Our New Year’s Resolution? Advance a Feminist Economy.

“People are fed up,” Jamila Medley announced during one of our recent Zoom of Our Own conversations, “and when people think about the economy that they want — I bet it’s more fair. I bet it’s more just. I bet it’s probably more democratic.”

We probably don’t need to tell you that the economy we want is all of that — and more. But we do want to tell you how An Economy of Our Own plans to inspire a feminist economy, and why we need your support.

We’ve accomplished so much in our first two years here at AEOO. We’ve built a thriving alliance of powerful women and feminist organization whose voices reframe economic change the world desperately needs and inspire us to rewrite an economic script written by and for patriarchal money-kings.

Our Zoom of Our Own conversations have engaged people working in cooperative businesses and public banking; revealed new measures beyond the GDP that would make our caring visible; discussed the federal reserve, monetary reform, and how to invest to support what we value; described what we all need for a friendlier feminist future; and ways of working from the ground up to ensure healthy food and clean water on farms and in cities too, all good for Earth’s climate.

This year we also launched our first Learning Circle — a guided, multi-week course designed to inform and empower grassroots activists in communities across the country to take action on issues of economic justice. (Our first focused on public banking, but we look forward to expanding next year — and offering more iterations with partners!)

We need your help to sustain and further grow what we’re building together. You can help us shine a light on more women economic activists. You can help us turn up the volume of their voices. Together, we can create an economy that wages restoring, regenerating life — not a war of extraction and consumption.

Our goal is to deliver a simpler economic vision — not one hard-fought in a money war most women cannot win, but instead grown in collaboration, real enough to taste. A change this big won’t happen without many more credible women’s voices — and the support of people like you who believe in the power of a woman-centered economy.

“Capacities are exhausted and people are overloaded,” Dr. Sabine O’Hara explained in one of An Economy of Our Own’s Zoom of Our Own conversations this year. “If you don’t get fed, if you don’t sleep, if you don’t get the love, where’s your productivity going to come from to go to work the next day?”

The last two years have shined a harsh light on the cracks in an old economy we’ve long known hurts women most, especially women of color — but really it devalues anyone who doesn’t believe money is humanity’s highest good. And it’s set up to make work like what we do here at AEOO — supporting, growing, and sustaining movements led by women and feminists for economic justice for all — nearly impossible.

Your support makes everything we do at AEOO possible. Please consider joining our Giving Circle before the end of the year so that we can start 2022 stronger than ever — and inspire even more progress and action.

We’ve done all the work of our last two years with the help of a tiny but mighty part-time team, the (pro-bono!) guidance of a brilliant and busy Advisory Board, and the support of a similarly small and likely overstretched group of donors. But we’re hungry to do more — to sustain our work and expand it in the coming year. Your recurring gift, big or small, will provide us with a powerful foundation to move forward. (Even five dollars a month! Or a one-time gift of $50 or more… or whatever you can afford to share before the clock strikes midnight.)

It’s long past time for a new normal — and a woman-centered economy in which most of us wouldn’t need to be poor so a few could be rich. Together, we’re demanding the change our friends, families, and communities need — and the intersectional reforms that will bring us all prosperity, regardless of our gender or race or myriad other factors in our lives.

Our New Year’s resolution is to push the needle even closer to a feminist economy. To upend business-as-usual. To challenge an economy designed by and for white, land-owning men, at the expense of everyone else.

A change this big won’t happen without many more credible women’s voices — and the support of people like you who believe in the power of a woman-centered economy. Please consider supporting our work in the coming year to power our conversations, courses, and resource library — all of which fuel a better way forward.

And no matter your gift, or decision to choose, we hope you and yours have a warm and wonderful New Year’s Eve — and that 2022 brings us all the prosperity we deserve.