis – a symptom of this failed model - is indeed a structural crisis, multi-dimensional and systemic. It is not only a financial and economic crisis, but also a crisis of food, water, climate, work, care, and fuel. Women’s rights advocates and organizations have denounced this model for decades; yet, those in power keep pushing it.

• There is great deal of diversity within and between regions/sub-regions in terms of the impact of the crisis. Similarly, women – depending on their specific location within a society – are impacted differently by the crisis. Indeed, for many women in the global South, crises have been the norm – and this crisis has not changed things. For others, this crisis has exacerbated already existing structural obstacles.

• With regards to employment, much of the crisis’s impact on the South – and specifically in Asia – was caused by a reduction in global demand from the North and a subsequent loss of export-oriented jobs – an area in which women dominate.

• Women who lose jobs often move to the informal economy (where the majority are already women) and migrants often return to rural areas that have limited capacity to absorb them.

• Foreign debt has compounded the impact of the crisis, as governments have to spend much of their revenue on paying this back. Therefore, even if economies are growing (like Brazil, for example) there is little to no ability to invest in social spending or strengthen social protection. Moreover, international financial institutions exacerbate the impact of the crisis by imposing conditionalities that limit developing countries’ policy space and undermine human rights.

• Women’s rights activists must be at the table, shaping the responses to the crisis and pushing for a holistic model of development, a model grounded in human rights, gender equality and environmental sustainability. Those who caused the crisis in the first place can not be the ones who create the responses!

• Government responses need to be gender sensitive and strengthen women’s rights and aid must be delivered in line with international human rights obligations.

• A women’s rights perspective must be integrated into the proposals of the financial transaction tax.

• There is a need for more and better equality sex disaggregated data in general, and specifically on the gendered impact of the crisis.

• Women’s movements as well as other social movements are fragmented; there is a need to mobilize together, particular when responding to the crisis.

For more information, please see AWID’s sub-regional brief series – offering sub-regional perspectives on and analysis of the systemic crisis’s impact on women and women’s rights. See also Social Watch’s Gender Equity Index – which found that all economic gains women made were wiped out due to the financial crisis.