 All right then. Hello everyone. I chose that you are well and I chose that you are safe wherever you are. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 19th webinar in the economics of COVID-19 series. Today's series is co-hosted by SOAS Economics Department and SOAS Open Economics Forum. SOAS Open Economics Forum is part of the global retreating economics that aims to promote pluralism and heterodoxy in economics. You can follow SOAS Economics and SOAS Open Economics Forum on the social media platform as pinned in the chat box on the right side of your screen to catch up with previous webinars and to stay up to date with upcoming webinars. By introduction, my name is Taibat Izain. I am a master of development economics student here at SOAS. I am also a member of the SOAS feminist network, a network of SOAS students and alumni that discuss research and their ideas about feminist and gender issues within the realm of economics. I also empower young African women to use their voice through an online platform called Women's Speaker Tribe. Today's webinar is on the theme economics of COVID-19 in Africa, an African feminist perspective. It is a topic that I'm very excited about and I hope you're also excited. And unlike previous webinars, this session we take a form of conversation among three remarkable women in the feminist economic space. We have Sonia Palasi, we have Lynn Osome and Christa Simione. Before I hand over to Sonia, who is the moderator for today's session, I will briefly read out their bio so we know the speakers. I'll start with Sonia. Sonia is a researcher and economist at the Institute for Economic Justice. The IEJ is an economic think base in Johannesburg and works at the intersection of policy, research and activism. The IEJ's core objective is to provide policy makers with, is to provide policy makers and progressive social forces in South Africa with access to rigorous economic analyses and well thought through policy options as a basis for concrete interventions. Sonia's research interests include the role of private finance and development, climate justice, and feminist economics. Lynn Osome is a senior research fellow at the McCarrere Institute of Social Research where she teaches politics and political economy. As specializations are in the field of feminist political economy, feminist political theory with research interests in land and agrarian studies, gendered labor, and the political economy of gendered violence. She is the author of Gender Ethnicity and Violence in Kenya's Transitions to Democracy, State for Violence. She's also the co-editor of the forthcoming volume, Labor Questions in the Global South. She has been a visiting scholar at Nakiana-Chiantung University and Witte University. She's also a resident fellow at Yale University. She serves on several institutional boards, among them is the International Association for Feminist Economics. Krista Simeoni is the director of the Nawee African Microeconomics Collective. Her work revolves around macro-level economic inequalities through a pan-African feminist lens. This entails policy advocacy at regional and global policy space. A lot of her work is around ensuring government and women's right organizations understand and demystify economics, social and political policies from a pan-African perspective. She champions for women at all levels to be able to influence macroeconomic policy decision making and therefore giving balance of power within these platforms and processes. Please feel free to drop any questions that you may have during the conversations in the chat box and the speakers will address them accordingly and if you would like to sweep this conversation please use the hashtag economics of COVID. At this juncture I'll hand over to Sunia. Thanks Taiwit for the introduction. Good afternoon to everyone and thank you for joining us. I hope you can hear me okay Crystal and Lin. Awesome, I am delighted to be moderating this conversation with two remarkable feminists who have both been guiding lights for me and thinking through what it means to be a feminist economist and in today's conversation I will pick their brains on their thoughts and experiences of the pandemic so far and hopefully we can also get into what a feminist response to the the pandemic would look like and whether this moment presents an opportunity for our feminist alternatives to take center stage particularly in economic policy making. As Taiwit mentioned please feel free to ask questions in the comment section and after about 30 minutes into the conversation I will field these questions to both Crystal and Lin. Please also feel free to include your name and where you are in the world currently and so to begin I would like to take a step back just a little bit to think through how we got here and Lin a lot of your work on feminist political economy has been very intentional in reckoning with the past and reckoning with our histories that are by no means accidental to what we're currently facing now and so to start off I wonder if you could highlight what key aspects of the pandemic have been foregrounded for you and what role you think history particularly African feminist histories should play in our thinking around policy responses to to the crisis. I was muted I admitted myself sorry about that so I mean thanks Sonya for the for the question in in terms of the crisis it has highlighted me a number of of issues and I'd like to highlight four one is is it possible to get rid of all this sound coming in I don't know. One is I've been struck by the ways in which the capitalist state I'm not capital I'm talking of the state itself so I've been really struck by the ways in which the capitalist state reaches for women and gendered labor in terms of crisis in during times of crisis like this and so food access to food and survival itself has become synonymous with women's labor or gendered labor that is one and two it has also for me raised the specter of the sort of infrastructures that make poverty liveable and I mean this in an ironic sense and make suffering bearable because this is something we know you know everyone who has been waging a critique of capitalism