Abstract

OU Economics is proud to celebrate a recently published collaborative book on feminism and sovereign debt, edited by Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky (CONICET) and Mariana Rulli (UNRN).

Join our seminar to discover a number of key issues relevant to strengthening a feminist approach to the difficulties posed by sovereign over-indebtedness and global economic governance.

• What is the impact of sovereign debt on gender equality?
• How can critical legal studies, human rights and intersectional feminist political economy shine light on how public debt disproportionately affect women, in ways shaped by race, class, sexuality, and ability?
• How do financial crises and their management overwhelmingly through IMF conditional lending perpetuate and exacerbate gender relations? What are the challenges and pitfalls of gender mainstreaming in the IMF?

The Open University Economics Seminar Series will host Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, former independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights of the UN and co-editor of the forthcoming book, together with the contributors: Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, Professor of Public International Law and Chair of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, Penelope Hawkins, senior economic affairs, UNCTAD & Patricia Miranda, Global Advocacy Director at the Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice LATINDADD.

The event will be introduced and chaired by Diane Elson, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, & former Chair of the UK Women’s Budget Group & Christina Laskaridis, Open University.

The book is out now in Spanish by Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Edulp) with the support of the Bretton Woods Project and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and will be published in English by Bristol University Press in 2024.

Speakers

Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky

Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky is a senior researcher at the Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at the National University of Río Negro (CIEDIS). He holds a Master's degree in Business Law and a PhD in Law. He defended the Argentine State in international arbitrations, participated in the nationalization of the national water supply company (AySA) and was its director representing the national State. He worked as Debt Officer at UNCTAD and was Independent Expert on debt and human rights of the UN. He has been a consultant for ECLAC, OHCHR, UNDP and human rights organizations. His research focus lies on the interlinks between finance and human rights.

Diane Elson

Diane Elson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK, a former Chair of the UK Women’s Budget Group (2010-16). She chaired the Commission on a Gender Equitable Economy set up by the Women’s Budget Group in 2019. She is a former Vice President of the International Association for Feminist Economics (2004-6). She served as a member of the UN Committee for Development Policy (2013-2021), and has been an adviser to several UN agencies, including most recently, UN Women and UNDP. She has published widely on gender equality, economic policy and human rights, including articles in World Development, Journal of International Development, Feminist Economics, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, and International Review of Applied Economics . Her books and book chapters include (with R. Balakrishnan and J. Heintz) Rethinking Economics for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights, Routledge, London, 2016; ‘Towards a Gender Equitable Macroeconomic Framework for Europe’ in G. Cozzi, H. Bargawi, and. S. Himmelweit (eds.) Recovery for whom? Austerity policies, gendered impacts and policy alternatives for Europ e, London, Routledge, 2017; ‘Gender Budgeting’ in G. Berik and E. Kongar (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics , London, Routledge, 2021. In 2016 she was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing Frontiers of Economic Thought by the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, and in 2018, the Japan Society of Political Economy honored her with their International Book Prize.

Dorothy Estrada-Tanck

Dorothy Estrada-Tanck is Professor of Public International Law at University of Murcia, and Co-director of its Legal Clinic. She is Chair of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls. Dorothy holds a PhD in Law (EUI), an MSc in Political Theory (LSE) and a Law Degree (Escuela Libre de Derecho, Mexico). She enjoys broad academic and professional experience in the UN, State bodies, NGOs and universities in Mexico, Italy, Spain, the U.S. and Canada, focusing on human rights, gender equality, human security, migration, and socio-economic justice. She is the author of Nuevos horizontes en la protección internacional de los derechos económicos y sociales ( Tirant lo Blanch, 2022) and Human Security and Human Rights under International Law: The Protections Offered to Persons Confronting Structural Vulnerability (Hart Publishing, 2016; Best Book Award 2017, Inter-American Bar Association, Washington, D.C.).

Patricia Miranda

Patricia Miranda is the Global Advocacy Director at the Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice LATINDADD, works on debt justice and is Coordinator of the New Financial Architecture Team. She has an expertise on debt and external financing at regional, national and subnational levels, crosscutting with gender and climate. She has been involved in advocacy processes at the UN and International Financial Institutions, and has been part of the Steering Committee of the C7 and C20. She was LA Regional Programme Officer at Debt Relief International focused on Debt Sustainability Analysis for Latin American Highly Indebted Poor Countries. She has a Masters on Finance and specialisation on Public Financing Strategies. 

Christina Laskaridis

Christina Laskaridis is Lecturer in Economics at the Open University and a Fellow of St Edmund Hall and Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. She works on the political economy of sovereign debt, financial crises, and international organisations. She is leading a grant on environment-related financial risks and regulatory capital requirements funded by INSPIRE and a project on debt sustainability. Her thesis, Debt sustainability: towards a history of theory, policy, and measurement, received the 2022 Joseph Dorfman Best Dissertation prize. Christina uses her expertise to advise on debt and development issues, such as the OHCHR’s Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, UNCTAD, ODI, and several NGOs working on sovereign debt issues.