Economic Resilience Brief
INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE REFORM: Reshaping the G7’s Economic Resilience Ambitions Through a Feminist Lens
This W7 policy brief urges the G7 to radically transform its approach to economic resilience by embedding feminist principles into international financial and trade reform. Moving beyond market stability and supply chain protection, the brief emphasizes that true resilience must center women and marginalized groups, ensuring they have the resources and support to withstand and recover from global shocks like pandemics, inflation, climate crises, and austerity measures.
The brief highlights six interconnected policy areas where the G7’s past commitments have fallen short:
- Tax – The G7 must support inclusive, gender-transformative tax systems, raise the global minimum corporate tax rate, end regressive taxes like VAT on essential goods, and adopt wealth taxes with redistributive mechanisms.
- Debt – With sovereign debt crises deepening across the Global South, the G7 must support a UN-led, rights-based debt resolution framework that prioritizes development, climate justice, and gender equality.
- Trade – G7 trade policy must shift from promoting liberalization to protecting labor rights, public services, and economic inclusion for women, especially in the Global South.
- Labor – Structural gender inequalities and the rise of precarious and unpaid labor demand enforcement of international labor standards, protection from workplace violence, and support for women’s entrepreneurship.
- Care and Social Protection – The G7 must treat care as essential infrastructure and invest in public, gender-transformative care systems. Recent regression on this front is alarming.
- Austerity – Austerity measures are gendered and harmful. The G7 must reject austerity conditionalities and expand fiscal space for countries to invest in public services and social protections.
Finally, the brief stresses the importance of resourcing feminist movements and women’s rights organizations at the grassroots level. These actors are vital to building local economic resilience and holding governments accountable. The G7’s economic leadership, the brief concludes, must be driven not by financial orthodoxy, but by human rights, equity, and care.