has you know thinks about it in in terms of in time in in relation to dignity and suffering and so on so in our thought are not about what are these structures that make this kind of you know poverty and suffering bearable and liveable and one of it of course is housing because the immediate response that we saw in many places was you know it's as if the crowd conditions of housing in informal settlements and in slums just became apparent these have been with us but during this time when we needed to practice physical distancing then it became you know a question that we were discussing alongside the crisis that covid had produced and you know another you know such infrastructure or condition is just the ability to go to work the idea of working itself so and in a lot of people see it as you know to go to work is to leave the house or to go somewhere and get you know so even the self-employed I know a lot of the trade that women do in informal settlements you know where you live is where you work you know you sell your tomatoes or onions out there but still that even that was truncated for a lot of people so this idea of working itself even when you're not earning sufficient income entirely it has for me also highlighted the fundamentally agrarian character of this crisis and I'll talk about this later and fourth of course this is something that is widely remarked that these features have not have not been produced by covid itself what covid has done is that it has highlighted the gendered and exploitative structure of the capitalist society in which we live right and all of these have historical these are historical continuities they have roots you know we we've been here before in a sense african feminists would say that when you know in our studies of the colonial political economy you know so I for one believe that there's not much we can understand about these contemporary manifestations outside of the set of institutional and structural legacies that configured gendered labor and women's labor as and you know I sort of it was the unnecessary condition of the stabilizing political stabilization of of the colonial political economy of the first migrant labor regime right and so the postcolonial near liberal state has failed to break with this model this model of dependence on a non-capitalist at that time rural realm of subsistence which supplements you know poorly paid wage labor but this is no longer in the current times is no longer just a rural kind of relation of supplementing wage labor we are also seeing an urban manifestation so there's now an urban demand for say land so all these struggles we see around housing with the shaft dwellers movements and so on there are demands around land there they are articulated to questions of food and subsistence people are saying we need to be able to eat we need to be able to feed ourselves I know in South Africa made many third fourth fifth generation of urban dwellers don't really have concrete links with with rural domain but this is also an urban seriously urban manifestation so that is one with the historical you know the role of history in thinking this thing and another thing for me has been in that gendered labor has really feminist critics have understood it in this wage wage labor capital relation so within the idea of exploitation as you know saying gendered labor or women's labor contributes to surplus value the production of surplus value but the reality that we are dealing with today is you know at least in the last two decades has been a massive attrition of industrial of labor from industry and from manufacturing and in fact there are large sections of the of the working population of labor force that capital doesn't actually need anymore they just you know surplus and and so the question that we have to ask ourselves is what is happening what has been happening to those those masses of people that are being expanded from industry who is looking after them when they are no longer being needed and this is a question that remains current in fact under covid you could multiply this by you know you know really exponentially because apart from those who are already kind of floating and latent labor now we have people who have been you know millions of jobs have been lost and we'll have to think about that not just who is looking after them but even post covid period these are not all those people who will simply not be going back into employment they just will not happen you know so we need to think about what kinds of social reproductive structures are going to be needed to look after that population and that is to reflect on the the social question this is a useful where found of thinking through the classes that covid is producing is to reflect on the social question that is being raised by covid in terms of you know as a as a political it's political manifestations and i'm saying this again in relation to history so it's political because historically when you looked at the forms of resistance that were waged by african women you know what we think of as anti-colonial struggles um women were under nine those struggles were usually a critique of social problems of the ways in which women were experiencing the colonial state and the colonial political economy in very specific ways so women were you know they were involved in peasant struggles uh you know struggles over land and this was because women could see very clearly that a lot of the land with with the you know with primitive accumulation a lot of the land that was used to reproduce communities and families was being taken away you know that i've learned redirected towards cash crop farming women were protesting against labor because they could see very clearly that their labor and their time was being redirected from the production of you know sort of food crops into not only cash crops but into other structures you know soil erosion and that kind of thing and of course there were protests over taxes the protests over you know women wanted over the you know efforts to control women's sexuality so this again so all of these were articulated to a question of you know the social reproduction women's