A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Tagged: economic justice

Democracy / Distribution / Economics / Social justice

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In Wisława Szymborska Park: Reflections on 15 Years of Citizens’ Budgets in Poland

This is a guest post by Callum MacRae (Jagiellonian University, Krakow)

A photograph of Wisława Szymborska park. It shows a stone waterfeature running alongside an area of mixed wild plants and flowers.
Wisława Szymborska park, photograph provided by Callum MacRae

Tucked behind the public Voivodeship library, connecting Karmelicka street to the east with Dolnych Młynów to the west, lies Krakow’s Wisława Szymborska park. The park is new to Krakow, having opened just last year. But, sitting just a short walk from the historic old town, those who live in the city have already come to know and love it as a precious area of public greenspace. On warm days, the park’s carefully considered design is alive with people; playing, chatting, reading, passing time, watching the world go by.

But the park represents more than just an impressively successful example of green, public, urban design. It is a product of Krakow’s Citizens’ Budget scheme, having been approved in the 2019 round of funding, and as such it also represents the power and potential of Poland’s remarkable modern engagement with participatory budgeting in local government.

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Academia / Distribution / Economics / Gender / General / Rights

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“Level playing fields”: a misguided complaint about discrimination against well-off women

This is the third, and last, of a series of three posts about gender justice and conflicts of interest between women who belong to different classes. In the first post I argued that priority should be given to the worse off women: When a particular policy (which is otherwise justified) would benefit poor, or working class, women, there is a strong presumption in favour of that policy even if it would, at the same time, set back the interests of better off women. Many care-supporting policies are like this: The very mechanism that makes them work in favour of those women from low socio-economicbackgrounds who are saddled with care duties leads to the reinforcement of statistical discrimination and other biases against professional women. (more…)