Decolonizing Feminist Economics: Interrogating the Women's Economic Empowerment and Gender Equality Development Framework

This article urges attention be paid to the project of decolonizing feminist development economics as a way to reimagine feminist economics and politics. Drawing on economic patterns within contemporary Mesoamerica, this article exposes modernist assumptions within development discourse on women's economic empowerment and their contemporary colonial forms, and expands the notion of economy and female empowerment beyond the scope of capitalist modernity. Further to this, and using the experience of working as a feminist economist in an international development organization in Guatemala, this article discusses feminist dilemmas in development that complicate current approaches to women's economic empowerment and gender equality.