Among all the social movements of the past century, the struggle for women’s rights and gender equality has been the most transformative in terms of the deep tectonic shifts it has created in the social terrain, yet skepticism about the value of funding women's rights work persists

If you are invisible as a producer in the GDP, you are invisible in the distribution of benefits in the economic framework of  the national budget. As feminists we must embrace an ecological model if we are to transform economic power, and the market and commodification must be seen as the servants of such an approach. 

The argument is being made that “food sovereignty” is an organising principle so demonstrably strong that it has the potential to transform economic power. Can we really invest in it as the ecological principle to take us into the 21^st century? Jenny Allsopp reports from the AWID Forum 2012

How can we empower women to participate in existing economic structures but transform them? We need a model of economic power and citizenship that is not simply about sustaining capital or growth, but sustaining and celebrating life itself.  Jenny Allsopp reports directly from the AWID Forum 2012. Here are parts two and three of her report.

How far can the flourishing "participatory state feminism" in Brazil expand into the state apparatus in order to counter the absence of women in decision making positions and redefine women's place in society?   

Twenty years of conflict has destroyed the social fabric of Casamance. The only way to re-instate security and eradicate famine in an area once known as the bread-basket of Senegal is to ask the women farmers, says Tabara Ndiaye

In the global context of economic insecurity and emerging 'care crises', there is a real risk that the development industry becomes complicit in compounding women’s burden of unpaid care and entrenching traditional gender roles -  something we must guard against, argues Emily Esplen