A/HRC/53/39 and intersectional feminist approaches to tackling poverty and the inequalities that it perpetuates and entrenches.21 14. For too long, the focus of most international and national economic policies has been on how to integrate women and girls more effectively into existing, unequal economic systems, rather than on challenging and remaking those systems so that they promote and protect the full range of human rights for everyone. 22 As a result, many interventions that address the feminization of poverty use a narrow concept of poverty as a simple lack of economic resources, and they have also tended to view women as a homogenous group. 23 Rather than challenging and transforming intersectional forms of inequality, mainstream poverty-reduction strategies may be further entrenching essentialist gender stereotypes and the structural inequalities that flow from them.24 15. Dominant approaches to security in times of crises, including economic crises, have also been narrow in scope – human rights being set aside, disproportionately affecting women and girls. Understanding security integrally as grounded in human rights law 25 would prioritize preventing and addressing aggravated risks of poverty and inequality for women and girls. In this respect, alongside its role in exacerbating existing inequalities, the COVID19 crisis has also prompted a re-evaluation of mainstream economic ideologies, including recognition of the central role of care in our societies, as called for by feminists for years, as well as revaluing the State’s position (vis-à-vis the market) as an actor in defining and resourcing public policies. The current moment, therefore, presents an opportunity to revisit concepts of unlimited economic growth, often based on deeply embedded forms of structural discrimination, transnational economic inequality, failure to fulfil international solidarity obligations of assistance and cooperation, and non-existent or insufficient networks of social protection and public services to guarantee universally recognized human rights such as health, water, housing, food and nutrition, education, a clean and healthy environment and access to justice. 16. Crucially, poverty and inequality are not inevitable. They are the result of structural discrimination that is reflected in the design of laws and policies which have facilitated present and historical injustices.26 Social movements advocating for transformative change from the perspective of feminist political economy and human rights, particularly economic, social, environmental and cultural rights, have highlighted the feedback loops between global poverty and inequalities, and they have drawn attention to the existence of alternatives to unjust economic and social policies and institutions. 27 These rights-based feminist approaches to inequality and poverty provide key insights, tools, accountability measures and remedies that would enable the structural determinants of poverty and inequality to be identified, challenged and overcome. Feminist and human rights-based approaches to women’s poverty and inequality B. 17. Conceptually, the feminist approaches to women’s poverty and inequality, as used in the present report, are based on the reaffirmation of substantive equality for women in the legal, social, economic, cultural, environmental and political arenas and in all spheres of life. While gender equality is a human right in itself, and as such feminism is connected to the 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 6 See A/HRC/38/46; and Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, “Gender equality and gender backlash” (2020). Views expressed during the Working Group’s consultations. Naila Kabeer, “Gender equality, the MDGs and the SDGs: achievements, lessons and concerns”, London School of Economics, 6 October 2015. Sylvia Chant, “Women, girls, and world poverty: empowerment, equality or essentialism?” International Development Planning Review, vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 1–24. See, for example, General Assembly resolution 66/290, para. 3. UNRISD, Crises of Inequality: Shifting Power for a New Eco-Social Contract (2022). Lucie E. White and Jeremy Perelman, eds., Stones of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights to Challenge Global Poverty (Stanford University Press, 2011); see also reports by the Center for Economic and Social Rights, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. GE.23-06173