Mothers worry and become anxious when one's child hasn't eaten one meal

Mothers worry and become anxious when one's child hasn't eaten one meal. One meal in one day. We buy groceries, we stock, we cook, we plan ahead, we negotiate with fussy children to finish their plates, eat the last morsel, not to waste food, that wasting food is a sin. We will save the best morsels, the best for our children. Feeding our children is one of the main jobs we have as mothers. Imagine the suffering of Palestinian mothers, of Palestinian fathers who are seeing their children starve to death. Imagine the plight, the suffering. Imagine they cannot buy groceries, stock, cook, plan ahead and feed their children with their own fingers, coax them, promise them their favourite foods and do what mothers and fathers love doing. Making sure one's child is well fed is a satisfaction, joy. It's a job done. Instead they watch helplessly as their children starve, beg for food, wither away. This is a Western imposed famine and genocide.

Good morning

 

Hello from Burning Brownie, I've been spending time here while Kavita's at Summer Camp at The Black Home, 10 AM to 2:15 PM. 

While the Genocide has been going on, Westerners were more interested in how

While the Genocide has been going on, Westerners were more interested in how Aid and Development could keep going, the colonial relationship between the Global North and the Global South. It was and always is more important to keep colonial careers going, the right of the West to bomb us and then give aid to us. They were silent when their leaders started giving unconditional support to Israel and are still silent when children are starving and dying. All for the sake of careers. And, I'm witness to this and have been gaslight by friends who keep insisting that they and their country mates have been vocal about condemning the Genocide when they haven't. They are not in solidarity with us and with our liberation.

What is a Feminist Economist?

From a job alert on Linked In, I noticed "Feminist Economist" and, decided to look up feminist economics further. I've seen Feminist label in Feminist Foreign Policy of Germany. Feminist has been mainstreamed by Western NGOs. I see that the UN has taken Feminist label, too.

USAID does not use the Feminist terminology in its language: "While USAID's work often aligns with feminist principles, it does not explicitly use the term 'feminism' as a core part of its stated language or branding. USAID's focus is on gender equality and women's empowerment, which are closely related to feminist ideals, but it frames its initiatives within broader development goals and human rights frameworks.  " (google search)

To answer "What is a Feminist Economist" , one can start with this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_economics. It's a comprehensive page. 

Feminist economics critiques the discipline of Economics for: 

- Normativity

- Free Trade

- Exclusion of Non Market Activity

- Omission of Power Relations

- Ommission of Gender and Race

- Exaggeration of Gender Differences

- Homo economicus
- Limited Methodology
- Economic Pedagogy
- 2008 Financial Crisis 

From the Wikipedia article: 

"Additionally, feminist economists claim that the historical bases of economics are inherently exclusionary to women. Michèle Pujol points to five specific historical assumptions about women that arose, became embedded in the formulation of economics, and continue to be used to maintain that women are different from the masculinized norms and exclude them. These include the ideas that:

• All women are married, or if not yet, they will be and all women will have children.
• All women are economically dependent on a male relative.
• All women are (and should be) housewives due to their reproductive capacities.
• Women are unproductive in the industrial workforce.
• Women are irrational, unfit economic agents, and cannot be trusted to make the right economic decisions."
  

Some areas which feminist economists develop/interrogate/build on are: 

• Care economy
• Unpaid work 
• Degrowth and Ecological economics

If Women Counted (1988) is a book by New Zealand academic and former politician Marilyn Waring that is regarded as the "founding document" of the discipline of feminist economics.

This is a rather long excerpt but worth putting here from the same Wikipedia article: 

Written in 1969 and later published in the Houseworker's Handbook, Betsy Warrior's Housework: Slavery Or a Labor of Love? presents a cogent argument that the production and reproduction of domestic labor performed by women constitutes the foundation of all economic transactions and survival; although, unremunerated and not included in the GDP. According to Warrior: "Economics, as it's presented today, lacks any basis in reality as it leaves out the very foundation of economic life. That foundation is built on women's labor; first her reproductive labor which produces every new laborer (and the first commodity, which is mother's milk and which sustains every new consumer/laborer); secondly, women's labor entails environmentally necessary cleaning, cooking to make raw materials consumable, negotiating to maintain social stability and nurturing, which prepares for market and maintains each laborer. This constitutes women's continuing industry enabling laborers to occupy every position in the work force. Without this fundamental labor and commodity there would be no economic activity nor we would have survived to continue to evolve."  Warrior also notes that the unacknowledged income of men from illegal activities like arms, drugs and human trafficking, political graft, religious emoluments and various other undisclosed activities provide a rich revenue stream to men, which further invalidates GDP figures. Even in underground economies where women predominate numerically, like trafficking in humans, prostitution and domestic servitude, only a tiny fraction of the pimp's revenue filters down to the women and children he deploys. Usually the amount spent on them is merely for the maintenance of their lives and, in the case of those prostituted, some money may be spent on clothing and such accoutrements as will make them more saleable to the pimp's clients. For instance, focusing on just the US, according to a government sponsored report by the Urban Institute in 2014, "A street prostitute in Dallas may make as little as $5 per sex act. But pimps can take in $33,000 a week in Atlanta, where the sex business brings in an estimated $290 million per year." Warrior believes that only an inclusive, facts-based economic analysis will provide a reliable bases for future planning for environmental and reproductive/population needs.

My sense of foundational texts is that The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan by Friedrich Engels is an important one that explores material foundations of families and patriarchy. And, then Feminist Marxism has laid the basis of material exploitation of women's unpaid physical and reproductive labour which forms the basis of capitalism. 

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 placed Pakistan almost at the bottom. This column in Dawn was a good analysis : Gender gap rethink by Aisha Khan (https://www.dawn.com/news/1921776/gender-gap-rethink). 

These are my favourite quotes from the piece: 

"The WEF index measures relative gaps between men and women in the same country, not absolute conditions for women. This means a country like Pakistan, where access to education, employment and healthcare is generally limited for both genders, will inevitably score low — not just because women are left behind, but because the overall base is already weak. Importantly, South Asia as a whole ranks second-last globally in gender parity. Pakistan is not an outlier, but rather reflects a regional trend marked by shared historical burdens, colonial legacies and cultural complexities.

The WEF’s framework rewards countries that align with Western models of empowerment — measuring success through female representation in corporate boardrooms, parliament seats and formal wage employment. However, this framework discounts the informal sector, community roles and unpaid care work — spaces where millions of Pakistani women actively contribute. The report does not reflect the significant presence of Pakistani women in education, medicine, agriculture, informal trade, social work and activism. Nor does it consider cultural systems where women exert influence through family or community structures. " 

End thought: 

Feminist economics along with Marxist feminist economics is crucial in advancing our understanding of how our economies actually work. However, what will a feminist economist do in the UN system? And, what does the UN system accomplish ? I am not asking these questions rhetorically or sarcastically. 

In my current thinking, states in the Global South have to attain economic sovereignty, eradicate extreme poverty which will lift the whole population, invest in education and health, and build self reliant economies. We have very few models to emulate and, the only one that is relevant to us is China.  Neoliberalism has been imposed on the Global South and,  we can all agree that privatisation, deregulation, and reduced social spending are not successful.  It is not a moral self righteous argument that we must eradicate poverty to be a successful state. It is an imperative!  Poverty has to be eradicated to build a strong state and society. And, we need to be at peace with our neighbours in the Global South. 

Voices on X