CLOSING PLENARY: Why the F Word Matters

Across the globe, we are witnessing a troubling resurgence of anti-feminist sentiment. Feminism is being cast not as an instrument of progress but as a threat—blamed for societal fragmentation, economic instability, and erosion of traditional values. This backlash is not just rhetorical; it is political. It seeks to roll back decades of hard-won gains in gender justice and to delegitimize feminist thought and practice. But as all of us here know, the real threat is not feminism—it is inequality. This Closing Plenary confronts the urgency of defending the word feminist—in economics, in publishing, in policy, and in activism. At a time marked by intensifying authoritarianism, deepening economic precarity, and environmental crisis, feminism is not a peripheral concern. It is a critical framework—one that foregrounds care, equity, interdependence, and sustainability. To discard or dilute it is to surrender the conceptual tools we need to understand and transform our world. 

Professors Ipek Ilkkaracan, Elissa Braunstein, Radhika Balakrishnan, and Luiza Nassif will offer reflections on the political and intellectual stakes of feminist economics across diverse domains. Drawing on their extensive work across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, they will consider what it means to claim the label feminist—and why doing so remains a radical act. In conversation with each other and with the audience, the session will ask: What does “feminist” mean in these different contexts? How can feminist praxis disrupt dominant paradigms across our fields?Why is it about more than just women or gender? And how can we expand feminist engagement across the spaces where we work and lead? The session will be chaired by outgoing IAFFE President, Professor Sara Cantillon.

SPEAKERS

Professor Sara Cantillon is Professor of Economics and Director of the Wise Centre for Economic Justice in the Glasgow School of Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University. Sara does research on care issues, gender and poverty, intrahousehold resource allocation and feminist economics. Current projects include The Care Economy; Global Challenges Fund Gender Network; UN Women Economic Empowerment; IntraHousehold Resources. She is the outgoing President of IAFFE. 

İpek İlkkaracan is Professor of Economics at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Faculty of Management. She served as President of IAFFE in 2022- 23 and the Conference Chair for IAFFE Annual Conference Rome 2024. Ilkkaracan is a Research Associate with the Levy Economics Institute
(New York) and the Economic Research Forum (ERF Cairo), and an Associate Editor of the Feminist Economics journal.  Ilkkaracan’s areas of research entail the care economy, gender and macroeconomics, political economy of gender, labor markets and development. Her ‘Purple Economy’ model, which depicts a gender-equal and caring economic order, was adopted as an advocacy and training tool by women’s organizations, including the European Women’s Lobby (Brussels), the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia-Pacific (Malaysia), Women for Women’s Human Rights (Türkiye). Ilkkaracan has served as Board Member of IAFFE (2015-2017) and the Middle Eastern Economics Association (2010-2012).

Radhika Balakrishnan is a Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University and was a Professor of Women's and Gender and Sexuality Studies from 2009-2024. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University. Formerly, she held the role of Faculty Director at the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers. Radhika currently sits on the board of the Global Initiative of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) and is a member of the Global Future Council on the Future of the Care Economy. Throughout her career, her roles include serving as a Commissioner for the Commission for Gender Equity for the City of New York and participating in the Global Advisory Council for the United Nations Population Fund. She was President of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) from 2020 to 2021. She has chaired the Board of the United States Human Rights Network and the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Her prior academic experience includes a Professor of Economics and International Studies position at Marymount Manhattan College from 2003 to 2009. Additionally, she contributed her expertise to the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asia Regional Program from 1992 to 1995.

Luiza Nassif Pires is co-director of Made and Assistant Professor at the institute of economics at Unicamp. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from The New School for Social Research and is a research associate in the Gender Equality and Economics program at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, where she lectured in the graduate programs in Economic Theory and Public Policy. She is also the representative of the caucus of women and non-binary people in the steering committee of URPE and a member of the board of directors of IAFFE.

Elissa Braunstein is a Professor and Chair of Economics at Colorado State University, as well as Editor of the journal Feminist Economics. Most recently she worked for 2.5 years as a Senior Economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Her work focuses on the international and macroeconomic aspects of development, with particular emphasis on economic growth, macro policy, social reproduction and gender. She publishes widely in both academic and policy venues, and has done consulting work for a number of international development institutions, including the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, the United Nations Research Institute on Social Development, and UN Women. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a Master’s of Pacific International Affairs from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego.