The perspective presented below is the result of the work developed by the members of the Feminist Economics Working Group GT 2016-2019, which is renewing its application to continue being part of the Clacso Working Groups in the period 2019-2021.

From a feminist economics perspective, we have characterized the current crisis as a reproductive crisis to recognize how feminism breaks with the understanding of crisis as a product of capital accumulation cycles, emphasizing the fundamental aspects of life that are burdened by the imperative of ever-increasing profits. “The term ‘crisis’ does not refer to episodic financial crashes, stock market falls, capital runs, and/or bankruptcies in speculative sectors. Although the term is frequently used in the orthodox view of economics to designate some of these events. In this work, we speak of a ‘reproductive crisis,’ referring to the systematic exclusion of large sectors of the population from access to the resources essential to satisfy their biological and social reproductive needs. Hence, the current economic system is in crisis, despite attempts to situate this reproductive crisis exclusively within the social sphere and as external to the economy” (Quiroga, 2008).

This crisis is also being analyzed in its multidimensionality (financial, economic, environmental, food-related) to frame it as a civilizational crisis and to account for the human, non-human, and planetary limits inherent in the current mode of production. Furthermore, as Federici (2019) states, “The capitalist crisis has meant very different things for women, depending on the part of the world, but there are also common elements. Women today face, in a very different but powerful way, a profound crisis of reproduction at all levels as a consequence of the failure of the welfare state, the failure of the male wage, and the failure of full employment policies, which have forced many women to leave the home and take on a second job in addition to unpaid domestic work, so that now women's working day is endless. Women today must work both outside and inside the home.”

This manifests itself in the way women, through unpaid labor, absorb the costs of adjustment policies and public spending cuts, and mitigate the environmental consequences of (neo)extractivist processes. At the same time, they play a leading role in generating income to support households, either as sole providers or as “invisible” providers. This income is obtained through precarious participation in the labor market and/or within informal, self-managed, informal, and illegal economies. Ultimately, in the context of systemic crisis, women manage the daily reproduction of life through the overexploitation of their time and labor. While we can affirm that this is a global reality, which also affects the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, its specific manifestations in different countries and regions vary depending on multiple factors. And its impacts on diverse social groups are highly unequal, depending on the interconnected oppressions that define their position.

From a feminist perspective, it is argued that we are experiencing a process of reinvention and/or reinforcement of heteropatriarchal and capitalist control over women's bodies and lives. And, particularly from feminist economics, it is argued that female labor is becoming the unit for absorbing capital's crises.

In Latin America, the deepening of neoliberalism over the last few decades has led to greater impoverishment and instability for a large part of the population. The so-called “economic crises” have not only demonstrated the clear choice of governments to sustain the vast accumulation of capital rather than the population, but can also be argued to have been generated by the very economic policies that reduced the public sector's role and oriented the economy toward a market economy. However, in other countries, particularly in South America after the last decade, there appears to have been a break or weakening of the neoliberal paradigm, with a re-legitimization of state participation and an improvement in certain social indicators (including those related to income poverty). This experience of improved rights seems to be creating a barrier to the prolonged expansion of neoliberal governments. In the collective consciousness, the impact of state policies on the conditions of reproduction is cited as one of the essential reasons for a shift in neoliberal hegemony, as recently occurred in Argentina.

The heterogeneity of socioeconomic realities is a fundamental characteristic of the region. Despite this, it could perhaps be said that (neo)extractivism is its main homogenizing feature. This strategy encompasses the introduction of megaprojects based on the exploitation of natural resources, as well as the expansion of the agro-export model. It is pursued by both “neoliberal” and “progressive” governments, albeit with particularities in each case. The privatization, commodification, and appropriation of natural resources that characterize this approach imply the parallel construction of women's exclusion from the use, access, and management of these resources, as well as the deprivation of certain sectors of the population of their livelihoods, forcing them to migrate from their territories. This, in turn, fuels internal migration within countries, as well as intra- and interregional migration, in which women have been playing a leading role for decades.

