This blog is the first in a series exploring the five demands of the 2025 Global Days of Action on Tax Justice for Women’s Rights.
By: Martha Hungwe and Dr. Maria Ron Balsera, Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR)
The current global financial architecture, designed during colonial times, mainly represents the interest of its founders, particularly rich corporations and individuals in those countries and is exacerbating the polycrises of climate, debt and inequality. Based on an economic system where the Global South subsidises the Global North, through debt payment and IFF, and women and girls subsidise the economy by providing unpaid care work. Marking the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, we need to pay attention to the role of taxation in promoting or hindering equality, rights, and protection for all women and girls.
We need to join forces and call for progressive tax policies to ensure that wealthy individuals and corporations contribute their fair share, creating fiscal space for a gender-transformative social organisation of care. By funding essential services such as childcare, eldercare, healthcare, education, and social protection, we can reduce the disproportionate caregiving burden on women and marginalized communities. Regressive tax policies, which unfairly and disproportionately impact women, especially low-income women, must be repealed.
Tax justice is essential to closing gender gaps in income, wealth, and access to services. The global tax system is not gender-neutral—it actively exacerbates gender inequalities. Women, especially those in low-wage, informal, and precarious jobs, bear the brunt of austerity policies, unpaid care work, and regressive taxation. The reliance on indirect taxes (e.g., VAT) disproportionately affects women, who spend a larger share of their income on household essentials, education and health costs. Progressive taxation—where tax rates increase with income and wealth—must replace regressive tax structures to ensure wealth redistribution and gender equity.
Corporate tax evasion and avoidance cost governments hundreds of billions annually ($492b, according to TJN), starving public services of funds needed to support women and disadvantaged communities. Women’s rights and public services are directly undermined by tax loopholes and illicit financial flows. Tackling tax abuse—through global tax cooperation, transparency measures, and stronger enforcement mechanisms—is critical for financing gender justice. A UN-led tax convention is a critical step in the fight for tax justice, as it will create a more equitable decision-making forum for all countries, including those that have traditionally been excluded. By securing a just international tax system, countries can unlock much-needed resources to invest in gender-responsive public services, social protections, and economic justice—foundations for a world that reinforces rights rather than erodes them.
Global Tax Governance for Women’s Rights
Current tax policies are designed to protect corporate interests over human rights, reflecting the legacy of colonial and patriarchal financial structures. Shifting global tax governance to the UN would create a fairer system that integrates gender equality into tax negotiations and policies. A UN Tax Convention must prioritize women’s rights and intersectional gender justice in global economic governance.
Key Recommendations for Gender-Transformative Taxation (for more information see here)
- Adopt progressive tax policies to finance gender equality and public services.
- Apply a gender lens across the budget cycle, ensuring that fiscal policies actively reduce gender disparities.
- Ensure women’s participation in fiscal policymaking, particularly Indigenous, Black, migrant, and rural women.
- Curb tax abuse through stricter regulations on multinational corporations and high-net-worth individuals.
- Reallocate tax burdens from consumer taxes to wealth and corporate income taxes.
- Abolish harmful tax incentives that benefit the wealthy at the expense of social services.
- Introduce taxes for historical reparations, particularly for Black and indigenous women who have faced structural discrimination.
- Increase tax transparency by requiring companies to publish disaggregated tax data by gender and race.
- Develop and publish gender impact analyses of tax policies.
- Support a globally inclusive UN Tax Convention to ensure international tax justice aligns with gender equality goals.
A Feminist Fiscal Future
A fair fiscal system is the cornerstone of gathering the necessary resources to uphold human rights and address inequality. States can foster a fairer society by leveraging taxes to generate revenue to resource rights and public services, redistribute wealth to reduce inequality, re-price goods and services to disincentivize harmful practices, enhance representation to improve democratic governance, and redress the historical legacies of colonization and ecological damage (through reparations).
A truly equitable and feminist economy requires dismantling the gender biases embedded in taxation. A gender-just tax system will redistribute wealth, fund social services, and empower women economically, ensuring that the burden of care work and economic insecurity does not fall disproportionately on women and marginalized groups.
