Last March 8th, International Women’s Day, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, its partners and members spoke up to promote #TaxJustice for #WomensRights, from Latin America to Africa, Asia and Europe!
As a vast “women shutdown” was organized by many Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Womens’ rights groups, INESC stressed the tax discrimination affecting women in Brazil – black women being proportionally most affected among them.
Tax and Fiscal Justice Asia (TAFJA) published a statement jointly with its secretariat organisation, APMDD, on TAFJA’s brand new Facebook page. The statement is titled “Tax and Fiscal Justice for Women’s Economic Empowerment and the Enjoyment of Women’s Rights!”. “Asia is known to have the biggest share of policy changes, including tax policies, TAFJA states, to accommodate investment incentives, a number of which waste people’s money. At the same time, governments are increasingly shifting away from implementing equitable or progressive tax policies”.
Freedom from Debt Coalition, a member of TAFJA, marked International Women’s Day in the Philippines by highlighting the anti-poor impacts of the Duterte administration’s tax reforms: “Already passed into law, these reforms rely heavily on consumption taxes which discriminate against the poor and particularly low-income women. Revenues mobilised will not go to urgently needed public services but to a massive infrastructure program that primarily caters to big business interests.”
The Global Alliance for Tax Justice issued a global statement, calling for tax justice to advance women’s rights and economic equality: “The world will not be able to achieve women and girl’s rights, gender equality or the Sustainable Development Goals without taking action for tax justice”.
GATJ’s regional network member in Latin America and the Caribbean, Red de Justicia Fiscal de América Latina y el Caribe, distributed it on twitter:
The Global Alliance for Tax Justice keeps inviting social movement, trade unions, women’s organisations, social rights activists and other justice champions to sign on to the Bogota Declaration on Tax Justice for Women’s Rights (available in 6 languages) via this link.
Global Alliance for Tax Justice’s partner Tax Justice Network, through its Director of our Human Rights and Tax Justice programme Liz Nelson, wholeheartedly joined GATJ’s statement, in an article called “Tax Justice is a feminist issue”: “We celebrate International Women’s Day today by reaffirming tax as a feminist issue. In advocating for greater tax transparency and accountability we, as feminists, are not only demanding multilateral progressive tax policies and a global financial architecture that recognises and disaggregates by gender, but a complete rethink of the orthodoxy; of what fair taxation policies should look like for greater rights and equality for women”.
Listen to Liz Nelson about the Bogota Declaration:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxNaMPRdgg9CKtfR19FIbhA?feature=emb_ch_name_ex
In Canada, Diana Gibson contributed a blog titled “International Women’s Day: tax fairness is a gender issue” in which she explains why and how Canadians for Tax Fairness “calls for action on tax and gender bias”: “There are two problems with gender bias of the tax system – a disproportionate benefit to men at the top incomes from tax breaks; and a loss of revenues for programs that mostly benefit women at the lower incomes”.
https://www.facebook.com/canadiansfortaxfairness/
ICRICT Commissioner Magdalena Sepúlveda wrote an op-ed, “Fiscal Injustice Has a Woman’s Face” which has been published in Liberia’s GNN, Norway today, Ghana Business news. The editorial has been translated into several languages and published in 16 countries… and counting!
- In Spanish, “La injusticia fiscal tiene cara de mujer” in Mexico’s Mexico Social, Spain’s El País, Argentina’s La Nación, Nicaragua’s El Confidencial, Ecuador’s El Universal y Newsweek en español.
- In French, “L’injustice fiscale a le visage d’une femme” in Canada ‘s Le Devoir, France’s Mediapart, Belgium’s La libre Belgique, Senegal’s SudOnLine,
- In Portuguese, “A injustiça fiscal tem rosto de mulher” in Brazil’s Poder360 and Angola’s MakaAngola.
Global Alliance for Tax Justice’s regional network member Tax Justice Network-Africa flooded Twitter with multilingual visuals focused on the link between #TaxJustice and #WomensRights, in several languages:
Global Alliance for Tax Justice’s partner Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) took the opportunity to re-circulate reports linking Sustainable Development Goals, International Financial Institutions and Women’s Rights, describing for example how “the IMF should prioritize efforts to implement robust, progressive tax and fiscal alternatives to austerity, thus preventing the real economic, political and human rights costs largely shouldered by women”.
As UNCSW starts today, make sure to attend our side-events promoting #TaxJustice for #WomensRights on March 13th:
The Global Alliance for Tax Justice together with her committed partners including Public Services International (PSI), Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), the Tax Justice Network (TJN) and Christian Aid will co-host “Tax and gender justice – empowering rural women in mining-affected communities”, at 10:30am on the 10th floor of the Church Center, and live on AWID’s Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/AWIDWomensRights/
The GATJ Tax & Gender Working Group and Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s are co-hosting “Taxing Rural Women in Developing Countries: Best and Worst Practices” at 12:30pm, just a block away.