Feminist Economy: A Look from the Resistance

Un

FEMINIST ECONOMY A LOOK FROM THE RESISTANCE

Berta Cáceres International Feminist School

INTRODUCTION Feminist economy: theory, practices and proposals of women and peoples in movement.

INTRODUCTION A tool for critique, In our struggle against neoliberalism, free trade agreements and transnational corporations. that, at the same time, guides our proposals & practices of transformation. (sustainability of life, solidarity economy, environmental justice, agroecology and food sovereignty, integration of peoples).

INTRODUCTION Feminist economy articulates our transformation project.

It is not just another issue or topic (it helps to overcome the fragmentation of agendas and to build programmatic syntheses).

Critiques It criticizes the androcentrism of the dominant economy: the construction of a mode of thought and analysis that considers the White man as the universal subject.

From this experience, a false vision of autonomous people with total availability for the market is constructed.

Contributions Feminist economy recognizes and incorporates women’s economic experience: women are economic agents.

It unveils the sphere of reproduction as the basis of the economy and, therefore, emphasizes women’s work, highlighting the sexual and racial division of labor.

Critiques Criticizes the reduction of the economy to the monetary, to what has exchange value and circulates in the market.

Contributions Feminist economy extends the boundaries of the economy to all processes, relationships and work necessary for the sustainability of life.

Tool for analysis and action: it shifts the focus to the sustainability of life, rather than the functioning of the market.

Critiques The dominant economy depends on a reduction of the concept of work to employment. It makes invisible other social divisions of labor (sexual, racial, international).

The dominant economy hides the fact that wage labor depends on domestic and care work.

Contributions Feminist economy makes visible domestic work and the work of caring for people and nature in households and communities.

In addition to visibility, it proposes to reorganize it, overcoming sexual, racial and international divisions of labor.

Illustration: Feminist Economy Course SOF- Sempreviva Organização Feminista

Critiques It criticizes the dichotomies and binarisms that separate and hierarchize production/reproduction; nature/culture; reason/emotion.

Contributions emphasizes the interrelation and inseparability between the spheres of life: production-reproduction; nature-culture, reason-emotion.

Source: Alianza Política Sector de Mujeres de Guatemala

No fragmentación de las luchas

Critiques It questions and confronts the logic of capital accumulation that advances over bodies, jobs and territories.

The sustainability of life is incompatible with the logic of capital: capital vs. life conflict.

Contributions

Sustainability of life is at the center.

Eco-dependence and interdependence are principles.

Starting from the processes that sustain life nature, care, the common/community - the needs and what should guide the State and the markets built on a different logic (solidarity, complementarity) are situated.

Principles of feminist economy as an emancipatory project

Sustainability of life at the center; Reorganization based on solidarity, equality and equity of life-sustaining processes; Confront the dynamics of the system of oppression (racism, class, gender) in an comprehensive way in the proposals. We must pay attention and be careful of the tramps of international organizations and conciliation policies that do not touch the structures of oppression; Non-fragmentation of struggles.