Who Pays the Price? Feminist Economics and the Politics of Work and Care in the Arab Region

By Zahra Bazzi and Lea Ibrahim

Who pays the price of the economy? Who benefits from it? And, most importantly, who gets to decide? Opening the webinar on feminist economics, organized by the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) on 17 September, Hadeel Qazzaz, gender specialist at Oxfam and feminist activist, invited participants to question the way we are taught to understand the economy—as something primarily linked to profit and businesses. Bringing together feminist voices and perspectives from across the region, the webinar featured Lina Abou-Habib, Director of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, and Shereen Talaat, Co-founder of the MENA Fem Movement, in a discussion moderated by Hadeel Qazzaz. The conversation was followed by an exchange with numerous experts, researchers, and representatives of feminist movements from across the region.

At the heart of the discussion, was a fundamental premise of feminist economics: the economy is not gender-neutral. It affects people differently depending on their social situation, where they live, and their access to resources and services. Feminist economics therefore asks questions that conventional economic analysis can overlook: how wealth and resources are produced and distributed; which forms of work are recognized, valued and measured; and how economic crises and adjustment measures affect different groups.

From this perspective, the economy cannot be understood only through indicators such as GDP, investment, inflation or public deficits. These indicators are important, but they do not necessarily reveal how economic resources, opportunities and risks are distributed, or how much of the work required to sustain households and societies takes place outside the market.

Rethinking what counts as economic activity

This leads to one of the central contributions of feminist economics: questioning the conventional distinction between the “productive” economy and social reproduction. Work carried out within households has traditionally been treated as private responsibilities rather than as economic activities. A woman may spend several hours each day preparing meals, cleaning, caring for children or supporting an older family member, without this work appearing anywhere in employment or economic statistics. Yet if these tasks were not performed, households would need to purchase or otherwise organize services to meet the same needs. Yet paid employment itself depends on this often invisible infrastructure of unpaid work. The question is therefore not simply how women can participate more in the existing economy, but also of how the economy is organized and how resources are allocated. As Lina Abou-Habib noted, “The issue is not a scarcity of resources, but rather their mismanagement. The problem has never been solely about the volume of resources we possess, but rather where those resources are directed and the choices that are made.”

Feminist economics also draws attention to the fact that economic inequality is shaped by more than gender. Geography, income, age, disability, migration status and other dimensions of inequality influence access to opportunities and public services. In Tunisia, for example, the World Bank found that 55% of women in rural areas had access to at least four prenatal visits, compared with 75% of women in urban areas. Access to public transport also varied significantly: 87% of households in urban Tunis lived within a 15-minute walk of a bus station, compared with 54% in the North-West and 65% in the Mid-East. These differences illustrate how economic opportunities and access to essential services are shaped by the distribution of public resources, not simply by individual choices.

Who bears the cost of economic policy?

Feminist economics draws attention to the distributional consequences of economic policies that may appear neutral when assessed only through aggregate indicators. A fiscal reform, for example, can increase government revenue while affecting households differently depending on income, gender, employment status and responsibility for household consumption and care. Similarly, cuts in public services may appear as budgetary savings, but can shift the cost of providing those services back onto households—and disproportionately onto women.

Feminist economics therefore examines how fiscal choices shape the distribution of resources and opportunities, drawing attention to the ways taxation and public spending can reinforce or reduce existing inequalities. It therefore brings issues such as progressive taxation, tax exemptions and incentives, public investment, social protection and the provision of essential services into the analysis of gender and economic justice.

The composition of public spending matters as much as its overall level: investment in health, education, childcare, transport and social protection can reduce inequalities and lessen the unpaid work required within households.

The issue, however, extends beyond women's participation in employment. Feminist economics also asks what kind of employment is available, under what conditions, and with what rights and protections. Across the Arab region, women are not only contributing to households and economies through paid and unpaid work; they are also navigating socio-economic crises, armed conflicts, displacement and environmental and climate pressures. In this context, increasing women's labour-force participation cannot by itself be considered sufficient if women are concentrated in informal, precarious, low-paid or insecure employment, face occupational segregation and wage inequalities, or remain excluded from social protection.

A feminist economic approach also challenges the assumption that economic growth automatically translates into improved well-being for everyone. Growth can coexist with rising inequality, precarious employment, inadequate public services and increased unpaid work. From a feminist economics perspective, the central question is therefore not only how much an economy grows, but what kind of economy is being built, for whom, and at whose cost. These questions become even more important during economic crises and periods of fiscal adjustment. When governments respond to crises through reductions in public expenditure, increases in consumption taxes, reductions in subsidies, or restrictions on public services, the consequences may not be equally distributed. Households may compensate for reduced public provision through additional unpaid work, often carried out by women.

Care is economic Infrastructure

Care provides one of the clearest examples of these dynamics. It includes both paid and unpaid work involved in caring for children, older people, people with disabilities and others who require support, as well as the services and institutions that make this work possible.

As Lina Abou-Habib argues in her 2026 article, Care Is Not a Private Matter: It Is a Public and Fiscal Infrastructure, care should not be treated as a private family responsibility. During the webinar, she emphasized: “Care work is not merely a family matter. The care work we perform as women benefits society and the nation as a whole; it is not a private affair.”

