2025 Gender IFI Summer School
•
Article summary
The 2025 edition of the Summer School was comprised of seven free online learning sessions, featuring experienced speakers teaching about how international financial institutions (IFIs) impact women’s rights, plus the sharing of advocacy and mobilising tactics to rise up against them amongst participants.
Now in its third year, the 2025 Gender and International Financial Institutions (IFI) Summer School took place from August and September. Reflective of the growing desire to learn about – and influence – IFIs’ macroeconomic policies that can harm women, girls and gender minorities, over 2,000 people signed up to attend.
The series of seven free, online sessions was developed and led by Gender IFI network members, showcasing a breadth of expertise, regional and country perspectives, and extensive research and analysis of feminist issues relating to economic justice. Please see below for more information:
Session 1: Introduction to feminist economics
This session presented an introduction to the main issues and debates in feminist macroeconomics. It covered the role of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) including the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) – the IMF and the World Bank – and talked about the kinds of gendered harms they are perpetuating. It also focused on what kinds of feminist advocacy and campaigns are possible and necessary to hold them to account and fight for gender equality.
Session 2: Financing for Development (FfD) 4 and the international financial architecture: Where to go now?
Moderated by a representative of the Civil Society FfD Mechanism Feminist Workstream, this dialogue prompted in-depth, cross-regional and cross-thematic analysis and unpacking of features of the FfD 4 outcome document – the Compromiso de Sevilla, particularly investigating the impact on gender. Aspects for discussion included debt, tax, private finance and civil society participation. This session also featured an update from the African Conference on Debt and Development, the theme of which this year is Reparations and Reparative Justice for an African Financial Architecture and Transformation.
Session 3: Climate, finance and women’s rights
This session provided an overview of the relationship between IFIs and climate (in)justice, both in terms of their direct financing of fossil fuel projects and environmental destruction, and their role in shaping the economic conditions that constrain countries’ ability to finance or implement a just transition. Speakers from a range of regional and thematic backgrounds shared case studies and resources that specifically speak to the interconnections between women’s rights/gender equality, climate action, and the role of the IFIs, particularly the World Bank, IMF, and regional development banks.
Session 4: Unpacking financialisation: how global finance shapes health, food security, and rights
This webinar investigated how financialisation – rooted in global financial institutions and neoliberal policies – reshapes essential services like healthcare and agriculture, treating them as assets rather than rights. By examining mechanisms such as de-risking and additionality, it explored how development is increasingly subordinated to investor interests. Speakers shared how this transformation impacts political agency, food sovereignty, and access to health, especially in the Global South and for women, while exploring pathways to reclaim public control and democratic alternatives.
Session 5: Conditionality and Neocolonialism
This session analysed IMF conditionality as a form of neo-colonialism or imperialism, that reproduces colonial relations, upholds Global North dominance, and undermines democracy and sovereignty in the Global South. It analysed the role of the IMF in imposing fiscal austerity measures such as public sector wage freezes, subsidy cuts, energy reforms, environment services, and pension reforms which disproportionately harms women and marginalised groups. Bringing the current situation from Argentina, Ecuador and Suriname, as well as the broader Latin American and Caribbean context, the session focused on how these measures erode access to public services, deepen unpaid care burdens, and limit climate resilience.
Session 6: The Rabat Roadmap: Resistance, militarism and the global economy
The Rabat Declaration emerged from the heart of the Middle East and North Africa, a region with a long history of resistance against colonialism and exploitation. It addresses the profound crises facing the peoples of the Global South which stem from the economic and political domination of patriarchal, imperialist, colonial capitalism, which perpetuates poverty, discrimination, and environmental dispossession. Women and marginalised groups in particular bear the brunt of these crises through increased debt burdens, austerity, erosion of social services, and an intensifying climate crisis. In this session, the writers and organisers of the Rabat declaration put forward the declaration’s call and vision for a global system grounded in economic, social, and environmental justice, and guided by a democratic feminist vision that centers women and all gender-diverse people.
Session 7: Feminist economic alternatives and the climate justice nexus
This session explored feminist economic alternatives that challenge dominant neoliberal paradigms, with a focus on how these intersect with climate justice and women’s economic justice. Participants engaged with frameworks and movement strategies that centre care, sustainability, and equity, and critically reflect on how feminist movements are pushing for a feminist just transition that puts people and planet over profit and patriarchy.
Panellists and organisers also contributed to a reading and resources list, which is now an extensive source of relevant materials on the topics covered.
If you have further questions about the summer school, please contact BWP’s GEM team, Amy McShane (amcshane@brettonwoodsproject.org), or Tara Povey (tpovey@brettonwoodsproject.org).