On Wed, 19 March, 2025 DAWN participated in the in-person CSW69 parallel event Feminist principles to understand and transform the economy: building collective thinking and action. The convening brought together feminist economists and activists from the Global South to reflect on how macroeconomic thinking and practice can be transformed from a feminist perspective. In a context marked by growing inequalities, rising debt, financialisation, algorithmic governance and global political shifts, the discussion explored how these dynamics impact livelihoods, gender relations and the social division of labor.
The session featured three ongoing initiatives from DAWN, Equidad and TWN, each contributing to the construction of a shared conceptual, analytical and political perspective for economic justice and the sustainability of life. Thirty years after the Beijing Platform for Action, the event revisited its commitments to autonomy and economic rights, placing them in dialogue with today’s polycrisis. The panel moderated by Noelia Méndez Santolaria (DAWN), featured:
- Corina Rodríguez Enríquez (DAWN): Executive Committee Member, co-leads DAWN’s Political Economy and Globalisation team, and researcher at CONICET, Argentina.
- Denisse Vélez (Equidad): Researcher in charge at the Mexican feminist organization Gender Equity, Citizenship, Work, and Family.
- Bhumika Muchhala (TWN): Senior Advisor at Third World Network and Lecturer in International Political Economy at The New School.
Read the full report here
DAWN (2025) ‘Feminist Principles to Understand and Transform the Economy’ DAWN’s Parallel Event at the UN CSW69. Summary Report March 2025. New York: DAWN Feminist.
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Feminist principles to understand and transform the economy: building collective thinking and action
By Noelia Méndez Santolaria*
On March 19, 2025, we gathered in a sunlit room on the 10th floor of the Church Center for the United Nations in New York, just across from where the official negotiations of the sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) were taking place. The energy in the room was vibrant and deeply rooted. We came together as feminists from different parts of the world—activists, scholars, and movement builders—to ask ourselves: how can we rethink and transform macroeconomics through feminist principles, rooted in the realities of the global South?
This side event, co-organised by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), Third World Network (TWN) and the Mexican feminist organisation Equidad de Género: Ciudadanía, Trabajo y Familia (Equidad de Género), was not just a conversation. It was a political act. It was about building a collective understanding and creating space to imagine alternatives to the current economic system—one that is extractive, unequal, and deeply gendered. These types of conversations are not only relevant—they are essential—within the framework of the Commission on the Status of Women. The agreements we need to truly advance women’s rights and achieve substantive equality require a radical subversion of the dominant economic paradigm. They demand that we question the very foundations of the global economy: who it serves, who it harms, and what logics sustain it.
As the moderator, I had the honour of opening the session by framing the discussion. Thirty years after the Beijing Declaration, we need to revisit and deepen our commitments to economic justice and autonomy. Today, we do so in a world marked by polycrisis: growing inequalities, the violation of planetary boundaries, and the erosion of democracies. The current geopolitical tensions, pointing to how deepening global divides—between the North and South, and among powers in the multipolar order—are influencing economic governance and creating further instability.
Our first speaker, Corina Rodríguez Enríquez from DAWN, urged us to move beyond a narrow view of feminist economics that focuses only on care or households. Instead, she called for a systemic approach—one that looks at the entire economic structure, including production, reproduction, financial capital, and the role of the state. She reminded us that the economy is a political terrain, shaped by power relations. Corina emphasised that the financial sector, multilateral institutions, and corporate interests are not neutral actors. They are active agents in deepening inequality and dispossession, particularly for women and marginalised communities in the global South. Her words invited us to ask: What kind of state and global governance do we need for a feminist economic transformation? And what space exists for civil society and grassroots actors to lead that change?
Denisse Vélez from Equidad de Género brought in a powerful political lens, reminding us that the growth paradigm is not just an economic model—it is an ideology. She argued that the global North must embrace degrowth, while the global South needs strategies of delinking to reclaim sovereignty. But such efforts, she warned, are often met with repression, imperialist backlash, and violence. In this context, Denisse called for building transnational feminist networks and re-politicising grassroots struggles. She shared examples from Mexico, where feminist organisations are weaving alliances and generating knowledge from the ground up, reminding us that change is already happening in the South.
Bhumika Muchhala from TWN took us even deeper, offering a decolonial analysis of macroeconomics. She spoke of the need to deconstruct neoclassical economics, which she described as a colonial tool that has legitimised austerity and inequality. For Bhumika, this is not just a theoretical task—it is also deeply political and relational. She asked us to reflect on the distorted relationships that colonialism has produced: between humans, with nature, and within ourselves. Her call to action was clear: we must decolonise economic thinking and build a new politics of sovereignty—not just over nations, but also over our bodies and territories. And we must do so collectively, through feminist, solidarity-based networks rooted in the places we inhabit and our community.
The interactive discussion that followed was just as rich. Participants asked how we might build alternatives to the multiple crises we face, how to sustain activism in contexts of repression, and how to turn feminist and decolonial principles into everyday practice. We heard about the power of community networks, the importance of intergenerational exchange, and the urgency of moving beyond autonomy to full sovereignty.
We closed the session with gratitude to everyone in the room and renewed energy. These feminist perspectives from the global South offer not only critiques, but also visions and practices to build something different. These are rooted in long-standing traditions of collective knowledge, resistance, and imagination—traditions that have emerged from centuries of struggle against the entrenched power structures of colonialism and imperialism. The work of rethinking the economy from a feminist and Southern perspective is not easy. It demands courage, creativity, and deep collaboration. If we are serious about dismantling those structures, then we must centre these voices and frameworks in how we think, negotiate, and act on economic justice. In the words of many feminists before us: another world is not only possible—it is already being built.
*To improve style and delivery, we used ChatGPT to support the writing process, ensuring clarity and coherence — the ideas and experiences are all human and the process was guided by human perspective