relations to their communities and today again we are seeing in this COVID period an increase in in reports from violence right in domestic violence which is already imploding into the public and and of course we have to see this under the kinds of resistance that accompany it as sort of political response that is that is needed right economic problems tend to or economic crisis tend to manifest a social crisis that did political solutions so this i i leave it there for now in terms of thinking of the key aspects of the crisis and the sort of historical um re-articulations that we're seeing in relation to to COVID and the forms of social you're breaking we can't hear you internet I'm not still there because she has sent me a question so I can see her but she's breaking so I'll give her two seconds okay hi but okay I'll go ahead um so I'll pretend I'm Sonia and read her question she had sent me sort of a directive around what she wanted to ask and her question to me was um many were saying that the economics fall out of the pandemic will be seismic and then many countries particularly African countries will particularly be affected tied to this that our debt levels will reach unsustainable levels for example many in South Africa are lamenting the possibility of South Africa's debt to become larger than 70 percent of our GDCs there's this a historical narrative that African economies are constrained by high levels of debt and this will inevitably set us back uh you have spoken I have spoken a lot about peace public private partnerships and illicit financial flows and how these issues are also feminist issues how is the conversation about debt also feminist issue a link to this what role does the state and private sector have in advancing a feminist alternative so I will hand over to myself um and so I'll start off with a quote from a song that says some words change some more they say the same um Lynn has spoken about forms of land resistance and resistance that women have have been putting forth against colonialism around against capitalism against um new new liberal forms of capitalist intervention and things that are constantly so violently in our spaces both as we're trying to make a living and trying to exist on the continent uh the work that I do straddles two fights which makes it very complicated sometimes it straddles a fight against new liberal new colonial new liberal models but it also straddles a fight against new colonialism and so it's one against the patriarchy and at the same time once again one against capitalism and so I'll start off by saying that by May East African countries had borrowed nearly 2.3 billion dollars in loans in less than three months and reporting our first covid positive cases and this is just in addition to all the loan benefits that you've been seeing against the backdrop of a tax revenue that is drastically dropping not only is our tax revenue dropping but our export earnings and our gas remittances are also in trouble and so this is really working together to paint a really dire picture for the continent um just this this last week we learned that the African Union COVID-19 special envoys have raised about 30 billion US dollars for the continent's response to the pandemic but again the devil is in the details we have no idea of whether this money and these resources are in loans and grants and if any of the above what terms we're taking the money and the resources from and this again poses a huge problem we're celebrating as a continent but at the same time are we really celebrating there's been calls around debt and beyond debt moratoriums the call for debt cancellation should be a priority and we remember Thomas Sankara saying at the African Union in his address in the 80s well if we decide to pay back our debt we definitely will be killing the people of Africa our government's the states of Africa we will not be able to provide for our citizens in terms of healthcare in terms of food in terms of education but if we don't surely nobody dies and I'm paraphrasing his words which was very powerful and can be found in YouTube and so I wonder if we should be going back to those those words of his and I wonder what a cancellation of debt would look like but we need to also start asking deeper questions about what debt we're taking and how we're not putting or putting citizens at the center of decision making and policies that affect ourselves. Sophie Kenya is an example and I've been writing a paper on what they're calling managed a Christian scheme project that's been running for the last five years it's got two years left in its lifetime and the program was to borrow money to take to lease specialized equipment for hospitals across the country specialized equipment for ICU facilities for dialysis for theater and the budget for the health sector in the last two years this was the fourth highest spend in terms of what the health budget had as a priority the fourth highest spend to lease out specialized equipment three quarters of which is still lying unused in in hospitals across the country because hospitals have three phase electricity to run the equipment didn't have running water to run the equipment didn't have doctors and sometimes specialized doctors or doctors at all to run this very specialized high-tech equipment and so it brings into question what priorities our state are putting at the center and who's driving these priorities how many IMF World Bank decisions are really pushing what our countries our states are taking into consideration of the prioritized funding and debt that we're taking and so we say that the clocks in time where it's important to begin to reimagine the role and the character of the African state to reimagine it through the social contract and open up what this contract means for us the rise of what many call the Wall Street consensus taking over from the Washington Consensus through the World Bank's cascade approach that is pushing our African economies to deregulate and change legislation and policy for the ease of private finance to come in because we are told this private finance will be the silver bullet to solve our development gaps with efficiency