Feminist Economics Strengthens the Case for Degrowth

27/08/2023

Vani Bhardwaj

Feminist economics implies transformative action^[1]Agenjo-Caledron, A., Galvez-Munoz, L. (2019). ‘Feminist Economics: Theoretical and Political Dimensions’. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Volume 78. Issue 1. … Continue reading as it breaches the concept of ‘economic man’, problematizes the dimensions of productivity, efficiency, work and sexism of labor relations and arrangements in classical and neoclassical economics. Keeping women invisible is as much a blind spot in classical economics as manufacturing of scarcity. Since degrowth has no affinity to produce double-digit growth rates it is sensitive to ecological distribution conflicts, feminist aspects to economic functioning^[2]Dengler, C., Lang, M., (2022). “Commoning Care: Feminist Degrowth Visions for a Socio-Ecological Transformation”. Feminist Economics. Volume 28, Issue 1. Taylor and Francis … Continue reading and inequitable access and distribution of resources.

Degrowth advocates the abundance of resources, debunking the necessity of scarcity in classical economics^[3]Akbulut, B. (2021). ’Degrowth’. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society. Taylor and Francis https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08935696.2020.1847014?src=recsys. The artificial generation of scarcity economics was made essential for achieving private accumulation and impressive Gross Domestic Product (GDP) statistics. The rapid industrialization of the developed countries came at the expense of drain of wealth for centuries from former colonies. Thus, there was not scarcity of resources in these nations but only the reallocation of their resources to the markets of the colonized markets. Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist in favor of degrowth, associates such economic logic with the colonization of previous centuries^[4]Hickel, J. (2019). ‘Degrowth: A Theory of Radical Abundance’. Real World Economics Review, Issue 87 … Continue reading. Therefore, shrinking of quantum of throughput is desirable. That is, scaling down input and outflow processes in global value chains (throughput) for all countries^[5]Hickel, J., (2021). ‘What Does Degrowth Mean? A Few Points of Clarification’. Globalizations. Volume 18, Issue 7: Economics and Climate Emergency. Pp1105-1111. Taylor and Francis … Continue reading becomes feasible. This way the overconsumption of intermediate goods and exploitative global value chains embedded in greenwashing are discouraged.

The nomenclature of ‘degrowth’ amounts to ‘snap judgments’ and has a ‘backfire effect’ as the term is loaded with negative unintended consequences as regards public communication and behavioral economics^[6]Drews, S, Antal, M., (2016), “Degrowth: A ‘Missile Word’ That Backfires?”. Ecological Economics. Vol. 126, pp182-187 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.04.001. Unmistakably, austerity should not be conflated with degrowth. Post-development theorists and ecological economists have been at the forefront of normalizing the discourse on degrowth^[7]Hickel, J., Kallis, G., et al. (2022). ‘Degrowth Can Help: Here Is How Science Can Help’. Nature Group. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04412-x . High growth rates need not be the prerequisite for national economies to achieve sustainable living^[8]Kallis, G. (2018). Degrowth. Columbia University Press. ISBN:  9781911116806 https://cup.columbia.edu/book/degrowth/9781911116806 in the first place and the correlation of the degrowth with recession is certainly erroneous. Jason Hickel observes that while recession entails a contraction of the economy, degrowth espouses the irrelevance of growth for an economy itself^[9]Hickel, J. (2019). ‘Degrowth: A Theory of Radical Abundance’. Real World Economics Review, Issue 87 … Continue reading, since there is an abundance of resources already.

Degrowth has drawn criticism for having an ambiguous political agenda that does not cumulate into large-scale transformations as it remains bounded to initiatives with limited capacities^[10]Saed (2012). ‘Introduction to the Degrowth Symposium’. Capitalism Nature and Socialism. Volume 23, Issue 1. Taylor and Francis https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2011.648836. Arturo Escobar, post-development thinker and anthropologist, debunks the notion that degrowth is merely localism. Escobar brings attention to the transnational nature of meshwork of imbalance of power dynamics and solidarity that ascertain interlinkages of state actors with critical indigenous knowledge systems and regenerating positive relations with state institutions in exchange^[11]Nirmal, P., Rocheleau, D. (2019). ‘Decolonizing Degrowth in the Post-development Convergence: Questions, Experiences, and Proposals from Two Indigenous Territories’. Environment and Planning E: … Continue reading. Gustavo Esteva, Mexican grassroots activist, renders such meshwork^[12]Escobar A (2018) Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Durham: Duke University Press as symbols of persistent resistance and autonomous solidarities instead^[13]Esteva, G., (2018). “Colonialism, Development, & Educational Rights: A ‘Dialogue Under the Storm’”. International Journal of Human Rights Education. Volume 2. Issue 1 … Continue reading. The natural corollary therefore can be how feminist economics dovetails with degrowth.

