Care & Carelessness: a Feminist Economics Walking Tour of the IFSC

 

As part of Culture Night 2024, Financial Justice Ireland hosted a feminist economics walking tour of the International Financial Services Centre, Dublin. We were joined by our wonderful collaborators from Latina Women Against Violence, Action from Ireland (AFRI), Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), speakers from global feminist movements, trade unionists, and those active in climate justice politics. Together, we emphasised women's agency in the fight for economic justice. 

Walking tour sites and speakers included: 

1. Liberty Hall - Mags O’Brien, labour historian, former SIPTU tutor
2. Custom House - Minerva Escobedo & Yanett Alberto, Latina Women Against Violence
3. Famine Memorial - Joe Murray & Katie Martin AFRI (Action from Ireland)
4. Docklands - Aisling Hedderman, Training Officer, Community Action Tenants Union
5. Hibernia REIT - Orla Hasson & Cara McLoughlin, FJI collaborators and Global Development facilitators, based in Derry 
6. Facebook - Sian Cowman, Climate Justice Researcher and Educator
7. Central Bank - Hilary Darcy, FJI GCE coordinator & Neltah Chadamoyo, facilitator & artist, opened a discussion by asking, "How can we build a new world in the shell of the old?"

Our tour focused on the operations of the global economic system and its representation throughout Dublin’s financial district. We chose to place a particular emphasis on feminist economics, asking ''who benefits from the care at the foundation of our societies?’’ Our participants joined us on a journey through Irish history, stretching back to the War of Independence and arriving at the contemporary situation of multi-national capital.

The walking tour is an opportunity to practice experiential learning; abstract concepts like ‘finance’ and ‘financial’ can be more readily grasped when we visit spaces where these things play out. It also allows us to think about our longstanding commitment to economic justice issues; our successes, the limits we’ve faced, and the demands the present moment presses upon us to approach these struggles with renewed vigour. 

Financial Justice Ireland is now more than 30 years old. Some of the demands we’ve long pushed forward are now widely accepted, such as the pressing need to redistribute wealth by reforming global financial institutions. We’ve seen this play out in the European Court of Justice’s clampdown on Apple’s large-scale tax avoidance practices and, elsewhere, in the historic vote for a United Nations Framework on Taxation. And, indeed, we’ve seen impressive momentum build behind the successes of the global campaign for a wealth tax and now the 9th edition of the Global Days of Action on Tax Justice for Women’s Rights continues to build power in support of gender and economic justice politics.

Yet, despite these strides of progress driven by civil society, we live in increasingly difficult times. Our era is marked by a climate catastrophe caused by a system of endless economic growth, pushing the planet to its breaking point. Amidst this, we find a care deficit in our homes, communities, schools, and hospitals; the result of chronic underfunding of our social infrastructure. This continuing crisis of care stands in stark contrast to the accelerating riches of billionaires, whose fortunes continue to grow by the day. 

We know we must be bolder, more ambitious and better organised across our organisations, movements and communities. Our walking tours are a step in that direction: they help forge relationships between communities and they share knowledge that illuminates the practices of financial power, offering a vision of how it can be challenged. 

At FJI, we are asking, how can we build genuinely transformative knowledge and power from below, that centres a politicised care, joy and love?

Finally, we walked in memory of Urantsetseg Tserendorj, a Mongolian Irish woman, mother of 2 and care worker, who was attacked and killed in the IFSC on her way home from work on the 20th of January 2021. 

 

With thanks to RoJnRoll Productions for producing the video. This event took place as part of Culture Night 2024.