UN CSW70 Spotlights Colonial Legacies in Gender Justice: How Science-Based Solutions Perpetuate Structural Inequities

Indigenous feminist traditions in Africa and the Americas frame gender justice as inseparable from land, spirituality, and community autonomy, challenging the individualistic, rights-based frameworks promoted by UN institutions. These traditions emphasize reciprocity and collective well-being over the 'science-based' metrics of progress favored by CSW70. The erasure of these perspectives in global forums like CSW70 reflects a broader pattern of epistemic violence against non-Western knowledge systems.

The current framing of gender justice at CSW70 echoes 19th-century colonial 'civilizing missions,' where Western powers imposed gender norms as part of broader projects of cultural domination. Structural adjustment programs in the 1980s-90s dismantled social safety nets in the Global South under the guise of 'efficiency,' exacerbating gender inequalities that persist today. The UN’s own history, including its role in the League of Nations’ Mandate System, reveals a pattern of using gender equity as a tool for geopolitical control rather than liberation.

Cross-culturally, gender justice is often tied to economic sovereignty, as seen in the Zapatista women’s movements in Mexico or the Chipko women’s environmental activism in India, where struggles for land and livelihood are inseparable from gender liberation. Western feminist movements, by contrast, have historically prioritized legal reforms over material conditions, a divide that CSW70’s technocratic approach exacerbates. The Global South’s feminist movements critique the 'science-based' model as a neocolonial imposition that ignores local epistemologies and priorities.

The 'science-based solutions' promoted at CSW70 often rely on positivist epistemologies that privilege quantitative data and measurable outcomes, sidelining qualitative, context-specific research from the Global South. This approach mirrors the history of eugenics and other pseudoscientific justifications for colonialism, where Western science was used to 'prove' racial and gender hierarchies. Feminist scholars like Sandra Harding argue that scientific objectivity itself is a colonial construct that obscures power dynamics in knowledge production.

Artistic and spiritual traditions across cultures frame gender justice as a sacred duty, from the Yoruba concept of 'Iwa' (moral character) to the Buddhist ideal of 'compassion' as a foundation for equitable relationships. These traditions often challenge the linear, progress-oriented narratives of CSW70, instead emphasizing cyclical understandings of justice and healing. The exclusion of these perspectives in global forums reflects a broader devaluation of non-rational forms of knowledge in policy-making.

Future scenarios that center decolonial feminist frameworks suggest that gender justice cannot be achieved without dismantling the extractive economic models that underpin global inequality, such as the IMF’s austerity measures or the patenting of indigenous knowledge. Scenario planning must also account for the climate crisis, which disproportionately affects women in the Global South, particularly those in agrarian communities. The current CSW70 approach risks entrenching these crises by treating symptoms rather than root causes.

Marginalized voices—such as Black feminist scholars, Indigenous women, and sex workers—have long critiqued the UN’s gender justice frameworks as complicit in neoliberal agendas that prioritize corporate interests over community needs. The exclusion of these voices from CSW70’s narrative reflects a broader pattern of silencing in global governance, where power is concentrated among a narrow elite. Grassroots movements like #AidToo and feminist collectives in the Global South demand a shift from 'inclusion' in existing systems to the creation of entirely new ones.