Progressive tax policy and international tax cooperation is needed to advance gender equality and fund care systems. The opportunity for this is at the start of the UN Tax Convention negotiations taking place the first two weeks of August in New York.
Find the op-ed originally posted in Spanish on Perfil here.
By: Maureen Mburu, GATJ Tax and Gender Coordinator
Care work is the invisible foundation of our societies and economies, yet remains chronically undervalued and underfunded. Care services, including education, healthcare, childcare, and eldercare, are subsidised by the time and labour of women. Care is a public good and human right; as such, it requires adequate public funding.
Care services lack public funding and are shaped by gender disparities. Women, particularly those from poor, migrant, and marginalised communities, continue to bear the majority of caregiving responsibilities, both paid and unpaid, without adequate recognition or support. Despite their essential contributions, the paid care sector, where women constitute the majority in roles such as healthcare, domestic work, and early childhood education, remains plagued by low wages, poor working conditions, and inadequate social protections.
Austerity measures and regressive tax policies, often imposed in the Global South as conditions for loans, have dismantled public care services, deepened gender inequalities, and pushed more unpaid care work onto women. Cuts to public spending force women to fill gaps left by the state, acting as the shock absorbers of society.
Our countries face a paradox: while rich in natural and human resources, they are starved of the public revenues needed to fund our own development. Each year, largely due to tax abuse by the rich and multinational corporations, the Global South loses hundreds of billions of USD to illicit financial flows, far more than it receives in development assistance.
Due to outdated and broken global tax rules which allows for such illicit financial flows, rewriting the global tax rules is a necessity. Now, for the first time in history, all UN Member States are coming together on an equal footing to negotiate a more inclusive global tax system under a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. This process began due to the leadership of the African Group with the support of much of the G77 who understood the urgency of this problem.
When governments cannot effectively tax the rich and multinational corporations, who are disproportionately composed of men, governments focus on other taxation methods through increasing regressive taxes such as value-added taxes (VAT) or other similar consumption taxes. Regressive taxes disproportionately hurt the poor: they target essential goods that make up the majority of purchases by the poor. Tax abuse deepens inequalities, forcing marginalised groups to pay the price when the rich and multinational corporations abuse the broken tax system.
In addition, many Global South countries remain trapped in cycles of debt, forced to prioritise repayments over investments in public services. The average debt-to-GDP ratio stands at an alarming 65%, further constraining the ability to fund care services and social protection.
Progressive taxation and gender-responsive tax systems are key policies. Progressive taxation, which ensures the richest in our countries and the largest corporations pay their share, is needed. Governments must shift away from tax models that disproportionately burden women and instead implement policies that ensure that those with the greatest ability to pay, contribute their fair share. Governments must increase public investment in care services. Rebuilding the social organisation of care is not only a moral and social responsibility but also an economic necessity: a well-supported care system strengthens workforce participation, reduces inequality, and fosters social cohesion.
Domestic tax reform is crucial, but it cannot happen alone. An unjust allocation of taxing rights and cross-border tax abuse, which prevents countries access to their own tax base, requires tax cooperation at the global level. The negotiations for a legally-binding global tax treaty, the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, offers a historic opportunity to fix the broken global tax system. This process also represents a power shift from the current tax system, developed by the world’s wealthiest countries under the OECD, which has consistently failed to produce effective and inclusive global tax rules.
If we are to create a global financial system that advances gender equality, the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation must include gender considerations. In fact, countries have already agreed on the need for gender-responsive tax systems. In early July, at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, countries agreed in the conference outcome document, the Compromiso de Sevilla, to advance gender responsive taxation and address gender biases within tax systems. While an important step forward, the document is nonbinding and now government delegations must deliver in the UN tax negotiations and show their commitment to gender equality by ensuring this language is included in the Framework Convention and all relevant provisions.
In August, countries will meet in New York to begin negotiations for the UN Tax Convention. The message to negotiators is clear: a robust UN Tax Convention is needed to provide the funding urgently needed for public care services. A better world is possible, now governments must show the political will to make it a reality.