Feminisms

“Life and Blood of our country, but we only have debt!”

5 March 2020 - by Amali Wedagedara

More than 700 women from 14 districts came to Colombo on February 27 to protest against government inaction on the microfinance debt crisis. Recalling a popular election slogan during the last Presidential election they demanded that the promise be kept, and microfinance debt be cancelled. (...)
Feminisation of micro credit

20 February 2020 - by Nalini Ratnarajah

The eighth CADTM South Asia regional workshop was successfully held in Colombo (Sri Lanka) from February 18-19, 2020 with participants from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Morocco, Belgium and France. Around forty delegates, representing social movements (peasants’ movements, feminists, (...)
Unitedly we fight against debt and all other oppressions!

2 February 2020 - by CADTM Asia

A region that was the poster boy of neo-liberal growth and for its emerging middle class is back in news for wrong reasons. The 2018 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) reveals higher incidences of poverty in the (...)
The Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) on private debt and human rights

13 January 2020 - by Chiara Filoni, Eva Betavatzi, Mats Lucia Bayer

This is our contribution to the appeal made by the UN Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights, Mr. Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky. Mr. Bohoslavsky, in the course of preparing his next (...)
How Is The Agrarian Distress In Maharashtra Affecting Women

23 December 2019 - by Manjima Misra

The plight of farm widows remains underreported due to lack of data, dearth of special focus on the gendered dimension of agrarian distress, policy paralysis and apathy of government. Women from suicide affected agricultural households suffer on multiple levels due to the burden of overwhelming (...)
No quick fixes to solve household debt crisis!

22 December 2019 - by Amali Wedagedara

Thanks to elections, rural debt problem has reappeared as a prominent issue in the public domain. While some candidates have vouched to cancel the rural debt, others have pledged to find solutions to rural indebtedness and agrarian crisis. Such accentuated attention from the people who seek (...)
Microfinance has been a nightmare for the global south. Sri Lanka shows that there is an alternative

12 September 2019 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar, Niyanthini Kadirgamar

The global hegemony of finance capital is based on burgeoning household debt accompanied by devastating dispossession. This is more evident in peripheral societies, where state investment in the rural economy is abandoned for the myth of expanding incomes through self-employment with the help (...)
Feminists on the front lines of the Algerian uprising

10 September 2019 - by Leïla Ouitis

Since the start of the uprising, women have taken up an increasingly prominent role, demanding gender equality and the abolition of the patriarchal Family Code. When in early February Algeria’s ailing octogenarian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his intention to run for the presidency (...)
World Bank’s women entrepreneur initiatives just “smoke and mirrors”

30 August 2019 - by Bretton Woods Project

In April, the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), the financial intermediary brainchild of Ivanka Trump housed and managed by the World Bank, hosted its West Africa regional summit. In conversation with World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva, Ivanka Trump introduced We-Fi commenting, (...)
Women’s/Feminist Strike in Switzerland: A Step Forward on the Road of the Internationalization of Feminist Struggles

13 August 2019 - by Stéfanie Prezioso

“But what do they want?” was the question since the first Feminist Conference in June 2018 held in Lausanne and its call for a Women*’s / Feminist strike to be held a year later. On the 14th of June 2019, exactly 28 years after the first-ever women*’s strike in Switzerland, more than half a million (...)
Explaining gender violence  in the neoliberal era

27 May 2019 - by Tithi Bhattacharya

Let us begin with an image: a naked white man pursuing a low-wage Black female asylum seeker down the corridors of an expensive Manhattan hotel in order to force her to have sex with him. The man, of course, is the then-director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), French politician (...)
Feminism and ecology: the same struggle? – The shaping of ecofeminism

13 May 2019 - by Marijke Colle

The ecofeminist movement was born a few decades ago from the observation that there is an analogy between the exploitation of women and the exploitation of nature. In the current context of urgency and collapse and as the concept of the convergence of struggles resurfaces, interest in this (...)
24^th April, International Day of Feminist Solidarity

23 April 2019 - by World March of Women

In 2013 over 1,000 women died and many others were injured as a result of the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, Asia. These women worked in inhumane conditions in exchange for starvation wages. The news shocked the world. We, women of the World March, join our voices with those (...)
Care debt: patriarchy and capital on the offensive, feminist economics as a proposal

