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“We must use our collective power to visualize a feminist future that includes all of us,
and that is bold enough to step forward and challenge the systems and structures.”
Dear John,
In a new op-ed in Philanthropy Women, “New Paradigm: Shifting Power as We Rebuild America with a Gender Lens,” written by President and CEO Teresa C. Younger and Joy Anderson, President and Founder of Criterion Institute, they discuss the opportunity and need to include and advance the gender justice movement as part of the nation’s pandemic recovery. As you read below, consider what a “just recovery” means to you?
New Paradigm: Shifting Power as We Rebuild America with a Gender Lens
by Teresa C. Younger and Joy Anderson
Imagine a world where financial actors actively sought out and paid gender experts to advise them on lending criteria and the terms attached to stimulus loans. Imagine gender justice organizations weighing in on reports produced by banks and consulting firms, shaping the narrative of where asset holders should be investing.
Imagine if a key indicator of economic recovery was not how large-cap US stocks are trading, but how many women, nonbinary individuals, and people of color have returned to work in safe jobs that pay a fair wage and offered benefits.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust a number of injustices and inequities into our consciousness and mainstream media conversation, from a lack of access to healthcare and protective equipment for low-wage, predominately female frontline workers to a dramatic increase in gender-based violence as victims of domestic and family abuse are quarantined with their abusers. The pandemic is disproportionately affecting women across the globe.
But it’s not because of COVID that we have health disparities, that people are unsafe and that there is a heightened risk of physical and sexual abuse. COVID is merely shining a spotlight on the failures of our financial and economic systems—systems that were neither designed for us or by us—and how they have historically failed to value women. This moment of brokenness reveals the urgency and opportunity to redesign economic systems that are more aligned with valuing everyone.
There has never been a more critical time for the gender justice movement to bring its wisdom, its voice, and its influence into public discourse to ensure that the financing of the recovery tilts the scales toward justice. As the country scrambles to plan for our economic recovery, those fighting for gender justice must claim this as our time to rebuild the nation and decide what success in the recovery looks like.
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