GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
A Feminist Approach to Macroeconomics, with Constanza Pauchulo and Sehnaz Kiymaz Bahçeci
In this episode we talk to Shehnaz Kıymaz Bahçeci, a gender equality activist from Berlin, and Constanza Pauchulo, a human rights lawyer specialising in feminist economics from Malaysi. They help us to explore vital feminist economy questions through their work on the Gender Equality and Macroeconomics (GEM) Starter Kit. Their unique perspectives shaped by research and activism offer a revelatory look at how economic policies shape our everyday lives and how feminist economics provides a transformative alternative.
"Feminist economy is the economy that actually works for everyone, with everyone's human rights," explains Shehnaz. Unlike conventional economics focused narrowly on GDP growth, feminist economics counts all value creation – including unpaid care work predominantly performed by women and the cooperative social activities that sustain communities.
Constanza brilliantly connects abstract macroeconomic concepts to our lived experiences: "We're talking about the price of food, how food is produced, healthcare, education, housing, childcare... Are we getting money from individual taxes or taxing the wealthy and large corporations?"
Both our guests frame the current moment as a critical juncture. Are we witnessing backlash against progress, or the breakdown of a dysfunctional system that requires fundamental reconstruction? Join us, and find out!
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Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mira Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Shehnaz Kıymaz Bahçeci, from Berlin, and Constanza Pochola, based in Kuala Lumpur, who work together on the starter kit on gender equality and macroeconomics GEM by International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia-Pacific.
Speaker 3:So Senaz is a gender equality activist, primarily focusing on international regimes on gender equality, international conventions on women's human rights and gender-based violence. And Constanza is an international human rights lawyer working in the areas of feminist economics and development. So Senaz Constanza, an international human rights lawyer working in the areas of feminist economics and development. So Senaz Constanza, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Danla and myself.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3:So we always love, yeah, lovely to see you, constanza, thank you. So we always like to start with a bit of a personal moment, a little personal touch. So would you both be able to tell us how you came to be part of the international feminist movement? Maybe we'll start with you, shehnaz, and then, constanze, you can tell us your background.
Speaker 4:Gladly. Hello everyone. I'm Shehnaz Kimaz Bahchij, as has been introduced, and I was a biology and sociology double major in university, which is rare. But that took me to bioethics, which took me to abortion, and I said, well, I could do an internship during the summer that could give me more information about abortion and the work and advocacy towards it, which led me to this amazing feminist organization based in Istanbul. Which led me to this amazing feminist organization based in Istanbul that was my hometown back then, called Women for Women's Human Rights, and it's been 21 years since I had that internship and my love for them continues.
Speaker 3:I'm still a board member. So that's the history and Constanza.
Speaker 5:what about you? What's your background? Yeah, I love this question because I actually didn't consider myself part of the feminist movements until I joined ERA Asia Pacific. Before that, I was more thinking of myself as related to human rights and social justice more generally, and that's connected to my background, my personal family background, as someone who was born in Argentina.
Speaker 5:My family immigrated to Canada when I was quite young, to a brutal dictatorship there that ended in the early 80s, and so throughout my childhood and formative years I learned all about what happened during that dictatorship more broadly in Latin America, its connection to corporate and economic and imperial powers and the incredible human rights and anti-impunity work that continued even in the middle of the dictatorship and after that. But also growing up in Canada, I also had a kind of relationship or idea of feminism as being very linked to white liberal feminism, which didn't quite jive with the ideas and politics that I had in mind, and maybe that's because I was in the wrong circles. But since moving to Kuala Lumpur, working with theRA Asia Pacific and having the privilege to be connected to and work with Global South feminists from across the Global South, I've just really got a deeper understanding of what Global South-led, decolonial, anti-imperial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist feminism can look like and from that perspective, I felt like, oh okay, this is something much more and something that I want to be a part of, contribute to.
