Gendering global governance

In this article I map out the major debates on global governance and the feminist critiques of the mainstream interventions in these debates. I argue that the shift from government to governance is a response to the needs of a gendered global capitalist economy and is shaped by struggles, both discursive and material, against the unfolding consequences of globalization. I suggest feminist interrogations of the concept, processes, practices and mechanisms of governance and the insights that develop from them should be centrally incorporated into critical revisionist and radical discourses of and against the concept of global governance. However, I also examine the challenges that the concept of global governance poses for feminist political practice, which are both of scholarship and of activism as feminists struggle to address the possibilities and politics of alternatives to the current regimes of governance. I conclude by suggesting that feminist political practice needs to focus on the politics of redistribution in the context of global governance

Depletion and social reproduction

Much work has been done on the unaccounted contribution of social reproductive work to national economies. What has been less studied is the consequence of this neglect for individuals, households and communities engaged in social reproduction. Where these consequences have been recognised, it has largely been in the context of economic crises. So, for example, Elson has pointed out in her analysis of gendered impact of crises, "If too much pressure is put upon the domestic sector to provide unpaid care work to make up for deficiencies elsewhere, the result may be a depletion of human capabilities, ...To maintain and enhance human capabilities, the domestic sector needs adequate inputs from all other sectors. It cannot be treated as a bottomless well, able to provide the care needed regardless of the resources it gets from the other sectors" (2000:28). In this paper we take this insight and develop it in the context of the everyday political economy. We argue that the inputs into social reproduction are less than the outputs generated by it. We term this difference depletion

Engendered development in a global age?

In this paper I raise issues about the ways in which globalisation is taking shape in the material world of economy, together with the changing rhetoric and repertoires of social and cultural worlds, and where and how are men and women situated within these changing and yet familiar worlds. I examine some current debates on the various levels of governance - the national, the international and the local. I suggest that a gendered analysis of the issues raised in these debates is important to examine the new opportunities opened up by the processes of globalisation, and those that are closed off for both women and men. I conclude by examining how gender mediates with social positioning, the trajectory of the struggles within/between national sovereign states, the homogenising forces of marketisation, and the success, or otherwise, of increasingly international social movements, and is important part of our understanding of globalisation

Social Reproduction and Depletion

Social reproduction is not costless. When unrecognised, valorised but not valued, social reproduction leads to depletion of those who care. Building on the arguments of feminist international political economists, I examine the importance of taking the work of care seriously. Depletion through social reproduction occurs when resources for social reproduction fall below a threshold of sustainability over time. To know the intensity and extensity of depletion allows us to reveal not only the distress – physical, emotional/mental and social - but also to strategise towards reversing depletion

Gendering international political economy

In this paper we argue that the gap between economic analysis and the rest of human life needs to be explored and bridged. The difference in economic criteria being applied to our life-worlds is often justified by the statement that economic analysis is only attempting to explain a certain part of life – albeit an important one. The danger is that this artificial separation allows distortions to creep in because in the real world issues to do with ‘body politics’, and social reproduction more broadly, permeate economics as well as all other aspects of life. International Political Economy (IPE) has sought to bring together the study of states and the study of markets in a global context. What needs doing now is to extend and transform the scope of IPE by incorporating the study of households and the function of social reproduction centrally in the analysis. In dealing with gaps and dissonances, feminist and gender research provides cross-disciplinary analysis and targeted research tools, addressing, in particular the issues arising from the unequal structural position of women and men in social and economic spheres. This kind of research has also opened up certain concepts, for example, production and the market to political scrutiny and demonstrated how these re-conceptualised elements, together with new concepts like social reproduction and the care economy might be integrated into mainstream political economy both at the theoretical and policy levels (Elson, 1995). In this paper we explore these issues in moredetail. This involves establishing the dimensions of the problem, as demonstrated first by the way in which IPE and other related disciplines continue to marginalize rather than incorporate feminist work, and second by the treatment in mainstream economics of the role of the household. We go on to set the problem in its global context, examining the decline of ‘embedded liberalism’, the rise of the competition state and the implications of this for women. We then look at the debate on these issues in both its structural and post-modern forms and how this throws light on contemporary situations. . Finally, we present an alternative conceptualisation, which gives equal weight to the domestic, market and state spheres and suggest two different ways in which the incorporation of the domestic into the international political economy might be theorised. In all of this, we are interested in solutions, which have resonance in both South and North and help to reveal the structural links between them

