Serena Natile

Published: Mar 02, 2020 by International Journal of Law in Context
Authors: Serena Natile
Subjects: Law, Gender & Intersectionality Studies

Bringing together socio-legal enquiry, feminist political economy analysis and post-colonial literature, this paper discusses the inclusionary regulatory arrangements of digital financial and examines its implications for gender equality. It shows that, while these arrangements contribute to including women in the formal financial system, they fail to adopt the redistributive measures necessary to address the gendered socio-economic disadvantages that cause and reproduce financial exclusion.

Published: Jan 06, 2020 by Historical Social Research
Authors: Serena Natile

This paper brings together socio-legal enquiry and international political economy analysis to argue that social entrepreneurship promotes a logic of opportunity rather than a politics of redistribution, favouring mobile money providers and the institutions involved in the mobile money social business over improving the lives of the intended beneficiaries, namely the unbanked poor.

By: Serena Natile

Reform or Revolution was Rosa Luxemburg’s first major political work. She herself considered it the work that allowed her to force the top echelon of the German Social Democratic Party (SDP) to take her seriously as a political thinker and leader, despite the fact that she was still in her twenties, a foreigner, disabled, and a woman. In 1898, after competing her doctorate in Switzerland she moved to Berlin, where she became involved in the SDP debate on revisionism. In 1897–98 Eduard Bernstein, an influential SDP figure, published a series of articles in which he argued that revolution was not necessary and socialism could be achieved by a gradual reform of the capitalist system through mechanisms such as consumers’ cooperatives, trade unions, and the gradual extension of political democracy. He denied the Marxist materialist conception of history, the contradictions of capitalism and the theory of class struggle. Rosa Luxemburg entered this male-dominated debate with the publication of Reform or Revolution in 1900 (following two articles published in 1898 and 1899). According to Rosa, the controversy between reform and revolution posed the question of ‘the very existence of the social democratic movement.’

In opposition to Bernstein, Rosa argued that while social democracy must improve living conditions in the here and now, revolution must remain the main goal of any socialist movement. She insisted that we cannot counterpose reform and revolution but that there is a necessary link between the two, as the struggle for reform is a means of achieving revolutionary transformation. Leaders who support legislative reform in opposition to revolution are not choosing a different method by which to achieve the same goal but are opting for a different goal, namely a cosmetic modification of the existing system that does not fundamentally change the mechanisms of power distribution within it. While revolution was the underpinning purpose of Rosa’s work, she also spent time thinking about ways of achieving this future, the daily actions we must collectively take, the rights we must fight for and the freedoms we must defend, as well as critiquing particular conceptualisations of rights and freedoms.

Rosa’s response to Bernstein and her thinking about the everyday work towards the revolution provides important insights into how the international legal order has enabled and legitimised the global maldistribution of power and wealth, and possible radical change. In this blog I draw upon her lessons about crises, capitalist states and democracy as I examine whether a grassroots-inspired transnational social security framework can have the revolutionary potential to disrupt global capitalism’ unjust distribution........

By: Serena Natile

Digital financial technology, or fintech, facilitates access to financial services for those excluded from mainstream finance. Digital financial inclusion has become a central policy tool to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including gender equality (SDG 5). Access to digital financial services is said to provide women living in poverty or on a low income with autonomy, safety, and entrepreneurial opportunities. While these services have included more female users in the formal financial system, they perpetuate the gendered structural causes of financial exclusion and can create additional vulnerabilities, especially for women at the lower end of the global income distribution. This policy brief examines the proposed benefits of digital financial services for gender equality regarding accessibility, security and autonomy, and assesses them against the potential risks. 

By: Serena Natile

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed deep inequalities embedded in national and international socio-economic systems and legal frameworks. Over-stretched social services and an over-reliance on unpaid and precarious labour compensate for the inadequacies of social infrastructure, economic policies and labour regulation, instead of inspiring more social justice-driven approaches. The crisis can provide an opportunity to identify the limits of such systems and reimagine the policies that shape them. This project aims to bring together activists, academics and policy-makers to collectively reimagine a feminist recovery plan for Covid-19 and beyond by placing grassroots feminisms at the centre of policy-making, learning from the past and looking at the future.

By: Serena Natile

In this episode of Between the Lines. Serena Natile discusses her book, The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion, which critiques mobile money as part of a historical succession of finance solutions and puts forward a strategy for gender equality, arguing for a politics of redistribution to guide future digital financial inclusion projects.

Interviewing Serena is IDS Digital and Technology researcher Tony Roberts