Women Organizing for Economic Democracy

With no sustainable economic alternatives in sight, women everywhere are creating their own responses to economic crises. From savings and loan clubs and workers cooperatives to sophisticated political campaigns against corporate land grabs and the exploitation of natural resources, women are developing alternative models and organizing collectively to demand economic power and rights. Yet, these innovations and stories of survival largely occur under the radar, unaided, and sometimes even undermined, by political and economic policies that are completely removed from the reality of women’s lives.

At the heart of women’s economic inequality and deepening poverty is a democracy deficit. Governments, international financial institutions, civil society actors, private companies, and others are all influential in determining whose economic and social interests are advanced and how. Yet most people, including poor women, don’t know how to engage with these entities, much less hold them accountable for the economic injustices they create. In turn, policy prescriptions are based on ideology; concepts such as free market economies and consumer-driven capitalism that are elevated to the status of norms, insinuating themselves as the “natural order” of things. In reality, these policies enable the consolidation of wealth and further marginalize and exploit women, serving as the basis for shredding social safety nets, human rights, and environmental protections.

What is Economic Democracy?

"Economic democracy" represents a vision in which access to and control over the world’s resources – material, financial, human, and natural – are shaped by democratic, transparent, and accountable systems and institutions. Where those who have the most to gain from economic justice – women – are truly shaping economic policy, development paradigms, and poverty reduction strategies and where progress is measured from the ground up, in the lives, dignity, and well-being of individual women. Economic democracy includes:

• Meeting women’s basic needs for survival;
• Demystifying economic policies and policy-making so that everyone knows how they can influence decision-making;
• Measuring the success of poverty-reduction and economic empowerment strategies from in terms of improvements to the lives, dignity, and well-being of individual women;
• Modeling and promoting alternative economic arrangements based on solidarity, ethical production, human rights, and environmental sustainability;
• Building and leveraging collective economic power – for example, through savings and loan clubs, workers’ collectives, or through consumer power.

Learning about...

Democratizing economic policymaking: Citizen engagement and global economic power

Written from an institutional perspective, this report discusses opportunities and challenges for making global economic policymaking more democratic and responsive to peoples’ everyday realities. It includes an analysis of the different places and spaces in which power operates to shape peoples’ economic realities and concludes with an overview of potential strategies such as “Global Economy Schools” to empower individuals to identify, deconstruct, and challenge the multiple forces – economic policies, social norms, and political power – that shape their economic well-being and lives.

Envisioning a new
economic world order

It’s easy to assume that global economics are value-neutral and simply reflect the “natural” order of things. In reality, our economic world order is shaped by distinct ideologies and beliefs about who should have access to and control over what resources, such as education, property, credit, and even time. The predominant paradigm is based on neoliberal and capitalist principles that promote free markets, unregulated trade, consumer-driven growth, and privatization of essential services, for example. But genuine alternatives exist and have always existed.

See resources for Evisioning a new economic order.

Economic literacy tools

Tools and resources: For many people around the world, economic policy is shrouded in the mystique of “expertise” that tends to obscure the politics behind the economics and prevents citizens from participating fully and openly in economic policy making. This selection of resources aims to equip activists with practical information and tools to form their own critical analysis of current economic policies and develop strategies for making them more democratic, just, and humane.

Visit Economic literacy tools