Crises seem to have become the new normal – from climate change to Covid to Ukraine and the economic turmoil they have generated for many. But with crisis comes opportunity, and there has been a proliferation of visions for reorganizing contemporary forms of capitalism and its complicity with militarism, extractivism, and uncaring. Some of these visions have been generated in international forums, others are emerging from the bottom-up.

This local plenary of the IAFFE conference will engage in a common visioning of a feminist future by engaging with new thinking emerging from international organizations, the ILO and UN Women in particular, and from the strategizing of actors in the Geneva social and solidarity economy. It will take the concept of caring as an entry point for such visioning, explore the promise of establishing a care economy and the policy challenges this entails. It also will showcase how current production and consumption practices can and are already being transformed in grassroots initiatives. And it will interrogate the limits of a care economy from diverse feminist perspectives.

Chidi King will provide empirical data drawn from the March 2022 ILO report on Care at Work. Anuradha Seth (TBC) will discuss policy ideas emerging from various UN Women processes and projects. Christophe Dunand (TBC) will present the After Manifesto of the Geneva Network for Social and Solidarity Economy and his work with Réalise, an organisation that seeks to integrate people in to the labour force by offering them jobs in the service economy. He will be joined by another local partner yet to be identified.

The format will be a series of short presentations, followed by questioning from the moderator and engagement with the audience.

Moderator: Elisabeth Prügl (Graduate Institute)

Presenters:
• Chidi King (ILO)
• Caroline Piffaretti (APRES)
• Christine Verschuur (EFI; Graduate Institute)
• Anuradha Seth (UN Women)