The experience of Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon illustrates the economic consequences of this unequal distribution of care. The World Bank’s Who Cares? report finds that unpaid care work falls disproportionately on women across the Mashreq, often creating a choice between remaining outside the labour market and taking on a “double shift” of paid work and unpaid care.

Childcare costs can themselves become a barrier to employment. The report estimates that childcare can represent around 25% of potential earnings in Jordan and more than 100% in Lebanon. In Iraq, only around 1% of children use formal childcare services, while 49% of working mothers report demand for them.

A care-economy approach therefore requires more than encouraging women to enter paid employment. It asks how care is organized, who provides it, who pays for it and how responsibilities are distributed between households, markets, communities and the state.

This approach also requires bringing care into wider economic and social policymaking—including employment, social protection, health, education, taxation and public spending. The concept of the purple economy builds on this understanding by placing care, gender equality and social justice within broader economic thinking.

Across the Arab region, elements of such an approach already exist, but remain uneven. UN Women’s analysis of Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Tunisia examines policies and services including paid leave, early childhood care and education, and elder care, while highlighting significant gaps. In Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, women—including those in paid employment—continue to carry high levels of unpaid care work. Tunisia shows somewhat different patterns, including lower levels of unpaid care work among the countries examined and higher enrolment in early childhood care and education.

Beyond care: ownership, wealth and economic power

But feminist economics goes beyond care. It also raises questions about ownership, wealth and economic power. Indeed, it draws attention to the structures through which wealth and economic power are accumulated and reproduced, including patterns of asset ownership, access to finance and productive resources, and representation in economic institutions and decision-making processes. These structures matter because control over assets and resources is closely linked to economic autonomy, bargaining power and the ability to withstand economic shocks. For example, a woman may have the skills and experience to start or expand a small business, but lack the property, collateral or financial assets needed to obtain a loan. Her ability to participate in the economy is therefore shaped not only by her income or employment, but also by whether she has access to the assets and financial resources that enable economic activity. Unequal access to land, housing, businesses, financial assets, credit and other productive resources can limit women’s capacity to generate income, invest, build wealth and make independent economic choices. At the same time, the concentration of economic power can shape the priorities of institutions and the policies that govern markets and economies. From a feminist economics perspective, examining economic inequality therefore also requires looking beyond income and employment to the deeper structures that determine the accumulation, ownership and control of wealth.

From monitoring to shaping economic priorities

This is where civil society has a critical role to play. The task is not only to make unpaid care work visible, but to question the economic structures, policies and power relations that shape the distribution of resources, responsibilities and opportunities. Civil society organizations can strengthen their capacity to collect data and produce knowledge on unpaid care, access to services, ownership, employment, taxation, public spending and the distribution of economic resources. What is not measured can remain invisible—and what remains invisible is harder to change. But evidence alone is not enough. As Shereen Talaat emphasized during the webinar, “Civil society needs to move beyond merely monitoring decisions to actively intervening and setting our own priorities, refusing to let this global economic system dictate our lives.” This means bringing care into public debate and decision-making spaces, advocating for policies that recognize, reduce and redistribute care responsibilities, and pushing governments to allocate resources accordingly.

Solidarity and collective action is also required. Civil society organizations, feminist movements, researchers, workers’ organizations and other social actors can work together to build shared analyses, strengthen public demands and create sustained pressure for policy change. Rather than addressing economic policies and their consequences in isolation, they can connect questions of care, taxation, public investment, social protection, employment, ownership and access to services to a broader understanding of economic justice. The aim is not simply to assess economic policies through aggregate outcomes, but to examine their distributional consequences, including the allocation of costs and benefits, the distribution of public resources, participation in economic decision-making, and the recognition of different forms of work. By bringing these dimensions together, civil society can contribute not only to influencing policies, but also to reshaping the reflections and public debates through which economic priorities themselves are defined.

Who pays the price of the economy? Who benefits from it? And who gets to decide what the economy is designed to achieve? These are the questions with which we began. Perhaps the next step is to imagine what an economy in the Arab region would look like if these questions were asked from the very beginning. Not an economy built around care alone, but one in which care, gender equality and equal opportunities are considered across taxation, labour, social protection, public investment, trade, ownership and economic decision-making. In such an economy, success could be measured not only by growth, investment or profit, but also by indicators of care, economic security, equality and people’s ability to participate and thrive. What would such an economy look like—and could we begin to design and test its sustainability?

Sources

• World Bank. (2011). Poor Places, Thriving People: How the Middle East and North Africa Can Rise Above Spatial Disparities. Washington, DC: World Bank.
• World Bank. (2015). Tunisia Systematic Country Diagnostic. Washington, DC: World Bank.
• World Bank. (2024). Navigating Social Norms to Empower Iraq’s Female Workforce. World Bank Blogs, March 10, 2024.
• Redaelli, Silvia; Lnu, Anukriti; Buitrago Hernandez, Sandra Paola; Ismail, Tala (2023). State of the Mashreq Women Flagship: Who Cares? Care Work and Women’s Labor Market Outcomes in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. Washington, DC: World Bank.
• UN Women. (2020). The Role of the Care Economy in the Arab States. Regional Economic Forum, UN Women Regional Office for the Arab States.
• Abou-Habib, Lina (2026). Care Is Not a Private Matter: It Is a Public and Fiscal Infrastructure. Beirut: Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND).