Written By Noémi Giszpenc, CDI’s executive director
One year into the Covid-19 pandemic, women’s economic status in the United States has plummeted back to levels not seen since 1987, when Women’s History Month was first established. A combination of job losses focused in hospitality and food service, care and education, and retail, along with childcare and school shutdowns, has forced millions of women out of work. The effects are the worst among women of color.
Some bright sides to the long pandemic confinement include more appreciation from men of the work of care and household management, not to mention respect for “essential workers” who have long toiled in obscurity.
An even more heartening shift would be if we could commit, not to achieving women’s equality in an economy built to exhaust, exploit, and extract, but to a balanced economy that nurtures life, reciprocity, and respect. It is possible to imagine what that would look like. For me, several women have pointed the way.
In 2014, science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula LeGuin accepted the National Book Award for distinguished contribution to American letters with a speech decrying the elevation of profit over art, truth, and freedom. She said, “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.”
As much as I love LeGuin’s stories, economic research can also set me dreaming. Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel memorial prize in Economics in 2009, studied how groups of people could successfully manage a common resource over the long-term without destroying it. Her work discerning the patterns and principles that contribute to stability are informing current-day efforts at improving social outcomes.
One of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever read was Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, a symphony of science, tradition, insight, and hope. She succeeded in implanting in me (and millions of others) a longing for an economy and society that works with nature, not against it, for the benefit of all.
A shining example of such a relationship is Soul Fire Farm, co-founded by Leah Penniman, author of Farming While Black. Soul Fire Farm reclaims land sovereignty for Afro-Indigenous people, creating a world where food, health, and culture are the natural right of people and cannot be denied.
These and many, many more women inspire me to work toward a world of abundance, care, and joy. As the saying goes — We can do it! ¡Sí se puede!
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Blast from the past: enjoy this slide presentation that we made in 2015 to celebrate the history of African American women cooperators featured in Jessica Gordon-Nembhard’s book, Collective Courage.