In summary, one of the most powerful contributions of feminist economics lies in highlighting the fundamental conflict that currently affects the foundations of the entire social and economic system. This tension lies between two contradictory objectives: on the one hand, obtaining profits at the expense of destroying nature and exploiting human beings, and on the other hand, caring for and sustaining life (Picchio, 1992; Carrasco, 2003; Pérez Orozco, 2014).

The logic of capitalism demands its constant expansion by appropriating vital resources and energy in order to create surplus value. But in this movement aimed at increasing its margins of accumulation, capital disregards the conditions necessary for the daily reproduction of the vital substrate upon which it relies. It simply expects this substrate to always be there so it can extract the greatest profit, even at the expense of its own ruin. Faced with this absurdity, feminist economics reveals the transcendental nature of the sphere of reproduction for the functioning of all the structures that make up any society, including the productive structure. Its central premise is that the fundamental conditions for life are generated in the realm of reproduction, which is where bodies, identities, and relationships are produced and sustained daily in a space characterized by interdependence and ecodependence.

Feminist thought thus questions some of the dominant theoretical models in current economic science and proposes a paradigm shift that reorganizes its assumptions. One of the conceptual frameworks discussed is that of the neoclassical school, where the economic sphere is limited to what happens in markets, with the fundamental actor being a rational agent who makes decisions based on their individual self-interest in order to maximize profits in a context of scarcity. Its critique lies in the fact that this doctrine obscures and marginalizes unpaid or unvalued work, which is fundamental to the care of human life and whose performance is mostly carried out by women (Carrasco, 2006). Similarly, feminist economics highlights the flaws of the neoclassical model when it posits an ideal, autonomous, and unconditioned subject as the economic agent, who has no responsibilities beyond those derived from their productive function. Such an abstraction is androcentric because it refers to the figure of a male worker freed from domestic responsibilities, and it is also incorrect because it overlooks the reality of real people, who act following very diverse motivations, depend on each other and have numerous needs whose satisfaction is not obtained in the market.  

Feminist struggles have contributed to making reproductive labor visible and have allowed for the understanding that capitalism is based “on a specific type of worker—and consequently on a specific model of family, sexuality, and procreation—which has led to redefining the private sphere as a sphere of production relations and as a terrain for anti-capitalist struggles” (Silvia Federici, 2014:161). In other words, capitalism perpetuates the presence-absence of reproductive and care work. Because it is work that gives life and sustains it, it has had to be hidden, because “only in this way could the conflict between accumulation and the care of life be disguised, and the social illusion that markets were self-sufficient and wage laborers autonomous be created” (Amaia Pérez Orozco, 2006:19). The EF argues that what has been evident and blatantly made invisible is the relationship that care work maintains with capitalist accumulation.

In contrast to the market-centrism that characterizes traditional theories, the feminist turn places the conditions for the reproduction of life at the center of economic analysis, with Federici (2013) being a prominent exponent of this feminist perspective in a field that is not that of economics thought of as a discipline.

In short, this shift consists of placing the reproduction of life as the primary goal of economic activity, replacing the current paradigm that prioritizes the reproduction of capital. The arguments supporting this proposition are essentially twofold. The first, relatively simple and based on common sense, recognizes that any human activity, whatever its nature, lacks the necessary conditions for its realization without a vital foundation upon which to rely. Without human and non-human life, it is impossible to explain the existence of workers, businesses, the market, or even society itself. The second is ethical and political. Given the evident failure of markets, which only reinforce and amplify exclusion and inequality, it is urgent to advocate for new social configurations that ensure well-being for all. This is why feminist economics should not be understood as something limited exclusively to the interests of women. While we speak of crisis, alternatives have been developing in Latin America and the Caribbean. To fully understand these issues, it is necessary to incorporate reflections from other worldviews and analytical perspectives, such as those emerging from the multinational contexts of Ecuador and Bolivia, with the rise of concepts like “good living” (sumak kawsay in Quechua or suma q'amaña in Aymara), “dignified life” (lekil kux lejal in Tsotsil or Tseltal), and “collective good living” (tekoporã in Guarani). It is equally necessary to incorporate the reflections of Latin American, Afro-descendant, and community-based feminisms, which have been weaving together theoretical and practical frameworks to improve living conditions, not only for women but for all of society, understanding that each political history offers distinct and diverse options in every country of the region to confront the systemic crisis we face.

