Earlier this summer, the ICTD Gender team attended the 32nd Annual Conference of the International Association of Feminist Economists (IAFFE) in Rome. We hosted three panels on gender and tax and attended many sessions with other feminist economists from around the world. In this blogpost, I reflect on the insights and lessons learned that emerged from these discussions and that we, at the ICTD, plan to take forward in our work on gender and tax.

 

We can’t succeed alone, building coalitions among actors in the policy space matters

At a panel on “Convincing Policymakers: Reflections on doing gender in policy spaces” chaired by ICTD’s Executive Director Giulia Mascagni, experts presented on the obstacles they experience when trying to include gender issues in policy framing. IDS Fellow Sohela Nazneen underscored the need for feminists to build strong coalitions with the state bureaucracy and political actors to push the gender equality agenda, as most feminist actors operate in the civil society space. Together with IDS colleague, Deepta Chopra, she emphasised that researchers, advocates, and members of the international community will need to find ways to reconcile personal ethics and strategies that work

Indeed, in Uganda, civil society organisations (CSO) are playing an increasingly pivotal role in pushing for gender-sensitive policies and parliamentary debates. More specifically, the Uganda Women’s Parliamentary Association (UWOPA) relies heavily on the research and policy arguments provided by CSOs to generate talking points for incorporating gender into tax issues. But how to advance these discussions when women parliamentarians are not always taken seriously in patriarchal settings? Ugandan MPs admit working closely with male allies, dubbed as “male champions”, to raise gender issues. We also found a similar approach taken by civil society actors in Ethiopia in our work for an upcoming paper on gender and tax compliance. This should, however, not undermine the effect that female representation has had on bringing women’s issues to the forefront of formal policymaking spaces. For instance, In Uganda, gendered matters within parliamentary debates increased alongside institutional requirements for greater female representation in Parliament.

 

Gender equality goals are not necessarily limited to gender-focused policies

From the international institutions’ perspective, Stefania Fabrizio shared that mainstreaming gender at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) starts with recognising that reducing gender disparities goes hand-in-hand with higher economic growth, greater economic stability and resilience, and lower income inequality. At the same time, economic and financial policies can exacerbate or narrow gender disparities. Well-designed macroeconomic, structural, and financial policies can support efficient and inclusive outcomes and equitably benefit women, girls, and the society in general.  Based on her vast experience working with the Fund, she explains that “when coming to gender, the language of [economic] growth [receives] greater attention [from] macroeconomic policy makers than the language of rights protection.”

Extensive research on gender and tax has in fact shown that generally good and progressive tax policies can be gender-neutral and yet advance gender equality goals. Consequently, this makes setting policy agendas a relatively uncomplicated matter in the sense that there is a lesser emphasis on making a case for ‘gender’ and more on making a case for something that ‘is good for all’.

 

To facilitate adoption policies should be tailored to the context

Given that much of the discussion centred around experiences in countries in the global South, attendees highlighted the reality that women’s issues vary according to context. Indeed, women living and working in lower-income countries hold different preferences and face specific socioeconomic constraints. These context-specific conditions need therefore to be included in policy formulations, differentiating them from the ones tailored to women taxpayers operating in higher-income settings. For example, most women in lower-income countries, particularly in African countries, do not pay formal taxes but rather contribute user fees to finance local public goods and services. Adapting policy recommendations to the context can make them more relevant in the eyes of policymakers and taxpayers alike, thus making the policy implementation achievable in the long run.

 

Data is important but collecting the right data is critical

Many conference participants agreed on the general need to use, collect and analyse data better for the purpose of studying gender and policy. There is a large amount of data that exists within administrations, in household surveys and cooperative financial institutions that is yet to be fully utilised. However, we also know that many current datasets were not designed to include gendered concerns.

In a previous ICTD blog post, I reflect on experiences from collecting qualitative data in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. This process and subsequent data analysis emphasised a need to rethink data collection from a gendered perspective. For example, in the process of working on a large cross-country project, I learned that standard taxpayer perception surveys fail to fully account for women’s lived experiences which could sometimes lead to erroneous conclusions.

 

Rethinking data collection is necessary but no need to reinvent the wheel

There is more to be explored in the way we collect individual/household level data, but according to Shailaja Fennell of the University of Cambridge, this needs to occur in conjunction with the full utilisation of already available data resources. This becomes even more valuable and cost effective if specific modules can be included into existing large-scale surveys. Such an approach has been demonstrated when applying minimal changes to multi-topic household surveys to enable the generation of nuanced gendered analysis. Making use of existing data to further the origination of gendered insights will play a central role in pushing gender as a workable concern in policy objectives.

 

What next? Bringing these insights to the Community of Practice on Gender and Tax

Gender and tax, and public finance more broadly, is a growing body of research, especially in the context of lower income countries. The increasing -but still minimal – number of researchers who work in this space can greatly benefit from peer learning and critical reflection on the policy impact of, and the methods applied to, research projects. To this end, the  ICTD and the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution officially launched earlier this year a Community of Practice on research and policy in Gender and Tax (CoPGT). Members first convened on the sidelines of the 2023 IAFFE conference in Cape Town.  The sessions our team attended in Rome, and the discussions we participated in, are going to directly influence the way in which we take our research projects forward. The CoPGT offers members a more frequent and less formal meeting space to develop frameworks and tools to make research on gender and tax more systematic. The need for such a space became even more evident at IAFFE, when the panel discussions left me with more ideas on how to advance knowledge in this burgeoning sub-field.

Sripriya Iyengar Srivatsa

Sripriya Iyengar Srivatsa is a Research Associate at ICTD working on the Gender and Tax project with a focus on tax compliance. Prior to this, she was an Overseas Development Institute Fellow at the Ministry of Finance in Sierra Leone where her work has covered data-for-development, research capacity building initiatives, and studying the labour market implications of household care-burden in Sierra Leone. She is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge where her doctoral research agenda is closely tied to ICTD’s interests in the political economy of taxation and sub-national revenues. She obtained her Master's Degree in Political Economy from SOAS, University of London, and previously worked as a legislative researcher in the Indian Parliament.