Are you interested in learning how e-commerce will impact women, especially in the global South? Join the GTC for the webinar ‘Does the digital economy promote women’s rights? Unpacking the myths!’ on Wednesday, 18 September at 14.00 CET (GMT+1). Please visit the following link to find out the time in your time zone.
To register in advance, please go to: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FPpfR9AnTg6w0ByDHztO-w. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Speakers
• Nandini Chami, Digital Justice Project — a collaborative research and advocacy initiative of DAWN and IT for Change.
• Scheaffer Okore, Vice Chair of the Ukweli Party, Kenya.
• Sofia Scasserra, Researcher and Lecturer, World Labor Institute “Julio Godio”, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), Argentina, and Economic Advisor FAECYS – Presidency UNI Global.
• Moderator: Crystal Dicks, a feminist activist, currently working as an independent gender and development practitioner, while completing a writing fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Information
The World Trade Organisation (WTO), World Bank, World Economic Forum (WEF) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are driving the debates on the digital economy, setting the policy agendas that will shape its future directions. The dominant discourse in trade and economic policy spaces is that digitalisation of the economy will automatically empower women from the global South, opening up new opportunities for entrepreneurship and flexible employment – in the form of e-commerce and on-demand work. However, this argument conveniently leaves out the fact that such benefits will remain limited to a small group only, mainly female entrepreneurs and in some instances female consumers in Western countries, excluding women without education or internet access.
Therefore, the presented narrative actually creates a myth about the positive impacts of the digital economy on women. The reality is that this new organization of the economy brings forth a new kind of corporation that thrives on controlling data and reorganizes supply chains by creating or expanding precarious cheap labour opportunities for which women are in many places an easy target. The supposedly ‘new’ configuration is in fact another avenue to promote the neo-liberal economic and trade models that are based on a narrow conception of economic growth and the promotion of profit-maximization for companies, prioritised before the well-being and human rights of people.
This Webinar will unpack the myths surrounding the digital economy, by demonstrating how in mainstream policy debates, the real impacts of platform capitalism and its culture of data extractivism on the lives of many women, especially those in the global South, are completely lost sight of. it will also give recommendations for a feminist trade and economic policy to regulate digitalization in our economies in a way that will empower all women and protect women’s rights.
This is the first webinar of the Gender and Trade Coalition, in collaboration with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and WIDE+ and in the context of their project “the Future is Feminist”. The Gender and Trade Coalition is a global feminist alliance for trade justice confronting the co-optation of women’s rights as a means for further liberalisation, and increasing consciousness, capacity, research, and advocacy for equitable policy alternatives.