we have seen over and over how it does the complete opposite we signed deals for white elephant mega infrastructure projects that our people don't use but who will be paying for generations to come we have trains in Kenya that are big and and have spent so much money and taken so much in terms of loans but yet our taxpayer is what this who will be paying for generations to come a train where majority of our food is grown by small holds of farmers who will never get on that train and never use a train to transport their food and their commodities yet we'll be paying through vat through commodity tax and all the forms of taxation and so i question how we can disassociate ourselves from the policy making i question how many of our central bank governors how many of our ministers of finance are ximx x world bank and what that means for the development of our state for the development of our state that also lack a political project to drive our policy and development agenda that is so inextricably linked to our debt to conditionalities that come with our debt and what that means for the future of our continent i will stop here i wonder if funna is back on hi sonia i think she's back okay but i don't think she's connected sonia if you could drop your questions in the chat box and i will be out to the speakers i hope she can hear me i can add one little bit as she comes back okay then sure um so i just wanted to add as well as our african states are really pushed toward the private financing mechanism for development it's important to remember that this is happening against the backdrop of a narrative that tells us that the african state is incapable of providing for her citizens is incapable of providing for me to ensure that i am able to take any children that i have to a decent and quality i can hear anything or have children in a safe hospital um and be able to access that universally um against the backdrop of the fact that Africa loses about not less than a hundred billion dollars to relift financial flows by these very same multinationals that we're then turning to as you know as a silver bullet for our developmental gaps and i think that contradiction is something that we need to really put at the center of our thinking and really inform who we get help from what we decided help and how we interact with debt okay so unfortunately um we thought this out i'll just take it up from the depth that you mentioned um we know that the there's more adverse consequence on debt especially in africa could you suggest or recommend alternative to this debt if we're not um if you're not going to rely on it because it it's always difficult because of the vices um associated with the debt could you recommend or suggest other opportunities so we can policy makers the government can look into um i think that's a multi-layered question that is not easy to answer but i'll try um i think there needs to be a lot more to implement our agenda 2063 and really own our own processes narratives and frameworks i think we have we've got great minds on the continent that can give us direction um and give us direction in terms of development um we the global south produces over 60 percent of raw materials over 60 percent of labor but we only accrue less than five percent of global wealth and this i think is something that needs to be at the back of our heads um some have called it a global apartheid of decision-making in the global economic landscape and i think we have to remember that as much as there has to be local solutions for local problems we exist in a very hyper-globalized world where there is indeed global solutions to very very local problems so case in point is our tax our tax base um and are we able to follow the guidance of the african tax administrators forum for example who have given models recommendations and frameworks of tax models that are retrofit for african economies so that we are maximizing our tax revenue from multinational that have found all sorts of ways to find new polls to ensure that they're not paying their their fair share of tax in the space and in the countries that they're operating in i go back to the fact that we're losing not less than a hundred billion dollars in illicit financial flows and we get less than half of that in development for the system simple mathematics is that we can pay for our own development i think the concept of economics needs to be demystified too many a time economists sort of paint this picture as if economics is overly technical and really too hard for most of us to understand i think we need to politicize it to come back to a space where it is really about power it's about who gets to decide what the quality of my life is how dignified my life is and i think that needs to be put at the front and center of those i don't understand why the iamf in the world bank should be making decisions about an african woman's life in rural africa and she's living it and understands and knows what needs to change um for her for her life i think there needs to be a more participatory approach um with citizens for women for example to be able to sit at decision-making tables and contribute to making decisions that really affect their lives but at the same time i call for solidarity across the world the oecd which is really a group of rich countries sit and make tax regulation and framework for all of us that we should all implement on the forefooting i think this is highly unsustainable and the crisis has really brought forth you know the fact that this new liberal very capitalist space that falls consciousness of what we've been living is completely not sustainable and something has to change i think decision-making in terms of global economic structures needs to change be more inclusive and really have us sitting at the table on fair on fair grounds and and and be more inclusive as a space as well um i think with all these as i as many have said all oppression is linked and with a more just framework i think issues such as debt issues such as trade justice tax justice will begin to to readjust to a more fair system but that includes a lot of people letting go of a lot of privilege um and that's not