Speaker 2:Actually, that's a great frame to talk about in a great journey of your life and, frankly, this is one of the unique moments that we really, really appreciate, the very core of uh, good guys, right steve, because we're in, at the moment, four different time zones, but talking about the same better world. So, so I'm so excited, and this also gives us a unique chance to gather different pieces together. Seynas, you were involved with the feminist movement in Turkey for over two decades and in recent years, you've been working globally from Berlin. Can you tell us where we stand at this historical turmoil we're in in terms of equality? What did we achieve in the recent past and what are we facing in the near future?
Speaker 4:That's a very big question that I think a lot of activists throughout the world at this point are asking themselves, and we're all trying to sort of figure out where it goes from here.
Speaker 4:But, looking back, I think part of the reason I consider myself so lucky in the feminist movement and as a human rights activist in general is that we've been through times that were motivational, that a lot of our kind of ancestors in the movement, rights activists and advocates, have done a lot of work in 70s and 80s which led to us to a very quick progress, especially in the 90s and early 2000s, on human rights, on gender equality and on sustainability issues, in our understanding of sustainability in general.
Speaker 4:Where we are now is interpreted in two kind of different ways, and this will link to economy in, I guess, in the later stages of the podcast perhaps.
Speaker 4:But there are two different thought lines. One is that we have progressed so much and this is a reaction to that progress and they're trying to take back the power. The power is being kind of taken back to kind of what a group considers the natural order of being, which is that the powerful always prevails and inequality is a natural state. The other interpretation, which we would hope and strive for, of course, is that we can only go better from here, because we're pretty low down at this point, that this is a breaking of a system that actually didn't work and we need to strive to build it in a better way in light of all the work that the ancestors, so to say, have brought together. But to do that, we still need to go a long way and we still need to change the systems for the better, because if we leave it as such, we know that the powerful will prevail, as they have done goodness.
Speaker 3:So, um, well, I I have to admit something. Okay, I'm going to come a little bit off script and say we often um grapple with quite big, intellectual, huge topics on this podcast, but I think this one is really quite a big and I think, stan, as you're, you're framing there of um, the breaking of a system that's suboptimal. So maybe we are slipping back or maybe we're at a critical juncture where things change really fundamentally is so interesting and I've got a question for you, constanza which is the kind of scales that both of you are working at. So you're both working at a system scale, and that's very much what the starter kit is all about. And then all of this pertains right the way through to our everyday lives. So could you tell us about that correlation between the systemic change that you're visioning and people's everyday lived experience? How does that work?
Speaker 5:yes. So when we're talking about economies, in particular um and macroeconomy, macro level economy, where we're talking about the societal level, right, it becomes all about systems. And if we are transforming those systems to support gender equality, enable human rights, ensure that well-being and dignity of all people and non-human beings, then it completely changes our everyday lives. It's also really important that when we're talking about the everyday, we think about whose everyday lives are we referring to? Is it the people who are surviving an active genocide in Gaza and the rest of Palestine right now? Or the people in the DRC, south Sudan, myanmar or countless other places where people are living through active conflict and military assault? These are everydays also, and they're deeply tied to economic policy, to private military and weapons companies, mining and other resource extraction industries and the governments that support these companies for economic and geopolitical gain. You know it's also tied to the anti-rights backlash and oppression that we're seeing on the rise again against migrant communities, against trans people, dividing people and distracting them from our common interest in redistributing wealth and power in a way that ensures that everyone lives and thrives with dignity and their rights fulfilled. And I know we're short on time and there's so much more to say as well about how the economy is linked to the continued theft and destruction of Indigenous lands, or the way it's propped up by unpaid care, labour predominantly performed by women, and so many other things that a feminist economic lens allows us to see. But again, since time is short, I think the key message is really that the economy must serve people and the planet first, and we can't be deterred by technical language or quote unquote experts into not getting involved in economic decision making and demanding accountability.
