July 1985
Nairobi, Kenya
The 1985 Nairobi Conference, marking the end of the UN Decade for Women, becomes a platform where feminists denounce the gendered impacts of structural adjustment, further amplifying calls for justice. Their interventions directly challenge neoliberal orthodoxy and advance calls for more equitable development frameworks.
This moment is identified with intensifying resistance to neoliberal restructuring imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), enforced as loan conditions by those institutions, mandate privatisation, deregulation, and drastic cuts to health, education, and food subsidies—policies that disproportionately harm women, children, and the poor. These austerity-driven reforms exacerbate structural inequalities and undermine national sovereignty, sparking mass mobilisations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Feminists critique the SAPs, exposing the human toll of neoliberal austerity and economic restructuring.