easy thank you so much i don't know if it is back uh if she's not back i will quickly pose this question to me um lean you're quite aware of the adverse effect of COVID-19 on women in Africa we can see um increase in domestic violence we can see in Nigeria they're recording increase in teenage pregnancy sexual violence rape cases do you think or can you give a case study of Kenya or Uganda is there a gender response strategy put in place by the government or is there something that the government should be doing but they're not doing well um i can't speak of specific interventions um you know what i could try to do is generalize um what we are seeing a trend that we are seeing and that as you say is um an increase in the levels of of of violence not just domestic violence but you know femicide what we are seeing in South Africa and i've i've been reflecting on this in in a in a broader way you know what especially how it um it articulates this question that i was talking about earlier you know the economy the questions of social reproduction and one way we could think about these kinds of violence that we are seeing is you know what happens when the you know the conjuncture between social welfare and the economy you know that the collapse of social welfare and the collapse and economic collapse what results out of it right and you know what in a sense what resources remain or become available or unavailable to people with this kind of these two pillars um of the market itself collapses and one of the things we are seeing now in a very real sense is a contestation between the state the the the the the capital estate but the state itself there's a contestation between the state and the family household you know the domain of when we think of social reproduction we are thinking of three domains of the market the family household and the state and so what this economic crisis has done is to diminish the role of the market so we are seeing a real contestation between the state and the household uh as as the primary domains of social provisioning you know and the state's response in that sense has been almost you know there's a direct intervention and and this this kind of direct intervention is actually part of the the solutions the proposals that are being put forward by economies right whether it is cash transfers and all these kinds of things but apart from that the state by its nature and its character is going to take advantage so we are seeing um the an increased intervention of the state into this you know so-called private I'm saying private in quotes because feminists have reached a long and sustained critique about the ocean the division between the public and the private we know it is not so so one of the things that feminists and the continent are thinking about is that what kinds of policy interventions would be acceptable without rolling back the gains that you know feminists have made and women have made over a very long period of time uh critiquing violence resisting violence whether it is through laws whether it is through policies and if we are not watching this we cannot watch this clash between the state and the household and the family we are going to go back to to square one in essence in the post-covid period if we can imagine such a period but also is you know the thing I mentioned uh earlier uh in term in the key aspects of the crisis that have stood out for me and one one was the ways in which the state has been reaching for for you know women's labor and gendered labor so in Uganda for example the one sector that was not shut down even when we were under total lockdown was the informal sector not just informal generally the food you know so women who are selling food uh there was a direct i directive that you know markets would remain open but on sale of food and I I did go to the market on a weekly basis because there are things I need from there and predominantly it was women you know selling food you know it really was the condition for that opening up of the market was that they would sleep there so in fact certain organizations like CIHA have shown how many women were being rendered homeless at the same time you know so here is the state pulling you and saying look we need that labor we need you to keep the link between the the rural food the food that is coming from the rural areas and urban consumption but we need you to do it in a certain way we need you your body's the physical presence in those markets we're not going to let you move but you're going to provide you with more bitterness and and so on nobody was talking about testing these women in those markets right they were just really quarantined in there you know when you think about it is the state really literally holding a gun on the heads of women which which it has been doing capital has been doing this this has been it's it's it's bold but now we see it in practical terms that you know market women could continue to sell and we could continue to get our food so we have to think of you know this the informal economy itself which in many countries across the continent constitutes you know 52 in Uganda it has been even estimated at 85 to 90% of the economy right and of the working population and many of these are women right and you know there is going to be forms of legal discrimination because a lot of these people are also not being even the way the government here responded a lot of people are not going to be recorded as a point you know so if you're going to be coming out with policies about uh some kind of recovery to people who have been contributing formally to the economy we are going to leave out a lot of what is actually sustaining our economies and what has sustained them in this period of of crisis you can't record gender bias if you're not looking for it in a sense and the last thing I'd like to say about this then is tied to the question and I think for me this is the most important question you know we talk about social reproduction and social reproduction happens all the time whether people are employed or they are not employed so it is not something again that is being produced by crisis it's being intensified as a