When oil spills and the production of weapons are good for growth and GDP, isn’t it time we changed our economic goals and how we measure them? Rachel Noble and Anam Parvez Butt report back from an impassioned session at the International Association for Feminist Economics conference, where scholars and activists called for nations to stop pushing growth at all costs – and instead move towards feminist, care-centred economies that prioritise rights, justice, people and planet.
From every quarter, we hear about the need to deliver growth at all costs: we see it in the advice of the International Monetary Fund; the commitments of politicians during elections; the strategies of policymakers and businesses; and reported repeatedly in the media.
Feminists are at the forefront of challenging this “cult of growthism”. Last month, leading scholars and activists gathered in Rome at the annual conference of the International Association for Feminist Economics to make eloquent and impassioned arguments for the world to abandon the quest for unquestioned economic growth that hurts people and planet. They called for growth at all costs to be replaced with a new goal – long called for by feminist movements: feminist and care-centred economies that prioritise the attainment of rights, reparative justice, and wellbeing of people and planet.
As Naila Kabeer of the London School of Economics, who chaired the session “Challenging the Cult of Growthism” at the conference, said: “Everything that matters only matters if it’s good for growth and can be measured by market value. The drivers of ill-being are coming together and perpetuating injustices.”
The battle to overturn economic dogma and write new narratives
Why does the cult of growth have so many in its grip? Delegates discussed how neoliberalism, colonialism and patriarchy have come together to enable the cult to grow, forcing already marginalised groups to the bottom of the spectrum of exploitation.
Neoliberal economic dogma has colonised knowledge production, excluding feminist economic alternatives, particularly those emerging form the Global Majority. This economic orthodoxy ignores the lived experiences of women feeling the harmful effects of growth-centric policies, with women at the intersections of oppression – such as women of colour, migrant women,and trans and non-binary women – bearing the sharpest brunt.
‘We need to reclaim economics for everybody because, as much as things may seem technical, at the heart of it, it’s about power.’
– Crystal Simeoni of African feminist group, the NAWI Collective
These harmful effects include the relentless prescription of cuts to public services and tax rises for ordinary people, with such austerity often imposed as a condition of loans provided to Global South countries by international financial institutions (IFIs). Such harsh policies continue despite decades of evidence of the harms they cause and decades of people taking to the streets to protest against injustice.
The powerful uprising of young people in Kenya against a new finance bill linked to IMF policy conditions, which would have seen the taxation of period products, bread and cooking oil, is a recent example of such a protest.
But here the dogma has been cracked: President Ruto has withdrawn the bill, although at least 60 people have been killed and numerous others have been illegally abducted and harmed by government forces in the process. “Young people in Kenya are fearless demanding for change, reclaiming and using their constitution and the rights it gives them and something is shifting. The personal is very political: from a sex worker to a nail technician, we are all facing implications from the new taxes”, said Crystal Simeoni of African feminist network, the NAWI Collective.
Militarization: good for growth, bad for humanity
In a highly unequal world that pursues growth at all costs, even armed conflict is seen as an opportunity for furthering this end, despite the devastating human costs.
For instance, in the occupied Palestinian Territory, capitalism is intrinsically linked with occupation as the latter has been exploiting Palestinian natural resources and labour and has crippled the Palestinian economy. Dana Abed of Oxfam International pointed out how the occupation of the Palestinian territory has enabled countries to profit from arms sales, defense contracts, and economic investments in the region, further denying rights and deepening poverty of Palestinians. Indeed, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements has led to confiscation of Palestinian land and natural resources, such as water, and decimated the Palestinian economy. The settlements, their expansion and their trade cause significant damage to the Palestinian economy, which has been stunted by years of restrictions. According to the UN, Israeli-imposed restrictions on the West Bank cost the Palestinian economy a total of $50 billion between 2000 and 2020.
The cult of growth is also the cult of GDP
Underpinning the cult of growthism is gross domestic product (GDP) – the standard metric used to judge how well an economy is doing based on the size and growth of its production. But prioritizing GDP has perverse consequences when activities that damage the planet help to boost it while critical life-sustaining activities, such as unpaid care, are not even counted.
Shereen Talat of the feminist network MENAFem highlighted some of GDP’s fundamental flaws, citing feminist scholar Marylin Waring. “GDP counts oil spills and wars as a positive contribution to the economy. GDP is a colonial measure, created by colonialism. It ignores the contributions of women – including the 90 billion hours of unpaid care and domestic work women undertake every week, whilst counting activities related to war and child labour positively.
“When we speak about growthism, we have to speak about GDP and why it isn’t a real indicator to measure how developing countries are going forward.”
GDP only values natural resources if they are exploited and extracted rather than safeguarded and preserved. As Shereen told the session: “Many Global South countries have their resources extracted in the name of development, including to fuel the green energy transition in the Global North. We are now entering an era of green colonialism”.
That is why feminists want to move beyond GDP, which ignores so much of women’s labour; values individuality over collaboration in communities; and ignores the costs of militarism.
Why feminists must push for economic alternatives
So how can we challenge the cult of growthism and GDP and their impacts on people and planet? Speakers underlined the importance of people power, and called for advancing feminist economic alternatives that upturn mainstream economic narratives and approaches.
As Jenny Ricks of the Fight Inequality Alliance told the session: “We have to be bold and systemic: we have to redefine dominant narratives and the economic frame. We cannot continue playing within existing terms of debate”.
This means questioning whose knowledge counts and centering the knowledge of women and communities, especially those facing intersecting forms of marginalization. It also means demystifying the language of macroeconomics to talk plainly about the lived realities for people.
That is exactly what young people in Kenya are doing, said Crystal Simeoni: “Young people are using the language of life to talk about economics. They have done the analysis, broken down the numbers and are asking, ‘what are we borrowing from the IMF for? Who is it benefitting?’. We need to reclaim economics for everybody because, as much as things may seem technical, at the heart of it, it’s a question of power.”
Time to connect economists and movements
Another important strategy for change will be bridging the gap between economists and movements. Jenny Ricks cited an example of this from her organisation’s work in Zambia “When the new government got elected and agreed an IMF loan program, the debate in the country was locked down as if there was no alternative possible. Fight Inequality Alliance Zambia worked with Zambian economists to put forward what economic alternatives to the IMF looked like. This fuelled a joint campaign between activists and economists that has enabled people to resist”.
Crystal Simeoni highlighted the importance of feminist visioning as praxis: “It’s easy to diagnose problems: we need to envision: what does liberation look like, feel like, smell like? If you don’t have the vision in mind, how can you work backwards, and how do we merge the vision to the theory?”
All the voices on the panel reflected the growing global feminist project to rewrite conventional economic narratives as part of the strategy for shifting to economies centred in care and justice.
As Shereen Talat said: “The economic narrative that is targeting our world is not ours, it is imposed. Feminists are producing alternatives, communities are speaking about what they need and what a just transition means to them. This is what we need to move beyond GDP-growthism.”
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This blog draws on discussions from a panel event at the 32nd Annual Conference of the International Association for Feminist Economics, in Rome from 3-5 July 2024. It was chaired by Naila Kabeer, London School of Economics and the panelists were Crystal Simeoni, NAWI Collective; Shereen Talat, MENAFem; Jenny Ricks, Fight Inequality Alliance; and Dana Abed, Oxfam International, in collaboration with Rachel Noble, Anam Parvez, and Chama Mwandalesa of Oxfam GB.
Find out more about the “Beyond GDP” movement in this blog by Anam Parvez, which introduces an Oxfam discussion paper that aims to encourage debate about alternative metrics: The Gross Domestic Problem: what would a new economic measure that values women and climate look like?