Like most branches of heterodox thought, feminist economics is not reducible to a single expression. Within its disciplinary boundaries, there are different emphases, styles of thought, methodological tools, and even disagreements and controversies. This heterogeneity is the result of a critical vocation that leads it to constantly revise its assumptions, as well as the situated nature of its analyses. The latter means that feminist economics cannot be practiced without taking into account the specific geography from which ideas are formulated and actions are carried out. Thinking about economics from Abya Yala, or Latin America, in this sense implies recognizing the particular historical processes of its peoples, their multiple social configurations, the different positions occupied by men and women, and the specific problems of territories connected in diverse ways to the structures of the world system.

One of the essential starting points for feminist economics formulated from this part of the world is recognizing the systemic links between patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism. It is impossible to adequately understand the functioning of our societies without considering the effects of the complex interplay between a cultural matrix that attributes greater power and value to men, the constant expansion of capital through its various mechanisms of dispossession and exploitation, and the persistence of a system of hierarchies, historically constructed from ethnic-racial, class, or territorial origin identities, where relations of domination are naturalized and subaltern subjects are constructed.

It follows that feminist economics produced in this social space assumes inequality and inequity in their multiple dimensions as fundamental axes of its analysis. This disparity manifests itself on different levels.

Although significant progress has been made in the educational achievements of the female population in recent decades, their participation in land ownership, paid work, spaces of recognition and prestige in the economic, political and social spheres, and access to social protection, show a significant gap between men and women.

At the same time, the machinery of inequality produces other contrasts across the continent, making the presence of deep social divides increasingly evident. The disconnect between slums lacking basic services and areas hypervalued by the real estate market, or the separation between populations whose lives are connected to the land they inhabit and elites formed on the ethereal space of transnational capital, are some examples of this disintegration.

These situations of injustice are intertwined with a long-term memory that makes intelligible the particular violence experienced by women, which in the region becomes more brutal in the face of the unfinished process of dispossession that entails a permanent pressure for territorial control, configuring "a permanent war against women" Segato (2016).

Therefore, emancipatory feminist economics faces the challenge of understanding the differentiated positions women occupy within this framework in order to recognize the multiplicity of experiences and capacities for satisfying needs that shape their bodies, subjectivities, and practices. Membership in Indigenous, Afro-descendant, or peasant communities, as well as the effects of poverty or migration, are markers that define social distances, differentiated roles, and modes of inclusion and exclusion that prevent us from conceiving of them as a homogeneous group.

Faced with this landscape where life is denied in an increasingly cruel and callous manner, emancipatory feminist economics rescues and values ​​modes of social and economic organization that offer more promising horizons. In its search for alternatives to the dominant order, it pays attention to the spaces or interstices in which diverse collectives are able to articulate forms of relationship based on other meanings, values, and practices. It is along these lines that the importance of appealing to categories imbued with a political sense becomes apparent, as in the case of what we call the commons, understood as “a constellation of collective processes that, throughout history, have fought to preserve or regain control of the means of existence for the reproduction of life” (Navarro Trujillo, 2016: 22). The notion of the commons acquires materiality in experiences where the management of well-being is in the hands of community actors, deviating from the scripts imposed by the State or the market. The same people, united by bonds of different types and densities, produce a social matrix where concrete needs are resolved, a wide variety of forms of support are put into circulation and shared meanings are defined, as occurs in rural communities or indigenous peoples who maintain ways of life that respect nature or in neighborhood assemblies and recovered factories in the cities. 

