[Brussels, 19 June 2017] Feminist economics has always sought to make visible women’s unpaid work and to distrust the consensus about how our economies should work. The EWL wants to translate those visions of a better economic future to action, and will set out our calls for a feminist economy in a Purple Pact.
To create this, the EWL established a feminist economics working group that met for the first time in October 2016. There members agreed on the key principles for a feminist economic model. This model must be: transformative, democratic, transparent, collective, sustainable, participatory, caring, just, inclusive, re-distributive and include solidarity, diversity, and parity. The second meeting of the working group took place on the 7-8 June, during the EWL Women’s Forum week.
The meeting discussed the principles of basic income, and heard from experts on minimum income and gender tax justice. We will continue to explore the concept of universal basic income in more detail. The working group will then be collaborating to refine our proposals for the broad content of the Purple Pact which will also include actions that will move us towards this new feminist economic model.
Neoliberal austerity economics has impoverished women across Europe. It has widened women’s inequality with men. It has displaced the burden of responsibility for the financial crisis onto women. It has reduced pay, pensions, and services. It has landed on women who were already economically unequal, because – among many things – of the gender pay gap, the unequal caring roles that women assume, and the way that social security systems and housing programmes are designed.
Over the coming years the EWL will use the Pact to sign up those with power and influence over the economy to make change happen.