Convergence of Degrowth and Feminist Economics

The valorization of constant productivity and efficiency under industrial economy across centuries has disregarded and marginalized the reproductive labor, care economy and household labor as economic units of analyses^[14]Urban, J., Pürckhauer A., (2016). ‘Feminist Economics’. Exploring Economics https://www.exploring-economics.org/en/orientation/feminist-economics/ . Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has brought into focus the feminized nature of unpaid care work^[15]Ghosh, J., (2021). ‘Women In Economics: Unpaid Care Work’. IMF Podcasts https://www.imf.org/en/News/Podcasts/All-Podcasts/2021/10/20/jayati-ghosh that stands precluded in malestream economics as feminist economics^[16]Michaeli, I. (2021). Radical Feminists, Mainstream Economics in Women’s Economic Empowerment. Palgrave McMillan https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89281-4_4 finds itself at the margins. While she reproaches the centralization of the ‘economic man’ and positions the ‘invisible woman’^[17]Ghosh, J., Kulvicki, M., et al., (2021). ‘The Invisible Woman’. Institute for New Economic Thinking. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/the-invisible-woman (AV citation) in the spotlight; to be truly gender sensitive her analysis remains deficient in including the invisible queer in market growth. What this article implies by invisible queer is the marginalization of queer-related economic deprivations and queer blindness in classical economics. Diving deeper into the economics of unremunerated care, Nina Banks, Associate professor of economics at Bucknell University, emphasizes the racialized vulnerabilities embedded in the white woman’s ‘feminine mystique’^[18]Friedan, Betty. (1963). “The Feminine Mystique”. W.W. Norton Company reiterating that domestic work for women of color is more exploitative^[19]Uncovering the Contributions Of Black Women to Economics’. 2022. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis … Continue reading. Black feminism^[20]Walker, A. (1983). In search of our mother’s garden. New York: Harcourt. brings forth the significance of critical leisure studies and that gender is not the sole lens but always overlaps with race, color and indigeneity. Black women are oft objectified when it comes to leisure activities^[21]Mowatt, R.A., French, B.H., et al., (2013). ‘Black/Female/Body Hypervisibility and Invisibility’. Journal of Leisure Research. Volume 45, Issue 5. Taylor and Francis … Continue reading, being at the receiving end of ‘invisible marginality’. Karla Henderson, distinguished professor with expertise in gender and leisure studies, forewarns against the add race and stir approach^[22]Henderson, K.A., Shaw, S.M., (2006). Leisure and Gender: Challenges and Opportunities for Feminist Research in A Handbook of Leisure Studies. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN : 978-1-4039-0279-5. She condones bodies of black women as sites of hypersexualization and commodification, leisure being a privilege for such women rather than a given. Most often their ‘powerless rage’^[23]Fromm, E. (1937). ‘On The Feeling of Powerlessness’. Edinburgh University Press https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/pah.2019.0310 is caricatured as a stereotype accorded to black women^[24]Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.. Such perceived ‘hypervisibility’ is rendered as offensive in order to silence the voices of resistance by black women^[25]Griffin, K. A., & Reddick, R. J. (2011). Surveillance and sacrifice: Gender differences in the mentoring patterns of Black professors at predominantly White research universities. American … Continue reading.

