Transforming Economies beyond GDP

This jointly organised webinar Transforming Economies beyond GDP: towards a caring and feminist future with people, wellbeing and planet at the center is being held in the context of the United Nations Summit of the Future.

• Date & time: 21 September 2024, 9:15-10:45am EDT (UTC-4)

• Location: online: register here; and in New York (RSVP required for in-person)

register here

Concept

Current economies don’t work for people and the planet: gender gaps in the world of work are ever widening, care and social services are underfunded/cut in the name of austerity, and the climate emergency nears the point of no return. We urgently need a genuinely transformative shift towards economies and societies that centre care and wellbeing of people and planet, that invest in local decent care and green work, rather than increasing wealth for a few by remaining focused on neoliberal macroeconomic considerations.

Centring care is key to building sustainable futures and meeting the ambition of Beijing and Leave No One Behind. When we recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care and domestic work, and when we ensure fair reward and representation for paid care work, we are tackling some of the biggest drivers of gender injustice. We know gender inequality and systematic denials of women’s rights are both a cause and a consequence of much of the world's poverty and injustice that we are trying to address with the 2030 agenda - so reorienting our economies to centre care for people and the planet is a fundamental strategy to address these injustices, thereby achieving a future that effectively leaves no one behind. Care itself is critical to dealing with several other development issues, such as climate change, ageing populations, and humanitarian and health crises.

The global COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of care and universal public services to fulfil human rights, as well as the fragility of these systems when they are commercialised, under-resourced, and under-valued. Deprioritization of care services in the context of high debt, austerity measures, or militarised spending are real risks. When crises occur, women and girls are disproportionately impacted and often carry the cost with increased unpaid care work. An equitable and gender-just economic model needs to look beyond traditional measures like GDP for tracking success. We need to put care front and centre, and reorient our economies for sustainable, human rights-based, and gender-just futures. This includes commonly agreeing on aims and measures of progress that meaningfully move us beyond GDP, and collectively reimagining measures that see development through a decolonial feminist lens. Metrics for progress beyond GDP need to encompass gendered and other intersecting dimensions of equality, unpaid care and domestic work, decent work (including for those in the informal sector), and universal quality and gender-transformative public services like health, education, care and social protection. To be accurate and effective, it is vital these new aims and metrics are designed and delivered in ways that reflect the lived realities of women in all their diversity and ensure accountability to them.

Held on the sidelines of the Summit of the Future, this interactive panel discussion will reflect on negotiations on the Pact of the Future and explore its potential for concrete action and building caring societies. It will seek to identify actions and ways forward in answer to two connected sets of questions:

Part one

Given the minimal language on care in the Pact, how do we steer the vital transformative shift away from the current exploitative economic model toward economies and societies that instead centre care and wellbeing of people and planet? What aspects of the Pact, and other commitments, can we draw on to ensure States act to situate care as a social good and a cornerstone of sustainable futures?

Part two

How can we use the Pact's commitment to develop beyond-GDP metrics to drive this transformative shift? What do these metrics need to capture - in both design and delivery - to help reorient our economies around care for people and planet?