Conference Agenda

All the signs are that a debt crisis is merging with a climate crisis in the developing world, and along with this, a reproductive crisis underlining the inequities underpinning the global economy. However, UN/ World Bank/G20 discourses around this emerging debt crisis still do not sufficiently highlight the critical linkages between macro-level debt and household debt and the centrality of social reproduction to the unfolding of these crises. In particular, the burdens borne by women in multiple spheres – from indebted households to families going through catastrophic contractions of family income - need more attention in this post-pandemic context. For feminist economists, in contrast, debt justice is a central value and principle, as they have consistently highlighted during past crises. At the core of a feminist understanding of debt justice is the principle that working class women and people of color cannot be made to pay for the recklessness of finance capitalists. The purpose of this round table is to be on the forefront of setting an agenda with other progressive forces and groups around the debt crisis in the global south so that shaping policy initiatives and critical engagement with multi-lateral organizations is feasible.