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2011 Annual Report IAFFE2011 Annuannuaall Rreepoporrtt 2010 a Vision, a Promise… Providing a Space for Research-Based Activism

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2011 Annual Report IAFFE2011 Annuannuaall Rreepoporrtt 2010 a Vision, a Promise… Providing a Space for Research-Based Activism International Association for Feminist Economics 2011 Annual Report IAFFE2011 ANNUANNUAALL RREEPOPORRTT 2010 A vision, a promise… providing a space for research-based activism IAFFE The International Association for Feminist Economics is an open, diverse community of academics, activists, policy theorists, and practitioners from around the world. Our common cause is to further gender-aware and inclusive economic inquiry and policy analysis with the goal of enhancing the well-being of children, women, and men in local, national, and transnational communities. By opening new areas of economic inquiry, welcoming diverse voices, and encouraging critical exchanges, IAFFE’s many activities and award-winning journal provide needed space for a variety of theoretical perspec- tives and advance gender-based research on contemporary economics issues. The working version of IAFFE’s mission statement, above, captures these objectives. A Tradition of Member Research Lynda Pickbourn, an IAFFE member, did field-research in 2011 for her dissertation “Migration, Remittances and Intra-household Allocation in Northern Ghana: Does Gender Matter?” In her dissertation, Pickbourn examined the impact of remittances from rural-urban migrants on intra-household resource allocation in northern Ghana. The scene is a powerful display of the sense of community that holds the village together. On a typical day, these women have much to do – fetching water, gathering firewood, cooking meals, bathing children, gather- ing sheanuts to make sheabutter, parboiling rice or extracting oil from groundnuts, and carrying out a myriad of other labor-intensive economic activities to ensure that they are able to meet their responsibilities for household provisioning. Yet, they willingly contribute their labor to communal activities such as this. In a community, each compound consists of a collection of huts built around an open yard where family members gather to cook, eat meals, and interact with each other. The laying and finishing of the floor of the compound, as well as its maintenance, usually takes place in March or April, after the harvest, and before the next planting season, and is considered to be the work of women. Cover photo: A woman repairs the walls of the bathroom in her compound. Courtesy of Lynda Pickbourn, May 2008. 2 | International Association for Feminist Economics 2011 ANNUAL REPORT When a compound needs a new floor, all the compounds in the community contribute at least one (female) member to help with the task of carrying sand, mud and water to the compound. The women of the com- pound start the day by boiling the roots and seed pods of the dawadawa (locust-bean) tree to produce a deep red liquid; this liquid will be mixed with the sand and mud (and occasionally cow-dung) until the mixture acquires a clay-like consistency. The addition of the liquid serves multiple functions: it helps the floor to harden, reduces its porosity and adds color. Each woman brings a wooden mallet. The women spread the wet sand mixture around the compound, and then beat it with their mallets in unison. As they do so, they sing in accompaniment to the rhythm of their mallets. The finished floor is smooth, hard and durable. International Association for Feminist Economics | 3 IAFFE2011 ANNUANNUAALL RREEPOPORRTT 2010 Diverse Membership 9 12 7 2 1 21 30 5 4 13 3 1 4 9 2 1 208 20 6 11 4 2 15 12 4 1 1 1 10 29 4 1 2 1 3 8 1 1 13 7 3 1 2 1 16 2 1 3 1 2 3 2 5 26 9 5 2 4 In 2011, IAFFE consisted of 603 members from 66 countries. Members hailed from around the world, including from the African Union (44 members), Asian countries and territories (87), European countries and territories (152), North America (263), South America (26), and Australia and New Zealand (31). 4 | International Association for Feminist Economics 2011 ANNUAL REPORT The 2011 IAFFE membership included 128 new members from 39 countries. Eight of these countries were newly represented in the organization: Bangladesh, Fiji, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Palestinian Territory, Occupied; Romania, and Singapore. Total 2011 Members n African Union New Members n Asian States & Territories for 2011 n European States & Territories n Central and Northern American States & Territories n South American States & Territories n Australia & New Zeland International Association for Feminist Economics | 5 IAFFE2011 ANNUANNUAALL RREEPOPORRTT 2010 Dear Friends, IAFFE has now entered its third decade. In a world of rapid economic and political change, it is proving clearer than ever that a forum for researchers and scholars of feminist economics from different parts of the