Synergizing Dalit feminism with degrowth economics^[26]Pan, A. (2020) .“Mapping Dalit Feminisms”. Sage. Stree

In a similar vein, Dalit feminism with its distinct similarities to black feminism, underscores the dual resistance of sexism within the Dalit community and the casteism against Dalits by bhramanism^[27]Pan, A. (2021). ‘Mapping Dalit Feminism: Towards An Intersectional Standpoint’. Sage Publishing. The four varnas were entrenched by the Vedic caste system: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras and those outside the caste system as ati-shudras or outcastes; this being in the acclaimed order of ‘superiority’. Brahminism is not merely being a Brahmin and having a misplaced sense of superiority in the stratification of the labor market in South Asian society. It is also about the contiguous striving of all castes and sub castes to keep ‘aspiring’ to adopt practices of the Brahmin in order to vest themselves off stigmatization. This process of Brahminism has been labelled Sanskritization^[28]Srinivas, M.N. (1956). ‘A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization’. The Far Eastern Quarterly. Vol. 15, No.4 by M.N. Srinivas, a pioneer Indian sociologist. Rajeev Bhargava, Indian political scientist, delineates how Brahmanism is an ideology to maintain the status quoist supremacy of the Brahmins in the social order^[29]Bhargava, Rajeev (2019-07-23). “What does it mean to oppose Brahmanism?”. The Hindu. .

In ‘Mapping Dalit Feminism’, Pan brings forth the plight of the Dalit woman. The Dalit woman finds herself in the crosshairs of the sexism of Dalit resistance politics and the casteism of the mainstream caste blind feminism.

Dalit feminism spotlights the casteist sexism, wherein the patriarchy exercised by Dalit men, ‘upper’ caste men and women stand exposed with their caste-embroiled undertones. Dalit women are expected to subsume their distinct experiences by Dalit men to fight the larger casteism. Anandita Pan, Dalit feminist and Assistant Professor in India, continuously discusses the contiguous erasure of Dalit women from Dalit Politics and mainstream Indian Feminism. Dalit women ‘talk differently’ as Sharmila Rege establishes Dalit feminism as an intervening episteme challenging dominant systems of knowledge that unpacks intersections of class, gender and caste^[30]Rege, S. (1998), ‘Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of Difference and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint Position’, Economic and Political Weekly . Dynamics of subjugation and oppression as experienced in a patriarchal casteist society when given a critical lens to navigate a resistant knowledge episteme is called an intersectional standpoint^[31]Pan, A. (2021). ‘Mapping Dalit Feminism: Towards An Intersectional Standpoint’. Sage Publishing. Dalit feminism thus leads to ever-evolving emancipatory interrogations.

So how does Dalit feminism associate with degrowth economics? Once the emphasis on pumping out high growth rates takes a backseat, the social division of labor can be renegotiated within the template of degrowth^[32]Eicker, J., Keil, K. (2017) ‘Who Cares? A Convergence of Feminist Economics and Degrowth’. Exploring Economics https://www.exploring-economics.org/en/discover/who-cares/ . It will also attribute greater value to the nature of work done by homemakers, unpaid labor, bonded caste labor or those not accounted for explicitly in valuations of GDP. Dalit feminist discourse informs the degrowth feminist economics by making the invisible and stigmatized Dalit women and girls caught in decades of bonded labor in agriculture. Mere financial autonomy in masculinized classical market economy does not ensure dignity for dalit women. This can be remedied by degrowth feminist logic.

Therefore, the assertion is that degrowth economics and feminist self-care hinge together, as it can be said that feminist self-care opens the door for degrowth economics to be normalized into our daily lives. 

Renegotiating the social division of labor within the purview of degrowth would also have implications for the caste-driven labor stratification in Indian society. There exists a literature gap with regard to the caste-degrowth nexus. Uma Chakraborty is a renowned intersectional feminist, filmmaker and an Indian historian. Her unpacking of Brahmanical patriarchies can be synergized with the practice of degrowth that will structurally challenge casteist labor relations (such as caste structure in leather tanneries of Punjab and cremation grounds of Uttar Pradesh)^[33]Stalin K. ‘India Untouched: Stories of a People Apart’. (2007). Culture Unplugged within Indian communities.