Speaker 5:The way we talk about the economy now makes a lot of people including myself before I started learning about these things feel disconnected, like it's not part of their everyday lives. But actually we're talking about the price of food, how food is produced, the quality of food, where it comes from. We're talking about healthcare. We're talking about education. We're talking about housing. We are really talking about childcare, how we relate to one another and if the way we not only spend money but how we raise it. So are we getting the money from individual taxes or are we getting money from taxing the wealthy and large corporations? Taxing the wealthy and large corporations Are we demanding reparations for historical injustices and the robbery of wealth from the global south, or are we piling on more debt as a way to pay for these things?
Speaker 5:If we're looking at all these elements of the system things, if we're looking at all these elements of the system, including trade, is trade supporting the sovereignty and well-being of each country while also incorporating international cooperation and international solidarity? If we're looking at all these systems in that way, in a way that's meant to fulfill human rights obligations, support equality, support sustainability, then the whole orientation shifts. It's no longer about producing as much as we can, growing as much as we can, making as much profit as we can, or creating jobs that actually, at the end of the day, have poor labor conditions and don't actually allow people to live in a thriving kind of way. Then if instead, our economies are pushing for the opposite of that, then our everyday lives change right. So ideally, then you can.
Speaker 5:If you get sick, you can go out and get health care without having to take on debt or stress about it in other ways. You know, if you need to send a child to education, to schools, which everyone does that's readily available, without discrimination or extra costs. I want to say jobs, decent work, is available. But I also want to think beyond that that maybe we get to a point where people aren't exchanging labor for wages and we're living in a more collective and supportive environment where we are able to solve societal problems through systemic systems that support one each other at the collective level level, rather than through exclusion, punishment and just more and more growth and profit making. I hope that made some sense.
Speaker 3:Oh, completely. I want to live in your world. Constanza, I want to live in your world. That sounds right.
Speaker 5:Well, we're talking about ideas, right, but at the end of the day it really is. It touches all parts of our lives. Every cost of living issue, every housing issue, every job issue can be tied back to macroeconomics or the economic and finance.
Speaker 2:I think it's great when you ask the questions very clearly and very shortcutting way, like are we using money to educate everyone and give health care, or are we using money to create more billionaires? You know no brainers questions and I love when we do that rhetorical questions but still very, very linked to the real world. So thank you very much for this frame Constanza. I love it. So, shehnaz, let's deep dive a little bit more into the kit. In the first chapter, you begin with the definition of macroeconomics, conventional theories around it and the feminist economy. So what do we mean by feminist economy?
Speaker 4:Well, maybe I can give a short introduction to the Starter Kit.
Speaker 4:The reason we have named it a Starter Kit is actually, just as Constanza said, to kind of demystify all these concepts and make the links to our everyday lives clearer. And in that sense, looking at the feminist economy, feminist economy is the economy that actually works for everyone, with everyone's human rights, as Constanza have said. But feminist economy is also an economy that counts every type of value created beyond the gross domestic product, which we count and measure, kind of the well-being of an economy, with the unpaid care work women bring together, the cooperation and the collaboration value created through our societies and the way of being that we have, the way we support each other. All this kind of value is counted within feminist economy. And feminist economy is an economy that we actually constantly analyze power, who has power over, who has power with and how do we create an economy that no one kind of dominates over and has a power, but everyone is able to share this power equally and thus share the welfare in the end equally as well.
Speaker 3:That is a good explainer on the feminist economy, jenna, thank you. So, katsanda, I've got a question for you. So, as Damla said, we're recording this across four time zones, so it's a very exciting global moment for us all. And yours is a very global project gender equality and macroeconomics project, isn't it? So it's coordinated by the bretton woods project in partnership with gender and development network, your organization, international women's right rights action, watch asia pacific, also connected to the latin american network for economic and social justice. So, truly global. And your part of the scrutiny of your project is looking at international financial institutions, isn't it? And the role that they play in kind of hardwiring some of these inequalities into global economics, and the major role they play in that. So how do you see that bit of the equation changing? How? How can you? How can you see a change in, particularly in terms of those international financial institutions?
