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Lessons from IAFFE: Building Economies That Care
From 9 to 11 July 2026, the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) held its annual conference in Cali, Colombia, bringing together economists, researchers, policymakers, activists, students and practitioners from around the world. GI-ESCR Executive Director Camila Barretto Maia contributed to three sessions on feminist tax justice, the future UN Tax Convention and rights-based fiscal policy, and attended a partner-led discussion on building sustainable care systems in Latin America. The gathering connected research, policy debate and movement knowledge around the challenge of creating economic systems that reduce inequality, finance public services and recognise the value of care.
Across the conference, participants examined the relationships between care work, labour markets, taxation, public finance, inequality, climate change, development and social protection. The discussions reflected feminist economics’ commitment to understanding how economic rules shape daily life, including who performs paid and unpaid work, who benefits from public resources and who carries the costs of debt, austerity and inadequate services.
For GI-ESCR, the conference offered an opportunity to bring a human rights perspective into debates on global tax governance and fiscal policy. It also created space to connect the organisation’s work on progressive taxation with its advocacy for rights-based public services and care systems.
Making Global Tax Rules Work for Gender and Economic Justice
Camila’s first contribution was to the panel 'Macro Frameworks, Policy, Tax and Financialisation', which brought together perspectives on feminist industrial policy, women’s entrepreneurship, public spending, credit rating agencies and international taxation.
The session examined how economic institutions and policy frameworks can reproduce gendered inequalities. Contributions addressed the limited attention paid to gender within industrial policy, the risks of promoting women’s entrepreneurship without confronting the unequal distribution of reproductive work, the role of public spending in women’s economic empowerment in Ghana and the ways credit rating agencies can reinforce unequal hierarchies.
Camila presented an international law analysis of the future UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. Her contribution focused on the institutional design of the Convention, arguing that decisions about transparency, participation, enforcement and dispute resolution will shape how power is distributed within global tax governance.
As a framework convention, the agreement is expected to establish core principles and governance structures that will be developed further over time. Feminist movements and organisations from the Global South will therefore need to remain engaged as its institutions, rules and implementation mechanisms take shape.
Camila also addressed the human rights consequences of tax opacity. When wealthy individuals and multinational corporations can conceal income, assets and ownership structures, governments lose resources that could support healthcare, education, social protection and care systems. GI-ESCR’s intervention called for tax transparency to be treated as a human rights imperative and for dispute-resolution mechanisms that countries with differing levels of technical and financial capacity can use effectively. Such mechanisms should provide binding decisions and prevent procedural inequalities from reinforcing existing global economic disparities.
Camila developed these arguments further during the roundtable 'Tax Justice as Gender Justice: Feminist Economics and the UN Tax Convention'. Chaired by Maureen Mburu of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, the discussion brought Camila together with Verónica Grondona, Antonella Gervagi and Caren Grown.
The roundtable connected the international negotiations with national tax policy and the wider struggle for gender equality. Grondona examined how existing international tax rules constrain fiscal space and disproportionately affect women and countries in the Global South. Gervagi drew on Argentina’s experience with measures to tax the digital economy, highlighting the need to combine national reforms with coordinated multilateral rules.
Grown argued that the coming decade should become a ‘tax decade for development’. Her recommendations included improving the taxation of high incomes, capital gains, wealth, inheritances, rental income and high-net-worth individuals, while reducing exemptions and incentives that disproportionately benefit multinational corporations and wealthy taxpayers. She also stressed the importance of protecting low-income groups from regressive consumption taxes and strengthening the capacity of national tax administrations.
The discussion highlighted several questions that will require continued attention during the Convention negotiations. These included the relationship between tax transparency and personal data protection, the possible inclusion of unitary taxation, contradictions between IMF tax recommendations and the conditionalities attached to its agreements, the political difficulty of eliminating harmful tax incentives and the need for monitoring and accountability mechanisms.
