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Paper short abstract:

A feminist perspective on the transformative potential of WorkFREE's UBIPlus pilot

Paper long abstract:

Universal Basic Income, delivered as a universal regular unconditional cash payment to individuals, challenges the transactional power relationship with the donor in international development and provides for greater economic and social agency. A potential decolonialisation of development. However, within the context of a plethora of existing structural inequalities, can WorkFREE be considered to have developed a framework for a new paradigm in development?

The WorkFREE project could be characterised as an attempt to include a feminist methodology within the Basic Income piloting field. Whilst most UBI pilots focus on cash payments alone, the Plus provides facilitated participatory community-based meetings for recipients to discuss issues and ideas for their community.

The Plus draws on a long history of PAR and, central to that, a feminist tradition in development work – a focus on the relational – seeing participation in the political, economic and social domains as central to the emancipation of women (Fraser, 2017) rather than just their empowerment. I explore the design and praxis of the Plus from a feminist perspective.

In turn, my empirical work on the gendered impacts of WorkFREE, and the initial results I have gathered, add some light as to what might constitute a feminist UBI.

• The women and solidarity – also leisure time

• The women and roles in the family – marriage, VAWG, care, decision making.

• Women and investments in the future (wider economic agency)

I argue that the inclusion of the participatory, relational and needs focused in the design of the pilot underpins its transformative potential and contributes to the definition of WorkFREE as a feminist UBI.