Speaker 5:the short answer is I don't see a change anytime soon oh dear.
Speaker 5:Of course there are others um in movement and in our networks who would be better placed to speak about the ins and outs of all these institutions, but ultimately, um the the international financial institutions, in particular the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are a reflection of geopolitical power, and decision-making and governance is held by the G7.
Speaker 5:And this is reflected in the voting structure and other systems.
Speaker 5:So what really needs to change is that type of unequal power dynamic where, through loans, through something called surveillance, which the IMF does to monitor countries' economies and how it's affected globally, and through other instruments and processes that these institutions have and processes that these institutions have, they have a lot of power to set and promote a certain kind of economic decision-making, certain kind of economic tools which have all been neoliberal and reported for decades as having hugely adverse impacts on especially poor and marginalized communities.
Speaker 5:Unless there is a shift in that decision-making, in the governance structures, it's hard to see a lot changing, particularly as it relates to the power dynamics between global North countries, b7 and global South countries, which is why a lot of our friends and colleagues are demanding that a economic transformation or a transformation of the economic and financial architecture actually happen under the auspices of the United Nations, which itself has its own problems and limitations, but at the very least it has more democratic decision-making between states and more robust civil society participation opportunities. Those are, of course, shrinking as well, but that's what comes to mind for me. I'm sure I'm missing a lot, because there's others that have much more expertise in the nitty-gritty of these institutions.
Speaker 2:Peace for sure. Well, I really think that we have to do another episode and Constance. We have to talk about Naomi Klein, the doctrine she was proposing and the international financial institutions and the role they have been playing around the world with the credit scores, and also the coups and everything, steve. Ok, stop me, I'm going somewhere very dark, so I'm stopping myself, but I have to ask this, since the name Bretton Woods popped up and I cannot unhear it now. So, sheyna, over the last six months, with the new and agile Trump administration, we're witnessing an unbelievable change, especially a huge backlash from the conservative wing to the gains of the rights movements, as you have stated just a few minutes ago, but long before that, there were signals that the throne of US dollar was fragile and the Bretton Woods principles were flailing, which were putting the USD as the new standard instead of gold after the Second World War. So pardon me for this very inedicate summary, but how does this global turmoil affect the feminist economy vision?
Speaker 4:Thank, you for the question. I think it goes back to kind of what I was saying at the beginning. We are at a crossroads to decide where we are going next for sure. What the agile, quote-unquote Trump administration has done is actually, I think, quicken or make it more visible that the systems are failing right.
Speaker 4:We all knew inequality was present. We all knew inequality, both between states and within states, is at an all-time high since the Industrial Revolution. We know that there are countries currently who are spending more on debt servicing, so like their interest and the service fees for their debts not the debts itself, even than their health and education budgets within the country. We know that poverty rate, although we seem to have pushed it up that there are less people in poverty, we know that there are more people in dire poverty right now. So it's not working and this fierce, agile kind of destructive to the benefit of America what Trump calls way is making it more visible how actually the current economic system, which is based on profit and capital and exploitation, is detrimental and is fierce and is very selfish. So where we go from here is also dependent upon how member states, both kind of in the global South, in the majority world, but also in the global North minority world, realize that this is not sustainable, neither for the planet nor for the people living on it. We have to go to a place that can be an awakening and that can be a system that will work for the people, for the planet, that will not be based on exploitation.
Speaker 4:And maybe an example in kind of all of this is you might have been hearing that the population is in decline and we need more people to keep the social security systems that we're in. Right, people are pushing for more births, and part of the reason that they are saying this productive control over women's bodies is actually because of the need for population growth. Well, at the same time, we're talking about AI and how AI will be replacing human labor, and AI will be, you know, will be putting people out of jobs. With this much value created by AI, why don't we ever talk about redistribution and distribution in a fair way, where you don't actually need as many people in the world, but you would be able to give them more welfare and kind of have a more sustainable planet and societies, right? So it's always about this kind of thinking of who benefits from our systems and how do we transform it then to one that actually benefits everyone equitably around it?
