International feminist organization based at UNL earns $1.5 M grant

The International Association for Feminist Economics located at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will receive a $1.5 million grant over the next three years from the Swedish International Development Agency to promote feminist economic research and to inform policymakers, economists, and other scholars about feminist points of view on economic issues.

"SIDA's funding will help IAFFE to provide an important forum for researchers interested in exchanging ideas about gender and economic theory and policy throughout the world," said Ann Mari May, professor of economics at UNL and IAFFE officer who will help to oversee the grant. "Feminist economic scholarship plays a key role in contributing to our understanding of social provisioning throughout the world and will help to counter the exclusion of women's voices in economic policymaking."

The grant will provide support for IAFFE's annual conferences held throughout the world, support workshops for the development of special issues to be published by the association's journal, "Feminist Economics" at Rice University, and provide core support for the IAFFE office at UNL.

IAFFE is a nonprofit organization with roughly 600 members from 55 countries. IAFFE has official NGO status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. The association began in the 1990s to promote feminist economic research and facilitate discussions and interactions among economists, researchers, women advocates and policymakers. May was a founding member of IAFFE and has served for the past four years as executive vice president and treasurer.

The grant will support IAFFE annual conferences and pre-conference training workshops to provide researchers, policymakers and community activists throughout the world with a forum to share their work and to exchange ideas on policy and crucial gender concerns. The IAFFE annual conference attracts about 300 scholars from all over the world, including scholars from developing and transition countries.

May said the upcoming conference will be in Buenos Aires and the following conference will be in China. The grant will provide support to those that otherwise may not have been able to attend, specifically encouraging new attendance from countries in Africa and in the southern hemisphere, to strengthen the interactions of those interested in feminist economics and policy.

"The support of SIDA for IAFFE's work serves as yet another reminder of the global priorities of the university," May said. "These priorities are reflected not only in the academic units, but in the diverse work of the faculty working within the university. This grant is an important acknowledgment of the work of IAFFE and recognition of the global significance of gender in economic policy debates."