world is of crucial importance. The 20th Annual Conference of IAFFE was held in Hangzhou at Zhejiang Gongshang University June 24-26, 2011. It was attended by 225 participants from 52 countries, and 32 in the Global South. Generous support for the conference was provided by the Swedish International Development Coop- eration Agency (SIDA), the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) - Berlin (Germany) and the Ford Foundation (China). The assistance of these agencies allowed many researchers and scholars from the Global South and throughout the world to participate in the conference, network with others who share in the interest of feminist economics, and explore new ideas and policies to improve the condition of women and children throughout the world. I would also like to express our gratitude to Zhejiang Gongshang University for hosting our conference and for their generous support of our many conference activities. During 2011, the strategic planning exercise for IAFFE’s future work engaged IAFFE members through questionnaires, group work and lively exchange of ideas. Exploring views of new opportunities, new challenges and extending membership interaction also with new actors has provided a wide array of ideas. The new strategic plan will be discussed and finalized during 2012, and then put into action. As university funding for research may be less available in countries with economic difficulties, it is extremely important that IAFFE finds attractive and efficient ways of sharing research results, initiating new ways of working across geographical and language borders, keeping costs for participants down and the intellectual level high as ever. As IAFFE president, I am proud to report that IAFFE membership is diverse, strong and very active in initiating, performing, presenting and disseminating important feminist economic research. Agneta Stark IAFFE President 6 | International Association for Feminist Economics 2011 ANNUAL REPORT The photograph shows members of a women’s group in the Bunglung community of northern Ghana making sheabutter. Photo courtesy of Lynda Pickbourn, May 2008 Fostering a Culture of Impact From the outset, in its vision and membership, IAFFE has sought to be inclusive and open, a global com- munity of economists and non-economists, of academics, practitioners, and activists who are interested in feminist viewpoints on questions of economic analysis, policy, and practice. Our goals are wide-ranging and include creating collaborations to develop feminist analyses of economic issues; educating economists, policy makers, and the general public on feminist points of view on economic matters; providing aid in expanding opportunities for women, especially women from underrepresented groups within economics; and encour- aging inclusion of feminist perspectives in the economics classroom. Current initiatives include a number of path breaking special issues of Feminist Economics. In 2011 the journal published the second of two special issues on Unpaid Work, Time Use, Poverty, and Public Policy, guest edited by Caren Grown, Maria Floro, and Diane Elson. Special issues in progress (detailed below) address a variety of urgent concerns. International Association for Feminist Economics | 7 IAFFE2011 ANNUANNUAALL RREEPOPORRTT 2010 In addition, many IAFFE members are working to educate nonacademic audiences in feminist economic issues. IAFFE member and former president Nancy Folbre has been contributing to the New York Times Economix blog since 2008, while during 2011, IAFFE member Susan Feiner posted on economics and gender issues to the Ms. magazine blog. In the UK, IAFFE member and Feminist Economics Associate Editor Jane Humphries presented “The Children Who Built Victorian Britain” (February 2011), a BBC 4 documentary examining “a world where 12-year-olds went to war at Trafalgar and six-year-olds worked the fields as human scarecrows.” Humphries’s look at the role of child labor in the Industrial Revolution opens a window on cur- rent international debates on the issue. Gender and International Migration Women are increasingly prominent in international migration, and by 2005 represented almost half of the total number of international migrants, with many more women now migrating on their own rather than in association with other family members. Increase in migration of women is partly in response to the care crisis that has emerged in the North. An aging population and more women taking paid jobs have intensified the need for caregivers. In some Asian societies shortfalls of women are generating international migration of marriageable women. In general, women migrants tend to be located at the lower echelons of labor markets, working in temporary and unstable jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors. Their jobs are often poorly paid and reserved almost exclusively for migrant women. These employment conditions call for active labor policies
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