in this period so it it it takes place whether a lot of people are people are employed and of course also the structures and the resources that support social reproduction differ across continents and countries so in the west we'll be talking about you know you know sort of securing some you know safety net you know in universal basic income which has been a conversation in South Africa not so much in other parts of the continent and so on but for much of the agrarianized continent the land remains central so whether you're thinking of petty commodity production or subsistence production even some forms of wage labor now really depend on land access to the commons and access to private land so if you're going to deal with these things structurally we have to deal with those kinds of resources structural resources that support you know social reproduction and care labor whether the state exists or not because as I said earlier there's just there's such a huge section of the labor force that that doesn't matter to captain anymore and it won't be accounted for even in the post you know like crystal was saying there's a lot that is going to be left out there's a lot of people that are not going to be seen because you're simply not looking for them so so so land remains relevant you know this is why I was saying for me it has asserted that there's been a fundamentally agrarian character to this crisis and so we need to be thinking of access we need to be thinking of laws and economic policies that support this kind of access many feminists have mentioned the idea of you know food self-sufficiency how do we create self-sufficient communities and part of this really is we have to think seriously of the linking basic livelihood from wage labor right as we go ahead and what that looks like actually thank you so much um please if you've got questions for the speakers can you drop them in the chat box and I will read them out to the speakers while we wait for questions um crystal you work with government you work with human and women rights organizations and do you think if we have women at the center of you know decision-making in Africa the response to COVID would be much better than what it is right now uh thank you wow what a question um so evidence has shown in countries where women are taking the lead like New Zealand response definitely is better um I also think um it's about systems and structures and so neoliberalism patriarchy are systems and not really individuals and so there's two points to this um one definitely representation is greatly lacking on the continent um and that I mean it's unacceptable Kenya where I live still hasn't accomplished it's two-thirds majority which is by constitution with our government and and that's a fight that we is still incredibly amazing that we're still fighting so that's the first um second is leadership has to be feminist and not just women um and and there's a difference there um but definitely I think from what we are seeing responses are different um and framing and and the political project backing that is different and you can tell um there is feminist framing in in the success stories of policy interventions that have been successful in response to um the crisis I also think the politics of narrative and language are important and as uh Lynn um spoke about informal a question who determines what informal is and how can it be informal if close to 80 percent of your economy close to 80 percent of your labor is in this informal and what we consider informal and how we address it and if you you can't address it if you're not looking for it like Lynn says so a lot of African countries Kenya included have given tax relief um but I question who this tax relief for is the majority of the people that are taking the burden of the ground of an economic slowdown are in the informal and outside of tax brackets um suddenly we're all talking about the care economy again the politics of language this term of care economy is really unpaid labor um care sometimes gives this idea of warm and fuzziness where a lot of the time it's back breaking work it's nurses taking care of patients it's women uh going to fetch water and carry loads of of of firewood on their backs literally breaking their backs and so I question the politics of these narratives and language that are so unfit for the realities of what happens in terms of social production but I think still relining to this is this crisis has turned all of that upside down and suddenly essential workers are not bankers and tax planners and all of those who create value out of literally the air essential workers are front-line workers it's the nurses it's women who are taking care of sick people it's women who have and always have been the backbone of our economy of our society and suddenly the world is coming to the realization that that's where importance is I wonder if that will mean you know how how do we make sure that that momentum turns into policy change policy change that is the responses and transformative for this body of work um but at the same time it also speaks to the power community and organizing of which women at least on the continent have been doing so wonderfully and and in spite in despite of government and capital and private sector upholding our economy and our society up and keeping people fed and healthy and I wonder how the power of community organizing meets state policy making and what that means Yeah, Sonia is back so there are a lot of questions. Thanks for sorry about that internet issue who there are quite a few questions in the chat box. There's one from Michelle that I'll address to you Lynn and the question is has COVID given us an opportunity to find more fertile ground for ideas that might have been seen as too radical before the crisis? Yeah, and I think that's part of what I was speaking to earlier is and Crystal has said this also. I think for the first time it's not just women but you know the idea of gendered labor which is unpaid labor and it's not a conversation that is abstract anymore and it's not a conversation that we have to have in relation to the sort of exploitation and surplus value production