Tax Justice and Women's Rights Webinar
This webinar was originally hosted on AWID.
On Tuesday 16 June 2015, on the occasion of the Global Week of Action for #Taxjustice, we co-organized with the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), and the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) a webinar on Tax Justice and Women's Rights. Over 100 women’s rights and feminist activists participated in a discussion linking tax policies to the achievement of women's rights & social justice.
Our four expert panelists gave examples of gender bias in taxation and the incidence of VAT on poor women. They contested the male breadwinner model that still dominates taxation policies around the world and that continues to rely on women’s unpaid work.
Specific advocacy spaces for influencing tax justice at the international level were discussed, in particular the Third Financing for Development Conference to be held in Addis Abbaba in July 2015.
Radhika Balakrishnan, from the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, focused on how human rights norms can be used to help raise needed resources through taxation by invoking the principle of Maximum Available Resources. With examples from the United States and Mexico, she explained:
Why countries with lower tax-to-GDP ratio (ratio of tax collection against the national Gross Domestic Product) have less ability to provide the services that are essential for the fulfillment of human rights
Tax evasion and avoidance is clearly higher for corporate sectors than for individuals
The fact that tax policies are written in such a perverse way that the more money someone has, the easiest it is for them to avoid paying taxes.