WIDE+ was part of two workshops on feminist economic literacy and gender & trade policy with a dedicated team of WIDE+ members and partners that each have a huge amount of expertise in feminist economic issues.
Firstly, WIDE+ was a co-organiser of a workshop on popular feminist economics: how to reflect on economic issues easily and collectively from a feminist perspective. This means that the economy is discussed holistically that includes (unpaid) care work for people (like raising children) but also illegal or ‘grey’ activities. It is of paramount importance to realise that most people in the world do not work in the formal economy.
The popular aspect of the feminist economic literacy means that the methodology is one that makes each person an expert. It asks for easy to use tools, like asking people to make a ‘tableau’: a picture in which people express a certain thought and emotion. This workshop was made possible by among others by WIDE+ members Silke Steinhilber, Heike Wach, and Edme Dominguez.
WIDE+ was responsible for a workshop on gender and trade. In this workshop we covered a range of economic processes. Christa Wichterich spoke about international migration chains of care provided mostly by women through bilateral contracts between countries.
Patricia Munoz Cabrera reflected on the impact of trade policy and human rights conventions on Lithium extractivism in Chile, in which local indigenous groups were able to resist successfully some extractivist activities that went against indigenous rights.
Edme Dominguez addressed the different trade agreements that Mexico had signed and how it enhanced the inhumane labour conditions in the maquiladoras.
Mirela Arqimandriti spoke about the labour conditions in trade agreements with Albania and how the challenge is still the implementation. There was no time to reflect on similar challenges for female entrepreneurs.
Gea Meijers reflected on the discriminatory impacts that algorithms likely have, with reflections from the FINDHR project WIDE+ is part of. She concluded there is a mismatch between the approach of EU trade policy and those discussed in its digital policy that equally considers risks of AI tools, rights to anti-discrimination and privacy, among others.
