Women and the Global Economy Series Presents
Isabella Bakker on Gender and Macroeconomics

The Center for International Studies' "Women and the Global Economy" series continues next week when Isabella Bakker, a professor of political science and women's studies at Toronto's York University, gives a talk titled "The Paradox of 'Sound' Macroeconomics and Gender Inequality." The lecture, to take place on Thursday, April 12, at 4:30 p.m. in Thomas 224, is free and open to the public.

"According to recent United Nations research," Bakker says, "in many parts of the world 'sound' economic policies have resulted in greater gender inequality. These findings suggest that the fiscal austerity of 'sound' macroeconomic policy tends to result in lower government expenditures (cutbacks) in social and public health programs and more regressive and inequitable taxation systems in ways that tend to hit the poor, and especially poor women, the hardest.

"By contrast, evidence from the United Nations Development Fund for Women suggests that macroeconomic policies based on high levels of both tax revenues and public expenditure are more conducive to gender equality and the advancement of women."

Bakker's lecture will explore the relationship between parallel national and global public-policy commitments over the last 25 years, including those intended to promote greater gender equality and those intended to produce "sound" macroeconomic policies resulting in greater economic stability and growth. She will conclude by identifying ways in which different types of macroeconomic policies may be reconciled with greater gender-equality and social-justice objectives.

Bakker is a leading scholar of gender and economic policy who has been recognized by numerous foundations for her work on economic governance and the global empowerment of women. She has worked with the United Nations and a number of NGOs and international agencies. Her published work includes The Strategic Silence: Gender and Economic Policy (1994), Rethinking Restructuring: Gender and Change in Canada (1996), and Power, Production and Social Reproduction (2003) with Stephen Gill, as well as numerous other works on gender and restructuring, fiscal policy and the political economy of state finance, the changing role of government, and globalization.

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