Inflation-targeting monetary policy based on the New Keynesian Economic framework has been an obstacle to fiscal stimulus, employment, and growth, reducing public investment in equality supporting services and transfers, with disproportionate impacts for women. Empirical research highlights the gender-based distributional impacts of interest rate interventions via differential changes in employment, wages, and debt servicing burdens. Quantitative easing has increased wealth inequality by driving up the prices of assets which women are less likely to hold, while quantitative tightening raises challenges for the fiscal space needed to support a feminist agenda. Engendering monetary policy requires: reforms to central bank governance and consultative bodies; broadening mandates to target real variables; widening of our understanding of the causes of inflation and the tools needed to address it; and an overhaul of operational procedures to introduce measures such as distributional impact assessments, facilities to incentivize investment in gender equality, and greater coordination with fiscal policy.
Feminist political economy has been enhanced by understanding the urban as a dynamic site of social reproduction. This article reveals how one aspect of social reproduction - women's accounting for and managing the sociality around debt, that is, caring for debt - is expressed through embodied gendered norms that play out in the everyday lives of women in low-income urban neighborhoods in the Global South. Drawing on geo-ethnographic research, the article analyzes embodied experiences of indebtedness among grassroots women navigating economic precarity in Cochabamba (Bolivia), Delhi (India), Georgetown (Guyana), Ibadan (Nigeria), and Shanghai (China). The article illustrates how caring for debt is experienced through emotional, mental, and physical dimensions of women's embodiment, expressed through their entanglement with socio-spatialities of the neoliberal urban. The analysis further underscores that women's work caring for debts is an additional out-of-sight dimension of the unpaid and underpaid social reproductive labor driving urban economies in the Global South.
This study aims to create an inclusive poverty index using indicators that represent women's experiences of poverty, focusing on agency power and autonomy. In addition to fundamental poverty dimensions, violence is assessed as a distinct dimension. Interviews with 162 married couples (324 individuals) provided insights into gender differences in poverty experiences within households. Principal Component Analysis determined the subdimensions and indicators of the Gender-Sensitive Agency-Poverty Index (GSAPI), which was then adapted to the Gendered-Human Development Index methodology. By employing both objective and subjective indicators, the GSAPI accurately reflects women's poverty experiences. This focus on agency-related indicators ensures inclusiveness and overcomes the limitations of traditional poverty criteria that evaluate outcomes rather than processes. Ultimately, indicators reflecting agency power concentrated on women's experiences of poverty.HIGHLIGHTS
Although many studies have assessed the effects of union dissolution on access to economic resources, few have analyzed changes in other domains of women's quality of life that might be affected when couple separation occurs in households with small children. This study analyzes the effects of union dissolution on economic and subjective well-being, time use and household workload, empowerment, and attitudes toward gender norms among custodial mothers. The study uses two waves of an official longitudinal study that followed Uruguayan households with children ages 0-3 years beginning in 2013. The findings show that union dissolution entails, on average, a net per capita household income loss of 29 percent, increased paid labor effort, and decreased time devoted to household work. Empowerment and gender norms are not significantly affected.HIGHLIGHTS
