Gendering global economic governance after the global financial crisis

Abstract

How can we better understand how changes in global economic governance since the global financial crisis are gendered? In response to pleas for gender research that moves away from ‘somewhat stifling critiques of co-optation’ and the ‘dichotomization of co-optation and resistance’, this article ‘studies up’ to answer unresolved questions about ‘how feminist agendas have been absorbed into international governance’. It also makes visible ‘contradictions, and tensions and spaces for subversion’, as advocated by Prugl and True. Using an approach informed by insights from feminist institutionalism, constructivism and practice theory, it opens the ‘black box’ of GEG to look at how gender actors could ensure that a (limited) gender equality agenda was adopted by some institutions of global economic governance after the crisis. It ends with an analysis of how one ‘gender equality as smart economics’ measure – decreasing the gap in women’s labor force participation by 25% – was adopted at the G20 in 2014. It shows the impact of new developments in GEG, like the increased role of informal, but influential organizations like the G20, on the gendering of global economic governance.