Towards gender-parity democracy

[Celerity]

It’s time to talk about a new social contract—one that women desperately need.

https://socialeurope.eu/towards-gender-parity-democracy



The call for a new paradigm, a social contract superceding the neoliberal ‘Washington consensus’, is becoming a trend in global thinking, taking in the G7. The most far-reaching implication of the ‘Cornwall consensus’—as it was labelled after the group’s summit in Britain in June—would be a revitalisation of the state’s economic role to pursue social goals, build international solidarity and reform global governance in the interest of the common good. The economist Mariana Mazzucato is one of the main voices calling for a radically different approach to international economic governance. Yet she rightly emphasises that this is not only about increasing public spending:



Many feminist theorists would argue that the empowerment of women and gender responsiveness is the most relevant ‘long-term public value’ in the new social contract we need. Even the most revolutionary transformations of modern times, from the enlightenment through to the welfare state, were conceived by and intended for men and their wellbeing. Women were basically ignored and subordinated, their rights denied.

Feminist milestone

Articulating and evidencing the structural and multidimensional discrimination against women, and so putting it on the political agenda, was a milestone for feminist political theory and activism. As a result, over the past quarter century—since the Beijing Platform for Action of 1995—historic changes have been set in motion in the lives of girls and women around the world. Feminist thinking now permeates institutions, policies and norms. Yet we remain far away from where women need to be if they are fully to contribute to, and benefit from, the system. The new social contract needs to comprehend and integrate what works for women and what they need.

Only nine years are left to attain the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. A predominant idea in this agenda is that women’s empowerment and equality between men and women is not only a specific goal (number five). It is also a transformative tool, to renovate the social norms which maintain the symbolic, cultural, political and economic discrimination against women. But as the Covid-19 crisis has shown—and the 2008 financial crisis before that—the political and intellectual discourse in favour of women’s empowerment is in contradiction with pervasively neoliberal governance practice.

Devastating for women.................

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