Macroeconomic policy tools to finance gender equality

Abstract

Abstract Feminist economists and heterodox macroeconomists have contributed substantively to the body of research that explores the distributional effects of macro policies. This work explicitly addresses the livelihood problems created by neoliberalism and, in addition, it provides a pathway for identifying financing mechanisms. Building on earlier work by Seguino and Grown (2006), this article synthesizes and elaborates the major contributions of this body of gender and macro research and, from this, extrapolates macro‐level policies and tools that support gender equality. Among the tools identified is targeted government spending on physical and social infrastructure, the latter a relatively new conceptual tool that is discussed in detail. A key argument is that financing for gender equality that raises economy‐wide productivity can be self‐sustaining. As a result, both physical and social infrastructure spending have the ability to create fiscal space. This possibility offers a financing framework for gender equality expenditures. A contribution of this article is to critique mainstream monetary policies and identify alternative approaches that expand the toolkit to achieve gender equality goals.

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