Gendered roles in the societal economic framework

Karl Polanyi, the Austrian economic sociologist in his canonical text, The Great Transformation, had gauged early on that economy is embedded in the society in which it is situated, while such a society is embedded in a natural environment^[34]Polanyi, Karl. 1944/1957. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. . The monetized economy, assert Dengler and Strenk, devalues care work and substantiates a dual discourse of remunerative and non-remunerative work, the latter being placed lower in the hierarchy of work economy^[35]Corinna Dengler & Birte Strunk (2018) The Monetized Economy Versus Care and the Environment: Degrowth Perspectives On Reconciling an Antagonism, Feminist Economics, 24:3, 160-183, DOI: … Continue reading. Ecological and feminist economics have had limited interaction in the industrial economic logic. The binary of productive and reproductive is in which the latter is considered outside the purview of the main focus of productive growth^[36]Jochimsen, Maren and Ulrike Knobloch. 1997. “Making the Hidden Visible: The Importance of Caring Activities and Their Principles for Any Economy.” Ecological Economics 20(2): 107–12. doi: … Continue reading. 


Employment impasses keeping LGBTQI+ population as dependents and the transition from caregiving responsibilities in a household to widowhood^[37]DiGiacomo, M., Lewis J. N.M. et al. (2013). ‘Transitioning From Caregiving to Widowhood’ Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. Elseiver for a woman are instances of how dualistic understanding of labor relations delegitimizes certain segments of the population from their livelihoods. The structural violence in the economic system causes further marginalization and an increase in structural strain against the widows and workplace harassment and bullying of LGBTQI+ employees^[38]India LGBTQ Persons Face Discrimination In Housing Work and-Public Spaces Despite Increased Legal Recognition. 2019.b International Court of Justice … Continue reading. Widowhood signifies a ‘distressing symbolism’ that enhances administrative vulnerabilities^[39]DiGiacomo, M., Lewis J. N.M. (2015) ‘The business of death: a qualitative study of financial concerns of widowed older women’ BMC’s Women’s Health. BioMed Central for such widows who have to manage the transition from being caregivers of a household to living alone in desolation and undergo numerous structural – psychological, economic and environmental – constraints. Similarly, for LGBTQI+ individuals and community to access livelihood formal and informal spaces with dignity becomes difficult.

And yet, degrowth economics is more inclusive of these cohorts of population. For instance, in relation to the interdependence of physically disabled women with their caregivers, degrowth economics can reframe connotations of productivity. Debunking the cartesian dualistic nature of statistical culture in economics, feminist economics of leisure and care traverses trans domains as it challenges conceptual dualities within mainstream economics.

Challenging the binary of monetized formal and informal economy juxtaposed to the care economy^[40]Saave, A., Muraca, B,. 2021. ‘Rethinking Labour/Work in a Degrowth Society’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Labour Studies. Palgrave MacMillan. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-71909-8_32 , degrowth scholarship elaborates myriad perspectives regarding labor. For instance, ageing is an anticipated feminized issue^[41]Davidson, P.M., DiGiacomo, M, et al. (2011). ‘The Feminization of Aging: How Will This Impact on Health Outcomes and Services?’ Healthcare For Women International. Volume 32, Issue 12. Taylor and … Continue reading and so is the critical threshold of limited resources coinciding with such future prospects. Relentless investments in renewable energy in a blind race to net zero is again entrenched in the neo-colonial paradigm of neo-extractivism of rare earth minerals from African^[42]Cohen, Ariel, (2022), ‘China and Russia Make Critical Mineral Grabs in Africa While the U.S. Snoozes. Forbes … Continue reading, Latin American^[43]Deslandes, Ann, (2021), ‘Mexico’S Lithium and the Global Race to Lock In ‘White Gold’, Al Jazeera … Continue reading and Asian^[44]Rogers Jason, (2019), ‘China Gears Up to Weaponize Rare Earths In Trade War’, Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/5/29/china-gears-up-to-weaponize-rare-earths-in-trade-war nations.

The economic institutions of the Global South have been influenced by the postcolonial nature of the states in the ‘developing’ world. The postcolonial state and its citizens experience economic hybridity^[45]Zein-Elabdin, E.O. (2009). ‘Economics, postcolonial theory and the problem of culture: institutional analysis and Hybridity’. Cambridge Journal of Economics. Vol. 33, No. 6 pp. 1153-1167. Oxford … Continue reading. Even as they integrated with global value chains^[46]Hughes, A., McEwan, C., & Bek, D. (2015). Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Production Networks: Insights from Flower Valley in South Africa. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, … Continue reading, the economic institutions of these countries are embedded in neocolonial interests. The ageing population can be transformed from being dependents to being self-reliant earning members of the family. This will however require changes in the modus operandi of the economic systems of postcolonial states and their marathon to become integrated with global value chains, largely centred around demographic dividends, would require more than a relook. Degrowth economics will not render the aged redundant due to their ‘non-productivity’.

