Economic Justice
In an ideal ‘economically just’ world, all persons regardless of their unique and intersecting characteristics would enjoy their fundamental right to ‘access’ and ‘control’ over productive resources as well as benefits, while meaningfully contributing to national and global development.
However, we do not live in this ‘ideal world’ because the mere foundation of orthodox economics and its frameworks fail to account for and recognize the indispensable role that women and girls play in ensuring economic growth through their contributions to the care economy and the informal sector. This has led to the assumption that ‘economics’ is a gender-neutral field, hence macro-economic policies have been formulated from this basis, leading to an underwhelming investment in social protection, gender responsive public services and public debt management.
FOR EQUALITY AFRICA
Feminist Macroeconomics Alliance (FMA)
The Feminist Macro Economics Alliance – Malawi (FEAM) is a women’s rights-centered coalition working to deepen knowledge, capacity, and skills of young women and their allies to engage and influence macro-economic policies and frameworks including debt management from a feminist perspective to achieve economic justice for women in Malawi.
Decent Work Consortium
Decent work as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO), encompasses; opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income; security in the workplace and social protection for families; better prospects for personal development and social integration; freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives; equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men. Malawi developed the ‘Decent Work Country Program 2011 – 2016 (MDWCP)’ following consultations with various stakeholders, to coordinate, harmonize and align technical assistance and financial resources around an achievable set of priority outcomes related to the promotion of the ILO’s global Decent Work Agenda. However, minimal change has occurred and the overall aspirations relayed in the strategy have not been actualized.
The Feminist-Macro Economics Academy (FEMA) is a learning platform for young women from diverse backgrounds designed to enhance their capacities to understand, analyse and interpret macroeconomic issues and policies as well as monitor public debt.
The Academy is run under the Activist-Her Project, a project funded by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, being implemented by For Equality, ActionAid Malawi, and Activista Youth Network, with support from the Feminist Macroeconomics Alliance – Malawi.
#SheActs4Feminomics
For Equality in early 2022 received support from Urgent Action Fund (UAF) to ‘strengthen feminist coordination for accountability on Malawi economic justice and Generation Equality Forum Malawi commitments. The initiative dwelled on the production of tools and resources such an accountability framework, reporting template and community scorecard. Although the tools were developed, the success was determined by continued engagements with CSOs and communities to operationalize the tools, which was a challenge due to financial bottlenecks.
Building from this, FE began implementing work under the #SheActs4Feminomics project, with further support from UAF, with the aim of building and maintaining a knowledge base on the macro-level policy environment and it’s impacts on economic justice with a focus on women owned SMEs, land and labour rights; strengthening capacities of feminists, women’s rights organizations, young women activists and media practitioners in Malawi to understand, analyse, communicate, lobby and advocate for a just and transformative macroeconomic architecture from a feminist perspective and, strengthen macro-level policy and regulatory frameworks to address challenges faced by women owned SMEs.
