This year’s Fourth International Financing for Development Conference (FfD) taking place in Seville from 30 June to 3 July presents a crucial opportunity for civil society to challenge systemic inequalities in the international financial architecture. Key among these is gender equality. Feminist groups in the Civil Society FfD Mechanism have argued that as the economy is gendered, so are the structures that perpetuate global inequality, extraction and wealth concentration. Gender is a cross-cutting issue which affects every area of economic development.

A feminist analysis goes beyond discourses of ‘women’s empowerment’ and instrumentalising women’s involvement in the economy in order to further an unequal structure (see Observer Autumn 2024, Summer 2024). The demands of the Mechanism’s feminist workstream – for the achievement of gender and race equality, and full realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms, through a systemic transformation of the international financial, trade and tax architecture – are pertinent given the recent rollbacks on gender (see Observer Spring 2025).

Feminists are mobilising at regional and global levels. A Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Feminist Economics School to share and build knowledge of the FfD process among pan-African and MENA feminists, and global feminist convening will take place from 13-18 May in Rabat, Morocco, to enable collective feminist strategising.