Methods, Methodologies, and Epistemologies
The Institute for Economic Justice hosted the fifth Feminist Economics Summer School (FESS), bringing together activists, researchers, policymakers and practitioners from across Africa to strengthen feminist approaches to economic research, advocacy and policymaking.
FESS forms part of the IEJ’s African Feminist Economics: Building Research Capacity and Policy Networks project. Through the School, participants develop the theoretical, methodological and practical tools needed to challenge orthodox economic thinking and advance economic policies centred on human needs, wellbeing and justice.
The 2025 theme, Methods, Methodologies, and Epistemologies, invited participants to examine the foundations of feminist economic inquiry. What counts as knowledge? Who is recognised as a legitimate knower? Which experiences and forms of evidence are excluded by conventional economics? And what makes an economic research method distinctly feminist?
The programme began by situating feminist economics within critical debates about knowledge production and the foundations of economic thought. Participants considered how feminist economics has moved from the margins into academic and policy institutions—and the risks of co-option, depoliticisation and the continued marginalisation of African, intersectional and Global South perspectives.
Sessions then connected these debates to practical research and policy tools. Topics included care and social reproduction, feminist critiques of GDP, time-use data, feminist approaches to quantitative evidence, ethnography, postcolonial feminist praxis and community-based knowledge production. A case study of Kenya’s National Care Strategy demonstrated how time-use evidence can inform public policy.
In collaboration with the UK Women’s Budget Group, the School also explored Gender-Responsive Budgeting as a practical feminist method for identifying and addressing the gendered effects of fiscal policy.
Popular education, peer learning and participants’ lived experience were central to the School’s methodology. The programme concluded with participation in the Rethinking Economics for Africa Festival and a collective reflection on applying the week’s learning to research, activism and policymaking.
Recordings featuring Asanda-Jonas Benya, Ritu Verma, Nonzuzo Mbokazi and Samah Krichah capture key discussions on feminist epistemology, the mainstreaming of feminist economics, care and social reproduction, and gender-responsive budgeting.