The identification and evaluation of these alternatives, constituted on the margins or outside the market, takes on new meanings within the context of the fluid exchanges that feminist economics maintains with other heterodox epistemic currents. This occurs, for example, in cases where feminist approaches intersect with decolonial thought, coinciding in their questioning of the paradigm of modern rationality, according to which there is only one universal truth, one final stage that all societies must reach, and one single way to do so. In response to these totalizing propositions, feminist economics challenges the relevance of binary categories that reduce human processes to the dichotomy between modernity and tradition or between progress and backwardness. This critique is based on the recognition that different economic options and models exist in the region, often operating according to the principles of Indigenous and Afro-descendant ontologies or according to the logic of the social and solidarity economy (Quiroga, 2014). These organizational forms provide concrete evidence of economies where the reproduction of life is not marginalized, but rather central to collective action. This, of course, does not imply romanticized interpretations that omit or downplay the conflicts, disputes, and forms of oppression that are often also part of these systems. However, despite their incompleteness, they propose alternative ways of understanding the social. Therefore, feminism embraces the imaginaries and practices that structure these alternative frameworks in order to incorporate lessons that enable new ways of producing, relating, and ultimately, living with dignity.

The Clacso Working Group on Emancipatory Feminist Economics (EFE) has been a space for human, academic and activist encounter that has given a Latin Americanist meaning to the theoretical and political development of the work that each member carries out in their local and regional networks.

In a critical sense, we have learned a great deal during the first three years of our Group. We mention the most important of these as challenges to continue strengthening ties and positioning our initial objective: (1) To advance in the formulation of territorialized theoretical and methodological frameworks for Economic and Social Policy (ESP) that avoid replicating North-centric, urban-centric, anthropocentric, heteronormative, and ethnocentric biases. (2) To analyze current economic processes in territories from an ESP framework. (3) To strengthen bridges between academia and social or community organizations that are developing thought and action from an ESP approach or one close to it. (4) To identify and disseminate the diversity of knowledge, proposals, and experiences (theoretical-analytical, political action, and public policy advocacy) from ESP that already exist but remain dispersed and/or little known. (5) To strengthen ESP training processes within universities and in spaces that serve as a link between universities and social movements.

We made efforts to bring together as many members as possible at least once a year (Mexico in 2016, Paraguay in 2017, Ecuador in 2018, and Buenos Aires in 2018 and Guatemala in 2019), seeking to establish a common agenda. However, given the human and financial challenges that have not been easy to overcome, we have considered the feasibility of holding regional meetings that would allow for more active participation from the Group's members.

 There has been a great deal of expectation and interest surrounding Emancipatory Feminist Economics in the Diplomas, Meetings, Forums, Workshops, and Seminars we have conducted. However, we recognize that this effort remains primarily at a theoretical level, with methodological advancements but a significant gap in understanding the political subject of feminist economics. This is perhaps one of the greatest challenges our Working Group faces in this new period.

The participation of each member has been highly uneven, and building more collective operating mechanisms within the Working Group Coordination presents a challenge. This organizational structure can be strengthened by forming regional groups. In this regard, we have a work plan that includes theoretical, methodological, and political action areas, which we will adapt to this regional strategy.

The group's continuation presents us with the challenge of producing publications, which we believe should be collective works. It is necessary to document the learning that is occurring through the ongoing work of the Working Group members. We now have the conditions to continue with the Working Group and begin producing something more tangible, which could be further enhanced if we can systematize our work.

Therefore, we return to the initial idea that united us: the recognition of Feminist Economics (FE) as an analytical-methodological and political proposal, as well as a distinctive way of organizing the economic system. Among its various dimensions, there is no abrupt break; the conceptual tools can be, and are, useful for building a different system, and naming a different economy requires using new terms. This Working Group (WG) aims to contribute to the construction of feminist thought that, in turn, fosters the strengthening and creation of economic practices that form part of an emancipatory alternative to the crisis. The intention is to open a pluralistic reflection (dialogical, processual, dynamic) in which to co-produce knowledge and wisdom committed to transformative socioeconomic action.

