Corporations, Taxes & Gender Inequality

What common denominator dictates the hardships faced by many women in both the Global South and the developed North? According to Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona it's the unfair tax structure that permits international corporations to get away with not paying their fair share. Lacking the funds these taxes could provide, governments are forced to introduce austerity programs that disproportionately affect women. Magdalena has often stated that poverty, worldwide, has a woman's face. Her opinions are based on her experience of six years, working as the UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty. She is a Chilean lawyer with graduate degrees in International Law and Human Rights Law. Her 20-year career has been focused on the intersection of poverty, development and human rights.

Magdalena's career has bridged research and activism. She has worked as a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, as a staff attorney at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as the Co-Director of the Department of International Law and Human Rights of the United Nations-mandated University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica and as a Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, in Geneva. She has also served as a consultant to several international organizations and worked with a range of NGO's in formal and informal capacities. She has published widely on human rights, poverty, and development and has taught postgraduate courses at several universities in Latin America. She has recently become Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Gl-ESCR) while still serving on the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. Her talk will help us to understand the forces at work preventing women from achieving gender equality in the workforce as well as in society at large