This working group is temporarily on hold to restart in October of 2023.
This Working Group aims to develop concrete projects to implement feminist economic literacy training, currently planned for Latin America and Western Balkans. Feminist Economic Literacy is non-formal education that all women can benefit from as a tool of empowerment to publicly participate in debating and setting economic policy. It aims to help people challenge destructive myths and create positive policy or community alternatives.
A main of activity of this Working Group is to function as a project group that aims to raise funds and implement these two related projects. This Working Group welcomes WIDE+ members, academics, activists and professionals to join on a voluntary capacity in order to develop this project.
The group meets up through zoom around 6 times a year and works through ad-hoc collaboration supported by WIDE+ staff in implementation in between meetings.
It aims to address topics such as: gender and the labour markets including social protection, informal labour and labour rights, care economy and care work as well as transformative care politics, gender budgeting, the financialisation of the economy, austerity policies and their alternatives, precarity, socio-ecological transformation, decarbonization, alternative solidarity economy, degrowth versus mainstream model of economic ‘growth’, extractivism of data and nature, including the digital economy, gender & tax justice, migration and the economy, and free trade policy.
For interest and further information, contact Gea Meijers at, info@wide-network.org
Photo by Anna Auza on Unsplash.
Background: WIDE+ and Feminist Economic Literacy
WIDE –the predecessor to WIDE+- developed a lot of materials to explain gendered roles in the economies from a feminist perspective with the method of popular education. Popular education connects the knowledge of the persons being educated (reflecting on their situation) to the information offered. It is an interactive form of educating that consists of tools and analysis to make complex ideas understandable and to uncover systemic issues behind what we observe.
While the old economic literacy developed by WIDE is still really useful, we identified there is a need for updated analysis that reflects on recent political-economic developments as well as translate new insights into more accessible analysis, while bringing these different strands of new developments and knowledge together.
What Does Feminist Economic Literacy adds in value?
- It is a tool for engendering broad public participation in debating and setting economic policy, economic literacy promotes a framework for revealing the structural causes of economic and social problems.
- It can help us to challenge destructive economic myths, to create positive policy alternatives, and to enhance community/neighborhood alternatives. Feminist economic literacy encourages people to dig deeper and find connections between different economic phenomena, so that more sustainable solutions can be sought.