Economic empowerment

What organizing and resident-run community land trusts make possible....

An inspiring news story for a change. A collective of single parent mothers, Moms 4 Housing, reclaimed a home they were about to be evicted from. They paired up with the Oakland Community Land Trust. The Mayor and Council gave them first rights of refusal for all of the properties from the company they were fighting, Wedgewood.

This is what is possible with strong organizing- heat from the bottom that leads to heat from the top!

Moms 4 Housing Collective. Photo: Guardian

Moms 4 Housing Collective. Photo: Guardian

Studying Economics? Read outside the box. The box is part of the problem.

Someone asked what they should be reading that is interesting in terms of economics. I’d recommend first reading something close to the ground and organizing, social movements. This is paper on feminist economics put out by Womankind Worldwide. This is what social and feminist movements globally have analyzed with respect to macroeconomics, the Bretton Woods institutions, illicit financial flows, corporate accountability, decent work, social protection, public services and human rights. The first thing to know is that these are all economic issues. https://world-psi.org/uncsw/word...

Then, get beyond Friedman and Smith. Elinor Ostrom (only woman to have received the Nobel prize for economics), Henry George, Karl Polayni have shaped our economic-political understanding of “commons” and more solidarity approaches to economics. For more contemporary writers, I would add feminist economists Silvia Frederici, Naila Kabeer as well as Kate Raworth.

Silvia Frederici, Italian-american scholar, activist. She critiques Marx and explores links between capitalist accumulation, women’s reproductive labour and bodily exploitation. Also alternative pathways and the political philosophy of the commons and public freedoms. See “Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation.

Naila Kabeer is an London School of Economics scholar, originally from India. She has shaped a lot of practice and thinking around women’s economic empowerment. That it isn’t, first of all, only about financial and economic matters. It includes and is intimately tied to gender-based violence and other structural gendered norms. It includes policy levers like social protection, child care policy, recognition and supports for the care economy.

A more mainstream economist doing some interesting work is Kate Raworth from the UK. She founded the idea of doughnut economics. Instead of simple measures of wealth, even linear trends, she explores environmental and climatic thresholds in combination with human and economic development measures. The country closest to finding the sweet spot in these is Vietnam, so the question is: could we all live like Vietnam? In Canada or Turtle Island, we’re doing well on the social and abysmal on the bio-physical transgressions. What are we each willing to give up, willing to risk is the big question here?

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(Source: Kate Raworth, The Earthbound Report).





Researching women's economic empowerment

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Sisters Ink has just been awarded a contract to support IDRC with an internal learning evaluation on the research funded to support youth and women’s economic empowerment. Nanci led a Mid-Term Evaluation for part of this program, GrOW. There were 14 research partnerships between North-South, South-South research agencies and universities. 

Highly rated research partnerships (quality; building local capacity; positioning for policy influence) had strong coherence between qualitative and quantitative methods, clarity on policy uptake and good governance marked by complementarity of partners, a mix of scientific rigour and context knowledge with at least one partner having a track-record for evidence-based policy research. Smaller mixed North-South partnerships with two partner institutions both academe and practitioner as well as academic North-South partnerships demonstrated stronger early results than larger consortiums and research projects only based in the South. 

What is the role of research in redressing power dynamics? The program demonstrates that the three outcomes (quality research; building local capacity; policy influence) can be mutually reinforcing but cannot be assumed. 

Reducing vulnerability in HIV vulnerable youth, orphans and vulnerable children

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Sisters Ink did a contract for FHI360 to review evidence related to evaluations and research on financial education for HIV vulnerable youth, orphans and vulnerable children. Evidence was limited in both scope and strength. However, a combined effect was found on HIV-related outcomes particularly programs integrating financial education with sexual and reproductive health supports. 

Not nearly enough is known about the various program and contextual “levers” that led to improved economic or health outcomes. Sometimes they are related. For example, we know that peer and trusted adult counselling can help. However, we don’t know how community-based programs compare to schools, for example. We need more studies to better understand the role that “self-efficacy” or agency plays in linking economic strengthening supports with asset building. 

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