10 April 2019 - by Blanca Bayas

In recent years, the concept of “care debt”, associated with the time and work women have devoted to domestic and care tasks, has been widespread, thus sustaining the impact of the current crisis and making the functioning of the capitalist and patriarchal system viable. What does the idea of (...)
“We will not be silenced” – Women’s stories from the frontline of Sudan’s revolution must be told

25 March 2019 - by Sondos Al Ali, Nazik Awad

Women are leading Sudan’s revolt against religious fundamentalism. As in Egypt and Saudi Arabia they face a violent backlash. But they must win. Sudanese women are fighting back against the Islamist state of Sudan after 30 years of oppression and humiliation. Major hikes in basic living (...)
#MeToo: A movement for women workers too!

8 March 2019 - by Sonia Mitralias

It has been more than two years since the emergence of the Me Too movement that unveiled the enormous extent of sexual harassment in the workplace and gender-based sexual violence around the world! Not at all ephemeral, this movement does not stop surprising us. Not only does it persist and now (...)
Appeal: Let’s make March 8^th, 2019 a women’s strike, a day of solidarity among women

3 March 2019 - by ATTAC/CADTM Maroc

Appeal Let’s make March 8th, 2019 a women’s strike, a day of solidarity among women. In defense of our economic, social and legal demands. Our rejection to all forms of violence in private and public places. Let’s make our voice heard against all forms of discrimination, inequity and (...)
Rage and Liberation. Bulgarian women against violence

11 February 2019 - by LevFem

March 8th – The Weekly Striker n. 1 : Rage and Liberation. Bulgarian women against violence For the third year, the global women’s strike is landing on dozens of countries on the 8th of march. The unexpected and enduring strength of this movement is testified by the tremendous circulation of (...)
Tunisia: the long march of the feminists for full equality in the law

5 October 2018 - by Joseph Daher , Ahlem Belhadj

In Tunisia, major mobilizations led by feminist organizations have taken place in recent weeks to demand full equality in the law, particularly with regard to the Tunisian Personal Status Code (CSP). The CSP consists of a series of legal provisions governing marital relations between men and (...)
Sri Lanka: Does microfinance really empower women?

2 October 2018 - by Cat’s Eye

As women were deemed to be thrifty, able to manage with meagre resources and responsible borrowers, they became the targets for such predatory lending. We are witnessing large protests across the war-torn regions in the north and east, urging the Government to restrict the activities of (...)
Microfinance: Does it empower women?

18 September 2018 - by Independent collective of feminists

We are witnessing large protests across the war-torn regions in the north and east, urging the Government to restrict the activities of microfinance companies offering loans to poor women at exorbitantly high interest rates. Women’s groups in other parts of the country are also voicing their (...)
Impact of economic reforms and austerity measures on women’s human rights

14 September 2018 - by Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky

The UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt just released his latest report to the UN General Assembly on Gender and Austerity, to which CADTM has contributed. The report is part of his larger piece of work on developing guiding principles on human rights impact assessments of macroeconomic (...)
How do patriarchy and capitalism jointly reinforce the oppression of women?

13 September 2018 - by Camille Bruneau

In the summary of the first chapter, we have laid out a number arguments for the necessity of feminism today. They include violence, the lack or suppression of fundamental rights, under-representation in politics, poverty, economic marginalization and the threat posed by anti-feminist (...)
Debts and feminisms: an overview of the book project – first chapter

13 August 2018 - by Camille Bruneau

Feminism and the situation of women is an ever-growing concern for the CADTM network, which becomes almost unavoidable in the broad fight against domination(s). Women are indeed impacted by debt in several ways; as the main contractors of micro-credits, as the caretakers that have a higher (...)
Whether in the South or in the North, women bear the burdens of the debt crisis and structural adjustment policies

23 March 2018 - by Chiara Filoni

The CADTM (Committee for the abolition of illegitimate debt) is an International network that has, over the past thirty years, warned of the effects of illegitimate debt and structural adjustment policies. Public debt and the austerity measures taken to reduce it have social and economic (...)