Our Objectives

This initiative aims to inspire inclusive possibilities and visions of economies that center care for people and the planet, building on the network’s Social Pact on Care, based on buen vivir, dignity, and collective care and security for all people in their diversity, and offering counter-hegemonic and resistance strategies to the dominant economic system rooted in patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial systems of oppression. This includes exploring the intersections of caring economies with issues of debt and climate justice as fundamental to addressing the impacts of the dominant economic model rooted in systems of oppression.   

The initiative will provide technical and practical accompaniment for ESCR-Net members, including social movements, grassroots organizations, domestic workers unions, feminist collectives, human rights organizations, and indigenous peoples’ groups, to conduct research grounded in communities’ visions, practices, and knowledge– including embodied, ancestral and lived experiences. The goal is to collectively challenge prevailing narratives and support advocacy for just, feminist, caring economies efforts at the local, national, and international levels.  

The Scope of Research:Regenerative economies centering care and its nexus with climate and debt justice.  

We understand the economy as a social system in which we live and experience our lives to meet our needs and wants, shaped by political, cultural and legal norms and values. The economy is about the way we organize our societies; how we live together in relation to ourselves, each other, and the planet; and how we access and manage resources and provide essential services to meet human needs in specific contexts. 

The hegemonic economic system, neoliberal capitalism, is rooted in extraction, patriarchy, systemic racism, colonialism, and imperialism. It thrives on the exploitation of feminized and racialized people and the planet. It relies on the denial, devaluation and erasure of care, which is essential to societal well-being. Care work is disproportionately assigned to women and girls from historically oppressed groups, remaining undervalued, underpaid, and increasingly privatized, despite its vital role in sustaining life and communities. This has led to invisibilization of social reproduction and the feminization of poverty, deepening inequality, and the further exploitation of women, their bodies, and the environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the unfair distribution of care work, while extreme weather events and climate-induced disasters increase the burden on women, intensifying social and economic inequalities. Even when there could be political will to address the care crisis and put forward real climate solutions, indebted nations must grapple with impossible decisions amid debt and broader economic crises that have been intensified by the pandemic and global geopolitical instability. As feminist movements have long argued, we call for a shift from the current economic paradigm to one rooted in care—valuing life, mutual and collective care, and the safeguarding of our lands, our territories, and ancestral wisdom. 

By drawing on communities’ and ancestral knowledge and practices of care, we will deepen our understanding of care as the pathway to a more sustainable, equitable and inclusive world, ultimately challenging the current paradigm. The FPAR initiative plays a critical role in providing evidence to advocate for policies and practices that recognize and value care as a fundamental human right, inspiring others by highlighting alternative care models, including those that have long existed -for example within indigenous communities- community-led care networks borne of necessity, and transformative agendas being seeded, all while resisting the destructive impacts of the current system.

Our Framing: The Social Pact on Care 

In response to recent intersecting crises, the Women and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Working Group (WESCR WG) has mobilized around a transformative Social Pact on Care, centered on human rights, people, and the planet. Grounded in a 6R framework—recognition, redistribution, reduction, rights, representation, and reframing the economy as a caring economy—the pact aims to reimagine the economy and build a feminist future by prioritizing care. The pact uses an expansive vision of care comprising all work that sustains life – paid and non-paid activities that make social reproduction possible. 

As a far-reaching vision for the life of people as interdependent subjects with one another and with nature, the social pact constitutes a key axis in the broader project of transformative change towards a ‘new normal’ defined by economic and social models centering care. The 6th R – reframing the economy – will be the main container for collective analysis and advocacy at the nexus of care-debt-climate, as we believe it constitutes our horizon for transformative and structural change. 

Each research participant will shape their methodologies and goals according to their specific needs, political context, and priorities. This may involve documenting existing care-centered systems, learning from local and indigenous traditions, or exploring solidarity economies. The research could also focus on developing new care-based systems or challenging policies, norms, and practices to envision alternatives to current hegemonic systems.

Methodological Approach: Feminist Participatory Action Research 

Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) is a transformative framework grounded in feminist theory and participatory action, aimed at challenging power structures and promoting social change. It emphasizes power, participation, and relationality, with participants, especially women from resisting communities in all their diversity, becoming co-researchers throughout the research process. This methodological approach to research also seeks to challenge and shift power dynamics in research, ensuring that those most affected by injustice have a central role in generating knowledge and driving change. 

FPAR incorporates intersectionality to address intertwined systems of oppression, uses creative, reflective, spiritual and care-centered practices to foster transformative, and collective action toward new feminist futures. It is conducted in ways that are non-extractive, focusing on co-creating shared knowledge that is grounded in the interconnectedness of body, mind, and spirit. 

The Research and the Collective Learning Process  

The research process is expected to last 18 months, from April 2025 to October 2026, with approximately 6 months of fieldwork, though the timeline may vary by research team (see timeline below). Throughout this period, participants will engage in collective learning, including one in-person workshop in early 2025 and quarterly online exchanges to explore concepts related to economies of care and feminist participatory action research. Tailored meetings or workshops will also be offered to address specific participant needs.

Although each movement will conduct the research according to their needs and goals, the collective learning journey will provide an opportunity to strengthen the research and analysis, stand in solidarity with others, and shape collective messages and demands that reflect the findings of each research project.

