Care and Economic Crisis

Mainstream economics frequently overlooks the gendered structures that shape economies and the paid and unpaid work through which households, communities and societies are sustained. Feminist economics responds by placing human needs, wellbeing and social reproduction at the centre of economic analysis.

The Institute for Economic Justice hosted its second Feminist Economics Summer School under the theme Care and Economic Crisis: History, Theory and Methodology in Feminist Economics. The School brought together scholars, researchers, policymakers and practitioners from across Africa to develop their understanding of feminist economics and its application to research, policy and advocacy.

FESS 2022 examined the relationship between the care economy and economic crisis, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic exposed the essential contribution of care work while intensifying the unequal responsibility placed on women to sustain households and communities amid illness, unemployment and inadequate public services.

The programme located these experiences within a longer history of structural adjustment and neoliberal economic policy in Africa. Participants considered how responses to economic crises frequently reduce public spending and reinforce market-centred policies, with particularly damaging consequences for women. They also interrogated conventional measures such as gross domestic product, which conceal unpaid and non-market activities that are essential to the functioning of economies.

The curriculum explored:

• economic crises in historical context and the question of care;
• theoretical interventions into debates about care;
• structural approaches to care;
• financing a care economy; and
• empirical approaches and critiques.

Participants examined different models of care, the history of welfare and social policy in the Global South, and the role of the state in supporting social reproduction. Discussions also considered how care systems could be financed and how feminist research methods could make unpaid work and gendered economic inequalities more visible.

The School drew on historical and contemporary debates in feminist economics and feminist political economy, alongside intersectional, decolonial and African feminist approaches. It connected theoretical and methodological differences to concrete differences in public policy.

FESS 2022 also helped build a multidisciplinary community of feminist economic scholars and practitioners. Through shared learning and the development of research and advocacy projects, participants strengthened a growing network working to advance feminist economic analysis across Africa.