Deliberative democracy and the politics of redistribution: the case of the Indian Panchayats

By examining evidence from India, where quotas for women in local government were introduced in 1993, this article argues that institutional reform can disturb hegemonic discourses sufficiently to open a window of opportunity where deliberative democratic norms take root and where, in addition to the politics of recognition, the politics of redistribution also operates

The Good Life and the Bad: The Dialectics of Solidarity

This essay asks four questions about the good life. First, what place has recognition of exclusion in the politics of redistribution? Second, can we imagine a public good life without also paying attention to the private and how does the private leach into the public imagination of a good life? Third, what obligations of justice are necessary to ensure our shared good lives? Finally, can we imagine new ways of thinking about resistance and change through alliances of the excluded? I argue that the imagination of a good life needs to be contextual, it is gendered and it is solidaristic

Remedying depletion through social reproduction – a critical engagement with the UN’s Business and Human Rights framework

The growing recognition of unpaid work in international law and the Sustainable Development Goals acknowledges that gendered labour supports the global economy. This work can have harmful impacts, leading to ‘depletion through social reproduction’ (Rai et al, 2014). When corporate harms impact on workers and communities, family members are often required to provide caring labour for those directly affected. However, the consequential harms of depletion are generally invisible within the law and uncompensated. In assessing the United Nations’ business and human rights framework, we argue that the international legal regime must take account of social reproductive work and its consequent harms

Feminist everyday political economy: Space, time, and violence

It goes without saying that feminist International Political Economy (IPE) is concerned in one way or another with the everyday – conceptualised as both a site of political struggle and a site within which social relations are (re)produced and governed. Given the longstanding grounding of feminist research in everyday gendered experiences, many would ask: Why do we need an explicit feminist theorisation of the everyday? After all, notions of everyday life and everyday political struggle infuse feminist analysis. This article seeks to interrogate the concept of the everyday – questioning prevalent understandings of the everyday and asking whether there is analytical and conceptual utility to be gained in articulating a specifically feminist understanding of it. We argue that a feminist political economy of the everyday can be developed in ways that push theorisations of social reproduction in new directions. We suggest that one way to do this is through the recognition that social reproduction is the everyday alongside a three-part theorisation of space, time, and violence (STV). It is an approach that we feel can play an important role in keeping IPE honest – that is, one that recognises how important gendered structures of everyday power and agency are to the conduct of everyday life within global capitalism

Recognising the full costs of care? The Gendered Politics of Compensation for families in South Africa’s silicosis class action

This article concerns recognition and compensation of the intimate, gendered work of caring by family members for workers who became ill with lung diseases as a result of poor labour conditions in the mines in South Africa. It focuses on a recent decision by a court in South Africa (Nkala and Others v. Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited and Others, 2016) that took the unusual step of acknowledging this care work and attempting to compensate it indirectly. The article combines insights from political economy and law within a feminist frame to develop an argument about compensation for social reproductive work to address the harm experienced by the carers of mineworkers. Using the theory of depletion through social reproduction, it suggests ways of understanding the costs of care in order to fully compensate the harms suffered by the carers. This is done with reference to a photographic essay by Thom Pierce called ‘The Price of Gold’ taken in the mineworkers’ homes after their discharge from work due to illness. The article argues that ideas of depletion should inform any consideration of compensation of people engaged in caring in a range of reparatory contexts