Gender and inflation targeting in South Africa: Brief feminist notes

abstract

Tito Mboweni's commitment to inflation targeting has met with support from those economists who believe that high interest rates would curb inflationary spending by individual spenders and would put limits on the inter-bank loans made by commercial banks. However, harsh criticism has emerged from various quarters, especially the labour movement that has argued that such austere inflation controls affect the majority of workers already suffering from high food and fuel costs that have impacted the world economy. Arguments also abound that inflation targets (IT) cannot control the cost of oil therefore price stability can never be assured. Within the South African context, a few feminist arguments have been voiced against interest rate controls as a tool to curb inflation, but these have not been widely articulated or publicised. This focus examines a feminist argument against interest rate driven inflation targeting. The argument engages some assumptions that ‘objective’ macroeconomic policies make about the ‘ungendered’ market and assesses how women more than men are affected by traditional fiscal and monetary policies due to the gendered nature of poverty and labour in our country and other developing countries. Finally, it proposes alternatives to curbing inflation that concentrate on employment generation in addition to IT. It also calls for the introduction of a gender-sensitive international economic and financial system that takes into account the differential effects of economic policies on men and women and calculates women's unpaid productive and reproductive work as a contribution to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

keywords:

• gender
• inflation targeting
• feminism
• economics
• employment