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At the Financing for Feminist Futures conference in Madrid (October 8–10), feminist and civil society leaders called for a new global financing agenda: one that redistributes power and resources and places care, equity, and rights at its core. Speakers warned that current financing frameworks risk reproducing the very inequalities they claim to solve.
In the session “The Past is Prologue, the Future is Now: Reflections on FfD4,” our Executive Director Maria Ron Balsera joined Bruna Martinez (Hivos), Katie Tobin (WEDO), Naomi Nyamweya (Malala Fund), and Ján Michalko (ODI) to reflect on what a truly feminist Financing for Development process would look like. The discussion revisited the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) and asked what they reveal about the persistent power imbalances shaping global finance.
As Maria noted, “We need to look at feminist ways of breaking the thinking that surrounds economic policymaking—because everyone can understand justice. Tax is made deliberately obscure to exclude people from the conversation, and that has everything to do with who holds power. When governments lose billions through tax evasion and avoidance, they lack the funds to meet their obligations and invest in people. And who fills that gap? It’s women, through the unpaid care economy: paying with their money, their time, and their bodies.”
Speakers emphasized that feminist and rights-based approaches must be central to global economic reform, not peripheral. That means going beyond token references to gender equality to transform the rules of the system itself: ending austerity, reclaiming public resources, and ensuring that financing supports collective wellbeing and sustainability rather than profit and extraction.
Panelists also highlighted how the commitments made at FfD4 risk falling short without structural reforms that address debt, taxation, and global financial governance. As feminist movements and Global South advocates underscored, the challenge is not a lack of ideas but a lack of political will to confront the vested interests blocking systemic change.
The Financing for Feminist Futures convening, organized by Hivos and partners, gathered hundreds of activists, funders, and policymakers to explore how to resource feminist change. Its 12 Calls to Action for Resourcing Gender Equality demand a shift from short-term, projectized aid to long-term, flexible, and feminist financing that strengthens movements and advances justice.