The initiative will produce resources such as briefs and videos to support the research and amplify advocacy messages at international, regional, and national levels. The research will be thoroughly documented and systematized, contributing to the Community-led Research School of the Network and expanding the collective knowledge base.

Participants

We aim to collaborate with five ESCR-Net members from – or working with– social movements, grassroots organizations, domestic workers unions, feminist collectives, human rights groups, and indigenous peoples’ organizations working on or envisioning care-centered economies. Participants do not need prior research experience.  

It is our hope that the research will amplify and make visible the perspectives of groups that have been historically marginalized and silenced. These groups include, but are not limited to indigenous women, rural/peasant women, informal workers, domestic workers, people with disabilities, people with diverse sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression, including gender non-binary people and non-gender conforming people, elderly people, forest people, people in the move, healthcare workers, agricultural workers. 

To ensure an active and consistent participation, each participating movement will identify a research team of at least 2-3 members who can communicate in one of the Network’s four languages (Arabic, French, Spanish, or English). These team representatives will serve as primary contacts and engage in both online and in-person learning spaces throughout the project.  

Collective Care and Protection 

FPAR is a powerful tool for disrupting existing power dynamics, and it is likely to entail some degree of risk to those involved. Collective care and protection will be at the core of the initiative to take the necessary actions to prevent the increase of associated risk during the research process. The ESCR-Net Secretariat and the Advisory Group will collaborate with each movement to identify potential risks and develop appropriate preventive and mitigation strategies, while solidarity actions will be promoted to support members facing threats, coordinated through the System of Solidarity (S.O.S).

The role of the Advisory Group and the ESCR-Net Secretatiat

The Advisory Group (AG), composed of 7- 10 ESCR-Net members from different regions, will play a key role in co-designing and co-facilitating workshops and learning exchanges, providing advice and sharing their experiences with project participants. The AG will offer guidance and share their expertise on feminist and participatory research in social, gender, environmental, and economic justice throughout the project. The AG is currently composed of 7 members from LatinAmerica, Asia and Africa, and we hope to expand the AG during the course of the project.

The ESCR-Net Secretariat will facilitate technical and resource accompaniment to the research teams, and coordinate the AG co- organizing online and in-person workshops to build capacity on specific methodologies. These sessions will also address challenges like community participation, security risks, and applying a feminist approach. 

Financial Support

ESCR-Net will bear all costs related to workshops and exchanges that will take place online and in person. ESCR-Net will also reimburse some of the costs of research projects up to a fixed amount of about 5000 USD. Please note that ESCR-Net is not a funding agency, therefore we have limitations regarding the types of expenses we can reimburse. Examples of expenses that we can reimburse include: travel, accommodation, meals, venue hiring, purchase of small equipment (including cameras, audio recorders, up to a certain amount, etc), communication and interpretation costs, testing/laboratory, access to archives, hiring external professionals (e.g. for multimedia, publications), etc. Other costs can be agreed with ESCR-Net in advance. 

We cannot cover costs related to stipends or salaries, office costs, such as utilities or occupancy costs, furniture or permanent equipment/technology (e.g., fax machines, computers, copy machines, among others). You won’t be asked to provide a budget at this stage but just keep these considerations in mind when thinking about what kind of research may be feasible for you to do as a research budget will need to be developed at a later stage. 

Timeline

Selection process 

• March 3, 2025: Opening call for expression of interest for ESCR-Net members (Please see form attached).
• March 11, 2025: Consultation process with members 
• March 21, 2025: Deadline to submit expression of interest form.
• End of March 2025: Consolidation of the Advisory Group 
• End of March- April 2025: The Advisory Group reviews proposals and identifies research participants – up to 5 groups from different regions
• Early April 2025: Announcement of selected participants
  Getting to know each other- First meeting

Research process 

April-August 2025: Rooting (us)- Building trust | Research design and planning process

Local consultations, defying our guiding principles,  research design with the support of the AG and ESCR-Net Secretariat choosing non-extractive methods, collective care and protection plans, and developing budgets.

• Four day in-person workshop in late May/early June 
• Online mutual learning exchanges in July- August 

August 2025- February 2026: Weaving (us) with the land and the communities| Fieldwork:

Security protocols in place; research teams immerse in the collectives and communities to co-create knowledge and data. Relationality, building networks of knowledge. 

• Collective online exchanges and/or local workshops on FPAR methods and on Care and its linkages with climate and debt justice.

February- June 2026: Thinking-feeling (us) within our communities | Participatory data analysis: 

Data entry, systematization, coding, thinking-feeling and imagining possibilities. Preliminary participatory data analysis workshops. 

• Collective online exchanges and/or local workshops 

July- September 2026: Moving (us): Action- Reflection- Collective power 

Development of research outputs (report, videos, art, popular education materials, etc), and advocacy and communication strategies.  Reflecting on findings, building collective narratives

• Online mutual learning exchanges on communication and advocacy strategies. 
• Evaluation and feedback from communities/collectives

October 2026 (and onwards) | Tangling (us) up: Shared analysis to build collective action 

Final workshops: Sharing findings, learnings and co-creation of shared analysis from all research processes and developing of a collective advocacy plan. Solidarity actions. Collective advocacy plans will continue to be implemented after October 2026 onwards. Documentation and systematization of learnings. Assessment and feedback from groups