Participants also considered how gender equality should be reflected in the Convention. Some supported detailed and explicit gender commitments, while others prioritised securing progressive and equitable tax rules whose distributional effects could reduce social and gender inequalities. The exchange illustrated the strategic choices facing feminist movements as they seek to influence both the language of the Convention and the economic rules it establishes.
These institutional questions have direct implications for countries’ ability to tax cross-border economic activity and mobilise resources for human rights. Access to information, meaningful participation and fair enforcement mechanisms can help countries in the Global South respond to tax abuse and protect the revenue needed for public services.
Connecting Fiscal Policy With Care and Human Rights
Camila’s third intervention took place during 'Financing Care and Women’s Rights Through a Rights-Based Approach to Taxation'. Chaired by Mariama Williams of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), the panel brought together contributions on tax abuse, illicit financial flows, sovereign debt, IMF fiscal advice and gender-responsive tax policy.
Drawing on GI-ESCR’s multi-country study 'Prioritising People in Fiscal Policy: Challenging Austerity, Reclaiming Public Services and Upholding Human Rights in Kenya and Ghana', Camila argued that fiscal policy is fundamentally care policy.
Debt, austerity, regressive taxation and tax abuse reduce the resources available for public services. When health, education, social protection and care services are weakened, essential work does not disappear. It is frequently transferred to households, where women and girls undertake a disproportionate share of unpaid care.
GI-ESCR’s contribution called for progressive taxation, stronger action against illicit financial flows, gender-responsive public spending and debt policies grounded in human rights and the sustainability of care. These approaches can help governments mobilise resources according to people’s ability to contribute, protect social spending and reduce the transfer of public responsibilities onto women, families and communities.
The reforms discussed during the panel could benefit women and girls carrying extensive unpaid care responsibilities, people affected by austerity and debt, low-income households facing regressive taxes and everyone who depends on accessible, high-quality public services. They would also support civil society organisations and social movements seeking to hold governments and international financial institutions accountable for the distributional consequences of fiscal policy.
Protecting Care Systems Through Political Change
Alongside GI-ESCR’s speaking contributions, Camila attended 'Care Systems in Latin America: Tensions, Lessons and Alliances for Transformative Change'. The panel was organised by GRADE and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), with support from the Global Alliance for Care, and chaired by Lorena Alcázar.
The discussion focused on the long-term sustainability of care systems and how policies can withstand changes in government, shifting political priorities and increasingly uncertain economic conditions. Participants identified unstable financing, conservative efforts to present care as a private family responsibility, legal challenges to existing frameworks and the pressures created by insecurity and violence as significant threats to continuity.
Institutionalisation emerged as a central strategy for protecting progress. Participants highlighted the value of advisory councils that bring together civil society organisations, academia and trade unions. Uruguay’s experience was particularly relevant: involving opposition representatives in bodies responsible for implementing care policies has helped build broader political ownership across successive administrations.
The panel also addressed the unequal distribution of care within households. Participants called for stronger parental leave policies, including at least two months of non-transferable leave reserved for fathers, as part of wider efforts to increase men’s participation in care and reduce the disproportionate responsibilities currently carried by women.
Concrete experiences demonstrated how existing institutions and services can be adapted to meet changing care needs. Karla Giacomin presented a programme in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which has integrated existing services for older people over the past decade. The initiative offers lessons for societies responding to demographic change and the growing demand for long-term care.
The exchange also connected Latin American debates with developments in Africa, including Kenya’s first national care policy and progress in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ethiopia. At the regional level, the African Union has recommended developing a Common African Position on Care Work, establishing an African Care Forum and encouraging member states to adopt national care strategies and assess the social and economic benefits of investing in care infrastructure.
By bringing together researchers, civil society organisations, public policy specialists and regional networks, GRADE, IDRC and the Global Alliance for Care supported an exchange grounded in both evidence and practical experience. The panel showed that sustainable care systems depend on stable financing, durable institutions, broad alliances and a shared understanding of care as a collective responsibility.
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