OFiP22 Day 4 - Panel: Feminist alternatives and gender-transformative public services

The COVID pandemic has brutally confirmed how the sexual division of labour in the private and public domains endures and produces systematically uneven gender power relations.

Published on

Dec 2, 2022

Source

OFIP GROUP

This division continues to obstruct women, feminised gender identities and gender non-conforming people from enjoying equal conditions and opportunities in life.

Multiple crises have converged. The care crisis, in particular, has confirmed that care is gendered and has highlighted some profound contradictions:

  • Women’s “traditional” labour in unpaid care work intensification.

  • Women’s “traditional” labour in paid care work extraction, commodification, precarity and exploitation, including in the global care chains.

  • A broken or inexistent global care system with major gaps in funding provisions that have fallen prey to outsourcing and privatisation.

  • Overexposure to domestic violence, femicide, and violence in the world of work

  • The intersecting structures of discrimination that confront women to the worst forms of living and working conditions.

We have seen the huge gender impacts of this period on the provision and access to public services, including:

  • How women’s “traditional” work carries the first responsibility of filling the gaps that privatised or inexistent public services leave. This situation increases poverty and feminises it.

  • Women’s sexual and reproductive rights advances and setbacks, which are also a matter for public services.

  • Weakening of the ability of public services to respond to women’s rights demands

  • The contradictions between public services making inequality more bearable, or really transforming unequal gender power relations.

  • The postponement of gender budgeting due to the shortage of public financing for public services impacted by debt, trade agreements in public services and uneven fiscal policies.

Lack of political power and democratic participation has been the rule in accordance with insufficient women’s representation in decision-making processes at all levels.

However, one victory we need to claim is the rise of the feminist movement globally fighting for rights and body integrity, but also combating the economic system, patriarchy and coloniality.

One expression of this movement and thinking will join the Our Future is Public Conference in Santiago de Chile, to debate feminist alternatives for gender-transformative public services as the core of gender justice.

Keynote speakers

  • Magdalena Sepúlveda, Executive Director of GI-ESCR, Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

  • Rosa Pavanelli, General Secretary of Public Services International (PSI)

  • Wangari Kinoti, Global Lead for Women's Rights and Feminist Alternatives at ActionAid International

  • Âurea Mouzinho, Global Policy Advocacy and Campaigns Coordinator, Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ)

  • Liz Nelson, Director Tax Justice and Human Rights, Tax Justice Network

Moderator

  • Camila Miranda, Fundación Nodo XXI

Subscribe for weekly updates