Integrating Feminist Agendas: Gender justice and economic justice

Abstract

Vibrant and vital global feminist movements have developed over the past 30 years to address a broad agenda for women's rights. Carol Barton argues that, in many cases these movements have tended to focus on specific issues, and in particular, to prioritize one over another. This is particularly true in a divide between those working on gender justice issues, including sexual and reproductive health, violence, and women's control over their bodies, and women working on a broad development and/or economic justice agenda. Efforts like Cairo and Beijing UN conferences that link these themes have not always changed the fact of specialization among women's organizations. This has had significant political implications, where feminist agendas have been pitted against each other in official venues such as the UN. Barton gives a brief history of this dichotomy and its pitfalls, the implications for the Millennium Development Goals and Millennium Summit process, and important new efforts to integrate feminist agendas, including the Feminist Dialogues, the Feminist Task Force of the Global Call Against Poverty, the Countdown 2015 campaign, and recent collaborations at the UN Beijing+10 review.