 This Working Group seeks a diverse feminist perspective, one that includes those who do not identify with the term but share key tenets. It aims to foster a perspective linked to alternative proposals from social movements and non-academic spaces. Finally, it seeks a perspective that both enriches and is enriched by other alternative economies (popular, community, cooperative, peasant), as well as other critical economic approaches (ecological economics, political economy). The plurality of perspectives within academia and social and political movements is a defining characteristic of this heterogeneous region. From this perspective, this Working Group seeks to enrich Feminist Economics and critical economic approaches both within and beyond the region.

The conceptual axes of the EFE are the struggles for life and territory, the sustainability of the conditions for the reproduction of life, and care work. It challenges the neoclassical, disciplinary approach centered on the perspective of Homo Economicus and markets, which considers the production of exchange value as the sole or primary economic activity and defines "work" as only "paid work," relegating everything else to the non-economic and "social" sphere.

 The EFE incorporates the perspective of intersectionality, or the interweaving of oppressions, and includes the perspective of decolonial and community feminism. We maintain that capitalism is governed by a structure of differential accumulation based on class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality (at least), which enables it to reproduce, expand, and develop itself. To do so, it requires the coloniality of knowledge-power and gender, which is constitutive of the coloniality of being, nature, and language as central constructs of the capitalist world's power system.

In this way, the colonial pattern and binary thinking are assumed. “With the transformation of dualism, as a variant of the multiple, into the binary of the One—universal, canonical, “neutral”—and its other—remainder, surplus, anomaly, margin—transitions are closed off, as is the availability for circulation between positions, which all become colonized by binary logic. Gender is tested, in the Western manner, within the heterosexual matrix, and rights of protection against homophobia and policies promoting equality and sexual freedom, such as marriage between men and between women, become necessary […] (Segato, 2015: 93)

In this way, women in the region are domesticated and maternalized by configuring the intimate and domestic sphere as their living space, quite contrary to the collective world of women in the village world described by Segato. These factors create the conditions for the availability of this invisible labor to be directly related to the heteropatriarchal nature of the economic system.

This EFE (Economic and Social Framework) is often part of the reflective and critical work of individuals and organizations developing it, though without explicitly naming it as such. Plurality is a strength, because it implies a capacity for dialogue within the framework itself and with other critical approaches. Among its weaknesses are its tendency to carry North-centric biases (pivoting around the reality of the Global North with difficulty addressing other contexts), urban-centric biases (struggling to name rural realities), anthropocentric biases (focusing on human life rather than an ecosystemic approach), heteronormative biases (naturalizing gender binarism and heterosexuality), and ethnocentric biases (using ethnic-racial affiliation as a marker of hegemonic value). An important task for our Working Group will be to enrich it with the advances being made in diverse contexts and to review it critically and collectively.

The EFE understands that knowledge is developed both in academia and in social movements. The Working Group (GT) is made up of people who are constantly working and engaging in dialogue between these two spheres; it seeks to strengthen existing spaces for interaction between them and create new ones where they do not yet exist. Knowledge generation is understood as a collective process that stems from situated and diverse realities. The GT is not conceived as the sum of individual contributions, but rather as a meeting place for people and organizations with a history of participation in collective thought-making processes in their territories, and who, through the formation of this Working Group, constitute a new and diverse collective space.

This Working Group seeks to: (1) Advance the formulation of territorialized theoretical and methodological frameworks for Economic and Social Policy (ESP) that avoid replicating North-centric, urban-centric, anthropocentric, heteronormative, and ethnocentric biases. (2) Analyze current economic processes in territories from an ESP framework. (3) Strengthen bridges between academia and social or community organizations that are developing thought and action from an ESP approach or one close to it. (4) Identify and disseminate the diversity of existing but dispersed and/or little-known ESP knowledge, proposals, and experiences (theoretical-analytical, political action, and public policy advocacy). (5) Strengthen ESP training processes within universities and in spaces that serve as a link between universities and social movements.

 The above objectives have already been put into play during the period 2016 to 2019, in the following three years in relation to the work plan that we have developed we will seek to consolidate our theoretical and methodological perspective.