Lessons for a feminist Covid-19 economic recovery: Multi-country perspectives

March 2022

Report: Times of crisis and renewal present opportunities for brave and innovative policy choices. Yet, despite calls to “build back better”, powerful actors around the world are showing little real vision.

Written in collaboration with feminists and women’s rights organisations in four countries, Argentina, India, the Philippines and Uganda, this report examines some of the policy measures enacted by governments in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the impacts of those policies on gender equality and women’s economic rights. 

In particular, the report draws on the real-life accounts and experiences of women who have borne the greatest impacts of Covid-19, and whose voices must be central to recovery design. The report also seeks to move from critique to proposition. Using the experiences of the four countries examined in this report, along with many alternative approaches to economic recovery planning put forward by feminists, women’s rights organisations and labour movements around the world, we have developed concrete lessons which demonstrate that feminist alternatives are not just necessary but also viable.

We conclude that the achievement of a just and equitable Covid-19 economic recovery requires the centring of care, sustainability and wellbeing with transformative policies that promote equity. Bold action by local, national and international decision-makers must: protect and promote democratic, participatory decision-making; apply intersectional feminist analyses in policymaking; and adopt alternative feminist economic proposals.