Women, War and Austerity: IFIs and the construction of gendered economic insecurities in Ukraine

This paper analyses the gendered circuits of violence that create and sustain economic insecurity in Ukraine. Drawing on feminist political economy analysis of the dependence of structural adjustment programmes on women’s labor, and feminist security studies critical analysis of the negative effects of militaries on human security, the paper shows how IFI-imposed austerity measures in Ukraine are inextricable from processes of militarization. While the gendered impacts of each of these distinct processes have been explored, this paper empirically demonstrates how IFI loan conditionalities and militarization intensify and reinforce one another precisely through the burdens they place on households and especially on women in the context of conflict.