Call for Papers: Women and Tax Justice Conference at Beijing+20, Ontario, March 2015

FEMINIST LEGAL STUDIES QUEEN’S and

WOMEN FOR TAX JUSTICE and

FEM TAX INTERNATIONAL

CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST IN PRESENTING PAPERS
International Women’s Day Conference: Women and Tax Justice at Beijing+20: Taxing and Budgeting for Sex Equality

Kingston, Ontario,March 6/7, 2015

In 1995, the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing. This was a turning point for women’s movements internationally as activists and advocates came together to discuss, debate, and mobilize around gender issues. The result was that at this conference, an unprecedented number of governments made commitments to implement gender-based impact analysis of all existing and proposed programs as laid out in the Beijing
Platform for Action.

2015 marks the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Conference.  This Beijing+20 Conference takes place at an historic moment when major international efforts to advance human development and human rights converge with intensify ing efforts to accomplish the eight Millennium Development Goals by their 2015 endpoint, and with the final drafting of the post-2015 development agenda and sustainable development goals as a global roadmap for the future.

Since 1995, however, growing reliance on tax cuts to stimulate growth, recessions, and austerity budgets have undercut women’s movement toward economic and social equality. Cuts to progressive taxes like personal and corporate income taxes have left heavier burdens of consumption taxation on women, particularly those in poverty and Indigenous populations, and reduced tax revenues are used to justify cutting public services, employment, and ODA.

At the same time, generous tax cuts, investment incentives, and corporate exploitation of offshore and tax haven regimes have enabled those with the highest incomes to increase their shares of wealth.

This conference focuses on identifying the tax and spending laws that are undermining sex equality, and on ensuring that governments develop sex-equal tax and budget policies that will raise the revenues needed to meet their Platform and other human rights obligations.

The organizers are seeking expressions of interest in presenting papers on these issues.  Right now, all we need is a short email with one sentence on each of these points:
•  What your research is about (country, type of tax, spending program, or budget issue)
•  Your organizational position and relevant qualifications
•   Approximate cost of travel/accommodation expenses you might need to attend

This call is to all those involved in all aspects of policy formation, critical scholarship, or applied forms of research at all levels pertaining to tax policy and gender, social welfare legislation, and gender-based budget analysis. This includes academic and practicing lawyers, policy analysts, interdisciplinary and comparative scholars and experts, law and graduate students, and those in development studies, sociology, political studies, economics, and other university disciplines, and NGO or community organizations.

This conference is being organized and presented in collaboration with Women for Tax Justice, a policy and campaign platform supported by Tax Justice Network, and by Fem Tax International, a research network of interdisciplinary scholars and policy analysts.

Date and Location: The conference will be held at the Faculty of Law, 128 Union St., Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, on Friday March 6 and Saturday March 7, 2015

Accessibility: The venue is fully accessible; please contact the coordinators with any questions.

Submit your expression of interest to either or both:

Prof. Kathleen Lahey      Prof. Bita Amani
Co-Director                         Co-Director

[email protected]             [email protected]

Feminist Legal Studies
Faculty of Law, Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario