ABSTRACT
In this chapter, postcolonial feminist social work is introduced as a conceptual tool for analysis and as a framework for engagement and action. It will be used to analyze neoliberal discourse and initiatives that aim to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment in the global South through financial inclusion and labor force participation. This analysis will demonstrate that this discourse is undergirded by an assumption that patriarchal culture, laws and practices in the global South are the primary cause of women’s inequality and lack of empowerment rather than the gendered consequences of global inequality and neoliberal economic policies that compromise the health, power, wellbeing, and equality of women in the global North and South.