Degrowth economics by challenging the cis-heteronormative^[47]Toorn, J.V.D., Pliskin, R. Morgenroth, T. 2020. Not Quite Over the Rainbow: The Unrelenting and Insidious Nature of Heteronormative Ideology. Current Opinion In Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier. … Continue reading neocolonial capitalistic orthodoxy can unravel the gender injustices that productivity and efficiency seek to impose on workers across formal and informal economic settings.

Dimensions of Degrowth Economics^[48]Gathii, J.T., (2020). ‘Without Centering Race, Identity, and Indigeneity, Climate Responses Miss the Mark’. Wilson Center … Continue reading

In the world, 80% of the population displaced by climate disasters constitute women^[49]Halton, M. (2018). Climate Change ‘Impacts Women more Than Men’. BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43294221 . Land ownership for women is highly skewed in their disfavor with approximately only 15% of agricultural landholders being women^[50]‘Land’. (2023). World Bankhttps://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/land . The urgency of gendered climate justice^[51]Simmons, D., (2020).’What Is Climate Justice?’ Yale Climate Connections https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/what-is-climate-justice/ requires a push for degrowth economics. What does climate justice entail? Gendered racial climate justice is a possibility with the logic of degrowth. Decolonial feminism addresses feminist economics and narrative of degrowth^[52]Dengler, C., Lang, M., (2022). “Commoning Care: Feminist Degrowth Visions for a Socio-Ecological Transformation”. Feminist Economics. Volume 28, Issue 1. Taylor and Francis … Continue reading thus advancing climate justice. Degrowth is enriched by the critical race, feminist and decolonial scholarship with respect to intersectionality^[53]Nirmal, P., Rocheleau, D. (2019). ‘Decolonizing Degrowth in the Post-development Convergence: Questions, Experiences, and Proposals from Two Indigenous Territories’. Environment and Planning E: … Continue reading. Simultaneous aims of degrowing capitalism and patriarchies augur rethinking and innovating when it comes to gendered labor exchanges within and across communities represent feminist degrowth economics.

Decolonial feminism problematizes the dichotomy of colonial human and non-human^[54]Decolonial feminisms and Degrowth’, (2022), Futures, Vol. 136 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328722000027 . Central dualistic paradox of modernity^[55]Lugones Maria, (2007), ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism’, Hypatia, Vol 25, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2010.01137.x ) is how there is always a hierarchy amidst human and non-human … Continue reading. The hypervisibility of women from the former colonies in poorly remunerated and undignified work is clear in the works of Chandra Talpade Mohanty^[56]Mohanty, C.T. (2003). “Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity Through Anticapitalist Struggles. Signs. Volume 28. No. 2 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/342914 and Jayati Ghosh.

The informal sector would be taken more seriously once the contours of classical economics transition beyond what we understand by work. However, we need to differentiate between dignified informal sector occupation and undignified labor. Being a seamstress is not considered part of economic statistics nor acknowledged for its contribution to a sustainable economy. Oftentimes, the aspect of dignity in work requires greater priority than mere financial autonomy. Ragpicking and manual scavenging are casteist occupations in South Asia and would certainly not be part of feminist degrowth economics. Women as miners^[57]‘Women In Mining: Towards Gender Equality’, 2021, ILO https://www.ilo.org/sector/Resources/publications/WCMS_821061/lang–en/index.htm ) require gender-sensitive mining regulations rather … Continue reading and mica mining^[58]Singh, G. (2019), ‘Mica scavenging in Jharkhand destroys lives and environment’. Mongabay https://india.mongabay.com/2019/10/mica-scavenging-in-jharkhand-destroys-lives-and-environment/ need to keep in mind. Resultantly, we require a healthy balance of walking the degrowth as well as the feminist economy pathways.