Speaker 3:I think the clarity of your vision is extraordinary, and I just know it is Now. Obviously this is audio only, but she is pulling a very, very silly face right now, but it's true, and I think the idea of talking about this as a moment of awakening actually makes this very dire situation quite well, very, very sobering, but also potentially quite transformational. So I think your analysis is really interesting and obviously we're recording this podcast. Um, literally just after the house, republicans have passed a bill in the us that's the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the richest in American history. So if that doesn't cause the awakening that you're talking about, I don't know what can. And we've got on the horizon.
Speaker 3:This is almost our final question, but this is one for you. The UN has a financing for development conference happening in Seville at the end of June, financing for Development conference happening in Seville at the end of June, and so all of this is sort of landing into that global forum that Constanza was talking about a minute ago. How do you think the global argument will be framed at that conference?
Speaker 4:So actually a lot has changed from the civil society perspective in terms of what we would be expecting out of that conference, and a lot of it stays the same the main issues around the conference, which is actually coming 10 years after the last Financing for Development conference. So a lot has changed in those 10 years. The one before was 2015 in Addis Ababa. That was right during the development of the Sustainable Development Goals. So there was a global motivation to do better to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. So there was a global motivation to do better to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. And there was this kind of hope in coming together in cooperation for the world.
Speaker 4:Where we are seeing us now is more of trying to keep balances while trying to push our way on certain issues that we might have a lead way to. For example, one of the issues the activists were pushing on, both from the Global South and from the Global North, was to increase the official development assistance of countries to a higher level and to make sure that it's distributed kind of more in accordance with human rights. Now it's more. With all the ODA cuts we have seen coming from both the US but also a lot of the European countries. It's more about keeping the level there.
Speaker 4:However, on issues of tax, for example, on tax justice and the UN Framework Convention on Tax, there's still a way to move forward. So that's a point, again, that the activists will be pushing for. So, while the situation doesn't look as hopeful let's put it that way there are points that we would be able to push on certain issues. That is another one that a lot of the global south majority countries are pushing on. Tax is another one. So there will be progress, hopefully again, and we still have some time to kind of advocate for these things. It's not a closed book yet, but it is happening, as you've said, steve, at a very important moment in time and hopefully it can reflect this kind of historical responsibility it carries with it for the way forward.
Speaker 2:I really want to go forever with you both, but I'm so sorry that we're running out of time, so I'm coming to our final question, but before that, let's remind all our listeners that the Starter Kit is available for everyone online on ERAW AP's website. And our final question our network is ironically called Do Not Smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, object, place or person always makes you smile? Constanza, do you want to go first where the first thing that comes to mind is dogs.
Speaker 4:Any dog I see on the street, my beloved dog who passed many, many years ago, immediately make me smile beautiful and Shehnaz, I would say, if it needs to be concrete tulips, but if it can be kind of an ideal, I really want to say the solidarity between the feminist and LGBTI movements. At this point in time, Coming from Turkey, it's really kind of what we yeah, what gives me hope and what gives, what puts a smile on my face oh, that's beautiful.
Speaker 3:Well, we're all smiling at the end of the podcast, even though we've I tell you what we've been through some big issues, haven't we? Shana ai, the end of work. Constanza, I heard you do it. You said that the end of work as a concept. You went there. I heard it right the way through to, obviously, the feminist economy that I think you know. We've been through a lot, a lot in 25 minutes. That's been amazing. Thank you both so much for stretching our heads today. Damla, do you want to close us up?
Speaker 2:So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not.
Speaker 3:Smile network of agencies and make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. See you all soon.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Good Guys, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, Brought to you by the DNS Network.
