The economic growth model has been dominating political and economic life for decades, leveraging on the expectation that a sustained economic growth is possible and leading instead to the careless exploitation of the environment, and the devaluation of female’s reproductive and care work. If progress and prosperity are measured only in terms of a percentage increase in Gross Domestic Product and GDP structurally excludes unpaid labor and externalizes environmental impacts, what we are labeling as “growth” is misconceiving and mismeasuring economic activity while not accounting at all for the population’s well- being. Such an economic growth conception is also suppressing the valorization of unmonetized services or goods which are useful to society, or that intrinsically enable its development and progress. In this context, a feminist degrowth critique is instrumental to an emancipatory understanding of the structural carelessness of the hegemonic economic growth model. The integration of feminist perspectives is therefore a necessary precondition to succeed in formulating a view that puts the reproductive economy of care and sustainability at the center of a new economic model. Whether and how a new economic model founded on de-growth and feminist economic theory can be enacted as a radical change in our economies and societies, remains rather controversial. Within such an intricate debate, the aim of this work is to shed light on how a reconceptualization of the economy which distances itself from GDP-based measurements of progress, can contribute to the feminist cause and a sustainable future.