that you know has made it so problematic and has you know feminist economists have received a lot of pushback you know from the mainstream probably because demonstrating the contribution of this labor to you know to suck to value to surplus value has to remain difficult right but you know in many many realms just today I was reading I think in Kenya that they've resorted now to home-based care I don't know what this will look like and how it is you know you know partly because the health system is not coping it cannot cope right not even just in the present but with what is coming in the future so here is the government just plainly saying we are going to this is this is the route we are going to take of course without mentioning any of the actual labor and resources that are going to be needed to to implement that and so that is an opportunity you know there are real opportunities for us to stay toe to toe with all these responses that are being dished out and to say but we have because we have the theories around this we have the practice around this African feminists have been talking about this for a really long time so we have the and I think part of our task is to put the evidence in in stark relief crystal and I have been part of a collective of African feminists who who wrote out an African feminist response economic response and part of the work we need to do and what we are doing around that is to tell the political leaders and those in power and the opportunity to agree with with crystal that we have to deal with the question of power this the economic crisis is really you know the response has to be a political response so all all across the world we are seeing different forms of resistance and they are manifesting in their intersections not just with gender but with race and with class and there is a real opportunity is a real you know if you scroll through social media people sharing resources that had been forgotten after the at the you know not you know at the end of the Cold War at the collapse of the Berlin Wall there was some literature you know you know radical political economy Marxist literature that people are having back that something right conversations I think there's a real opportunity and we have to to kind of uh remain vigilant because we love that we're done when we're not paying attention so up to response uh yes um and similarly for crystal I wonder how you how you whether you think that the pandemic is is an entry for four alternatives to emerge yeah definitely I'll take on Lynn said it all most of the time I sit here like you know the crisis is is horrible and the lost life the economic downturn everything but at the same time it's sort of it keeps forcing us to rethink it's a moment where with all our everything this little virus has brought us to our needs us our economies our way of doing things and I said this over and over again so apology that this is said again but we can't go back to normal because normal was the problem um but we're at a point of we're at a point in the fork of the world where we need to decide collectively which we were going to go and I don't think we can think about the corona crisis in absence of what's happening with Black Lives Matter and this global push against an imperialism and the solidarity that's happening just yesterday I was told about a rural town in Kenya that has an ethnic name that translates to breathing and they've now nicknamed this place George Floyd and I think that that's something around how we can see our oppression across global across borders across oceans we are the same we have the same oppressive all oppression is linked and I think as as Lynn said issues around power need to be centered power around race around class around geographic location taken to consideration our histories we can't let go of that and our histories that have been formed where we are today um has to be at the center of our thinking so I sit here sometimes sort of amazed that the world is coming around to concepts that just about eight months ago seemed completely radical completely outlandish by you know a group of you know crazy activists who nobody you know really had the time to listen to but suddenly we're talking about government policies around home-based care and yes we need to question like Lynn says what that means but for sure 10 months ago I would never have thought my government would be talking about home-based care and it's time for us because we've been developing this these ideas for so many years tirelessly women before us have been talking and setting you know creating these ideas that have always seemed crazy and outlandish and those ideas are all around us we all only need to pick them up now and they're slowly by slowly they're getting picked up but I think there's still such a fight in making sure that they're not just picked up but picked up in the way that we were meant because so many a time the IFIs you know multi nationals will pick up all of our language and the women's movement knows this and suddenly the IMF is talking about care work and the words they're saying are the same the meaning behind it is completely different so we have such a battle to still you know make sure that the meaning is kept true to what we were writing for and how we defined it and that we're also sitting at these tables of power and making sure that we are informing what the same normal will begin to look like so definitely the silver linings yeah thanks crystal and thanks Lynn and on that note I will close the meeting and hand it back to tibet thank you thank you so much for the wonderful conversation we're really sorry about the next walk break but you cannot group me that it was still a very insightful one especially with the new issues that I probably didn't know about thank you Lynn thank you crystal thank you Sonia please um you can stay up to the week upcoming event the next webinar is on Wednesday 24th June and the team is on how to build a new society after the COVID-19 crisis with Arjun Chang we hope that you will be able to join us on on Wednesday same time 3 p.m. same platform thank you so much thank you thank you thank you time bye thank you