UNRISD to Participate in Collaborative Research Project Linking Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) and Gender

UNRISD will be collaborating with the Graduate Institute and six other research institutes, of which five are located in the global South, on a new project entitled Feminist Analysis of Social and Solidarity Economy Practices: Views from Latin America and India. The project has received two years of funding from the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS).

UNRISD’s role in the project, which is coordinated by Christine Verschuur and Filipe Calvaõ from the Graduate Institute, will be to draft comparative analyses and policy briefs based on the research findings. UNRISD’s contribution, led by Valeria Esquivel, Research Coordinator on Gender and Development, will draw on its double expertise on gender and social and solidarity economy. It represents a new type of collaboration between UNRISD research teams and provides a pertinent illustration of gender as a cross-cutting theme in UNRISD work. In addition, it builds on some preliminary UNRISD work into the connections between SSE and gender (see previous conference papers and think pieces).

The field of social and solidarity economy is receiving growing attention from scholars and public authorities. But this interest remains gender blind, even though women play a major role in SSE organizations. Moreover, SSE practices in the area of social reproduction are still under-recognized. This research project will address these gaps in SSE analysis and policies from a feminist perspective.

Researchers involved in the project are working from the hypothesis that to be truly transformative, SSE needs to also address the reorganization of social reproduction, integrating the political goals of gender equality and more equitable power relations.

The project will take the form of a multidisciplinary and multi-scalar comparative study taking place across four research sites: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and India. At the micro-level, researchers will develop in-depth studies of selected SSE organizations, using feminist anthropological approaches. At the meso and macro-level, they will explore the interactions between SSE and political debate, action and public policies, using feminist economics, sociology and political science approaches.

The other research partners are:

• Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques (CESSMA) at the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD—France);
• Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (UNGS—Argentina);
• Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (Bolivia);
• Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF—Brazil);
• French Institute of Pondicherry (India);
• Institute of Social Studies Trust (India).

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