Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office

Sustainable Illusions?

Focusing on four European countries, this report shows that it is still largelywomen who take on the burden of care work, which in turn negatively impacts their prospects on the labour market

A Caring State?

Welfare State Retrenchment, the Effects on Women, and Feminist Responses in Sweden

Call for Tenders: Report/Study on “The effects of the dismantling of the Swedish welfare state on women”

The romanticisation of the Swedish welfare system and its positive effects on gender equality persists, notwithstanding the substantial dismantling of the welfare state in recent decades and Sweden’s drop in gender equality rankings. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, this development reflects an impact not so much of the last economic crisis when the government did not pursue the politics of austerity seen across much of the continent ...

Climate Justice and Gender Justice

The fight for climate justice must be feminist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist What does a feminist perspective mean? Feminism is constituted by a wide range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements across the globe that share the common goal to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, social and personal equality of the sexes ...

"Should Women Have More Rights?" - Traditional Values and Austerity in Russia

Russia has been experiencing the results of an acute economic crisis since 2012. However, the government has not been explicit in its declarations regarding austerity policies. On the contrary, it tends to represent its measures as "normal" and generally justifies cuts to public expenditure and reduced spending as part of a new understanding of the welfare state and socio-economic relations ...

Devaluation of Female Labor and the Retreat of the State

Following the Euromaidan, the outbreak of war and ensuing economic crisis, the Ukrainian government introduced wide-ranging reforms guided by the neoliberal idea that stability and economic growth can be generated by cutting social spending. Despite the government's proclaimed intent to support the poorest and weakest members of Ukrainian society, the opposite has occurred, and the negative effects of the new reforms have ended up targeting them most ...

Irish Feminist Approaches against Austerity Regimes

We find austerity is gendered and that, following almost a decade of austerity, the position of women in Ireland has regressed economically and socially. Different dynamics shape gendered austerity which in some instances re-feminises care, while in other instances forces a process of de-domestication for some women ...

The Permanent Care Crisis and Its Effects on Gender Equality

The international financial crisis that began in 2007 hit the Spanish economy hard, accelerating the housing market's collapse and increasing unemployment (which rose from 9.6% in 2008 to 26.9% in 2013) and the risk of poverty. The European Union intensified its pressure on Spain in spring 2010, as Zapatero's government approved the first package of austerity measures in May of that year, along with labour market and pension reforms later on ...

When the Belt Can't Get Any Tighter

"Without us, the world stops working" – This was the slogan under which millions of Spanish women launched a general strike on 8 March 2018. The strike was more than just a strike, however, giving women the opportunity to discuss different related topics and engage in processes of self-organization around questions like work, care, and consumption (read more about the strike) ...

Gendered Aspects of the Austerity Regime in Greece: 2010–2017

Though austerity has prevailed across Europe to varying degrees, Greece in particular faces a situation of permanent austerity. The fiscal consolidation programs implemented since 2010 have brought extensive cuts to the public sector, over-taxation, privatizations, institutional reforms, devaluation of labour, high unemployment and precariousness ...

Feminist Responses to Austerity in Europe

Women are hit twice by austerity – as workers in sectors double affected by structural reforms and as social security recipients. This is demonstrated by case studies from ten European countries commissioned by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in 2017. Despite recent growth accelerations, the European economies do not live up to their promise of ending austerity ...

Transforming our lives. Transforming the world.

The Third International Marxist-Feminist Conference will take place at Lund University (Lund, Sweden), October 6-7, 2018. The format of the Conference In March 2015 over 500 scholars and activists participated in the first international Marxist-Feminist conference in Berlin exploring topics such as neoliberalism, intersectionality and social reproduction ...

Fights We Can Win

Delivering his acceptance speech as the newly elected leader of the Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP) towards the end of 2015, Ron Meyer informed his comrades they "have to do things differently. […] Not a little bit differently, but completely different." The former campaigner from the ...

Tag: care