This briefing was created by the CSO FfD Mechanism for activists and advocates who are interested in getting involved in or learning more about how global economic governance relates to different sectoral and/or local and national struggles in Asia – including feminist movements, food sovereignty and land rights movements, climate justice activists, youth and student movements, human rights advocates, and more.
What difference can wealth taxes make for gender justice in Asia?
This briefing explains how wealth taxes can be used as a tool to fight inequalities and achieve gender justice aims and highlights the potential impact such measures would have by pointing to examples in India and Indonesia among other Asian countries.
Two years after a global pandemic, the measures of austerity have profoundly exacerbated inequalities. The dominant characteristics of austerity, which include inadequate and failed public services in education, health, social protection; income inequality driven in part by regressive taxes; and a skeletal role of the state built by privatization schemes. All this has led to a systematic erosion of the resilience of public systems, as well as of a social contract that safeguards the redistribution of wealth, resources and public goods towards equity and compliance with human rights.
This paper published by CDES examines the dynamics and implications of gender austerity in Ecuador in the context of its 27-month IMF loan program for USD 6,500 million, started in 2019 and redefined at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 (IMF 2021). The fiscal consolidation program attached to the loan includes a wide range of measures. For example: extensive cuts in public spending focused on the health sector, relief measures labor deregulation, elimination of fuel subsidies, restrictions on ability of the central bank to finance liquidity problems in the pandemic crisis and privatization of state companies and public services, among many others.
In the wake of a corruption scandal involving a senior tax official, this press release brought attention to the ways that Indonesia’s tax system contributes to inequalities and has detrimental impacts on women.
Farmer women and Batak women are the victims who suffer the most in tenure conflicts in North Sumatra due to plantation projects. However, the women continued to struggle to defend their ancestral lands.
Full movie available soon.
This report compiles an overview of findings from consultations carried out by Aksi! with women in 10 cities across Indonesia between November 2021 and January 2022. The report sheds light on the issues of gender and economic inequality faced by women at the forefront of these issues as expressed and analysed by the women themselves. It is hoped that by reading this report, stakeholders can see the situation of women from their own perspective, understand their challenges and their aspirations for change, and then develop joint efforts to help them, their families and communities deal with the situations of inequality and injustice they face.
The report is only available in Bahasa Indonesia.
Or view the online flipbook version here.
For the Dayak people, the forest is a symbol of women’s dignity. However, the indigenous people on the island of Borneo have to face land grabbing which has an impact on their lives.
This documentary by Aksi! for gender, social and ecological justice and New Age Cinema is the result of collaboration with the Mamut Menteng Women’s Solidarity. The full movie will be available soon.
In this documentary produced by Centro de Derechos Económicos y Sociales (CDES), the Women of Plan de Vida Fenashp in Ecuador, the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Napo (FOIN) and the Union of People Affected by Chevron-Texaco (UDAPT) tell the story of their lives as women in their communities facing fiscal austerity as a consequence of high debt service payments.
The undervaluation of care and care work is reflected in the gross imbalances and gaps in national budgets and lack of publicly funded care services, support systems for care workers, and physical and social infrastructures needed to reduce and redistribute care work. Care – caring for families, communities, and society as a whole – is an essential need and function of any society; it is not “just a woman’s responsibility,” but the collective responsibility of society.
The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) advances a comprehensive agenda for tax and gender justice that takes into account the multiple and intersecting layers of discrimination that women in Asia face. The issue brief explains how burdensome Value-added tax (VAT), Goods and Services tax (GST) and Excise tax are to women and all unpaid care workers and has become imperative to advance our five (5) calls and demands.
Outside the W20 Summit, on July 20, indigenous Toba women and a number of activists unfurled a giant banner that read “Women of North Sumatra Against Deforestation” on Lake Toba and a number of action posters on the boat. The action was a protest against the discussions at the W20 meeting that did not address the problem of economic injustice experienced by Indonesian women, especially indigenous women. This meeting was actually held only to produce policies that would benefit the country’s economic and political elites, corporations and international financial institutions, and not to discuss the real interests of the people.
Among other media coverage, Narasi, an online media outlet responded with a comprehensive video of the story and interviewed Aksi! and its partner KSPPM.