Ecofeminism essentializes the women^[59]Archambault, A. (1993). A Critique of Ecofeminism. Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers De La Femme, 13(3). Retrieved from https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/view/10403 of the Global South into the sacred feminine that beholds the baton of the nurture economy. Such feminized categorization of nature exploited by the hypermasculinized machines of industrialization and high throughput keep the women and feminine attributes to work as complacent and inefficient, thus villainizing leisure, diversity and inclusion at workplaces. Greta Gaard elaborates how the understanding of nature in binaries excludes the LGBT population^[60]Gaard, G. (2017). ‘Critical Ecofeminism’. Lexington Books https://www.jstor.org/stable/41301655 and eliminates our lens on the interdependencies of non-human and human interaction regarding comprehension of ecology.


Social Solidarity Economic Organisations (SSEOs) are inclusive of women who are vulnerable and at a disadvantage in the traditional job market i.e. the formal sectors of the economy. SSEOs open the doors for formalized employment on-the-job skill training and familiarization with financial services for women. Collective risk sharing due to collective ownership of SSEOs encourages economic empowerment and financial stability for women^[61]“Advancing the 2030 Agenda through the Social and Solidarity Economy” United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Solidarity and Social Economy, 2022 … Continue reading.


Scope of feminist degrowth economics


By overturning the logic of scarcity in classical economics, degrowth achieves success in reframing the entire development narrative. In doing so, it practices a decolonizing exercise of comprehending labor relations, the passage and processing of time in our capitalist societies.

In de-centering growth from economic production, the feminist-degrowth nexus will reorient our priorities about how we deal with economics in everyday life. 
In fact, what degrowth entails for Dalit women can be an effective mode of decasteizing gender and caste viz- a-viz classical economics. This will also enrich the narrative of Global North when it comes to degrowth. By targeting the seeds of structural violence, the degrowth of feminist economics is not only an exercise in decoloniality and gender justice but it de-escalates conflict flash points and contributes to peacebuilding^[62]Acheson, R., Porobic, N., et al. ‘Environmental Peacebuilding Through Degrowth, Demilitarization and Feminism: Rethinking Environmental Peacebuilding to Stay Within Planetary Boundaries and … Continue reading. The contribution of Dalit economists, economists of color, to the literature on degrowth holds emancipatory potential in the epistemes of feminist degrowth economics.

Time-use surveys for the queer population, Participatory Action Research on understanding how the communities comprehend the ecology they live with in everyday lives, particularly indigenous elderly and youth population. The experiencing of scarcity and abundance is enmeshed in societal stratification of caste, gender, class and other identities. Emancipating market systems of casteist, racist and classist impasses will establish a level field for feminist degrowth economy.

Decommodification of labor^[63]Saave, A., Muraca, B,. 2021. ‘Rethinking Labour/Work in a Degrowth Society’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Labour Studies. Palgrave MacMillan. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-71909-8_32 is highlighted by a collaboration between degrowth and materialist ecofeminism. Going beyond ecofeminist essentialization allows for reworking the understanding of labor itself in capitalist systems. It broadens the scope for the transition of the state as an ecosocial welfare state^[64]Dukelow, F, Murphy, M.P. (2022). “Building The Future From the Present: Imagining Post-Growth, Post-Productivist Ecosocial Policy”. Journal of Social Policy. Volume 51, Issue 3. Cambridge … Continue reading. The re-defining of care economy, dismantling of the mainstream narrative on labor relations and productivity will de-orientalize gender-blind economics of high throughput. The ‘dirty resilience’^[65]Harcourt W., Knox, S. and Tabassi, T., (2015). ‘World-wise Otherwise Stories for our Endtimes: Conversations on Queer Ecologies’ in Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the … Continue reading germinating from caste and racial injustices also informs the feminist degrowth economics.

Going beyond the template of ecofeminism, the political ecology framework is conducive to feminist degrowth economics. The political power dynamics of human-nature interaction sit well with challenging the misogynistic and patriarchal relations in market economics.

Productive aging can remedy the intergenerational disbalance in economics based on a limited notion of productivity. This can be facilitated by Social Solidarity Economic initiatives that reorient our comprehension of non-remunerative, domesticated, unpaid work.

Masculinities of economic productivity need to be queered, as we reframe our understanding of time, efficiency, production, leisure and ‘work’ itself! We have seen in this article that prior to establishing foundations for feminist degrowth economics, the structural overhauling of other systems of violence (caste relations, class relations, physical disabilities and race relations) is inevitable.