If I were Minister of Finance…: gaining understanding of financial crisis through a simulation workshop

Abstract

Financial crises (also known as debt crises, currency crises or balance of payments crises) have become endemic in the modern world. The countries at greatest risk have been developing countries. This article discusses a workshop, ‘If I were Minister of Finance...’, which we ran at the Association for Women in Development (AWID) conference in Guadalajara in October 2002. In the workshop, participants took part in a simulation of the Argentine currency crisis. The simulation sought to give participants a better understanding of the causes of a currency crisis, and the tough, limited choices a government faces in trying to prevent it. Simulations like the one described in this article can be helpful to activists and women's organisations in moving a gender-sensitive economic policy agenda forward.