Feminist tax justice activism

This series is for those who read “Do You Pay Your Taxes?” and wanted more. The voices in that article asked honest questions. Where does our money go? Why does the system feel rigged? Why do women bear the heaviest burden?

This series has answered, one layer at a time. It has traced the architecture of a system designed by the powerful, for the powerful. It has shown how women are taxed without being counted, how daily levies extract without record, how care and labour are stolen without compensation, how governments take and never give.

Now we ask: what will you do?

The Kampala woman’s question was not passive.

“Where does our money go?” was a demand. It was the beginning of a journey through eighteen articles. We have traced the architecture of a system designed by the powerful, for the powerful. We have seen how women are taxed without being counted, how daily levies extract without record, how care and labour are stolen without compensation, how governments take and never give. We have named tax violence.

We have the evidence.

Now the question turns to us.

Reactive advocacy has limits..

Gender‑responsive budgeting began as post‑mortem analysis. After the Minister of Finance read the budget, women’s organisations analysed it, raised alarms, and pointed out unfairness in allocations. Some prepared parallel women’s budgets. Year after year, the cycle repeated. The analysis was sharp. The budget was already a done affair.

They won awareness. They did not always win change.

The same pattern should not hold for taxation. We should not react to bills after they are tabled, nor to laws after they are passed, nor to enforcement after it causes harm.

Waiting for the final document to be read is waiting too long.

From reacting to acting.

Over decades, civil society organisations in Uganda and elsewhere demanded a seat at the planning table. They pushed for legal mandates. In Uganda, sustained advocacy led to the Public Finance Management Act (2015), which obligates ministries, departments, and agencies to do gender and equity budgeting. Budgets are assessed, graded, and must meet a minimum percentage to be funded. The progress is debatable, but the door is open.

Proactive engagement in the tax chain can shift power.

How to get in the room.

Understanding the tax chain is not a technical exercise. It is a power‑centre analysis. It maps who has formal authority, who has informal influence, who is consulted, who is excluded, and where decisions can be challenged.

This is the groundwork for strategy.

With strategy, we can act.

Instead of waiting for tax bills and the budget to be read, we:

• Research. Analyse the gendered incidence of taxation – who pays, who benefits, who is invisible. Document informal sector taxation: market fees, levies, user charges, and how they burden women. Research unpaid care work as a non‑monetary tax that the state extracts. Study tax administration and the lived experience of women: harassment, extortion, exclusion. Map representation and participation – who is in the room when tax laws are drafted, who is excluded. The series has already done much of this work. It is our ammunition.

  
  

• Build relationships. Build relationships with government officials, parliamentarians, revenue authorities, women’s organisations, informal workers, researchers, media, and community leaders. Use listening, trust, collaboration, accessible communication, and shared concerns to strengthen these relationships. Identify allies within government – in ministries, parliamentary committees, revenue authorities. Find champions who will carry gender analysis into decision‑making rooms.

  
  

• Engage strategically. Engage before, during, and after key policy moments such as budgets, tax reforms, elections, and public consultations. Build relationships early because trust makes it easier to influence decisions. Submit gender analysis to technical working groups during policy design. Testify in pre‑budget hearings. Participate in bill drafting consultations. Shape the law before it is tabled.

  
  

• Form coalitions. Tax justice connects to health, education, gender equality, labour rights, environmental justice. Build alliances across sectors and levels: policy advocates, legal defenders, intersectional organisations. Partner with women’s groups, informal workers’ associations, trade unions, researchers, media, and community leaders. Coalitions share knowledge, pool resources, amplify voices, multiply power. Together, we are harder to ignore. Power grows when voices join.

  
  

• Use civic diplomacy. Build trust. Influence government, Parliament, tax authorities, media, and civil society through dialogue, evidence, and coalitions. Frame feminist tax justice as a shared interest. Seek common ground while holding firm to the goal. Advocacy is more effective when doors remain open.

  
  

• Use evidence constructively. Research shows who pays, who benefits, who is excluded. Turn findings into simple messages, stories, and demands. Engage policymakers, media, and the public with clear evidence. Build pressure without closing doors. Advocacy is stronger when backed by facts and framed for change.

The series has given us the evidence.

The economic ghost. The triple tax. The maternal tax. The care tax. The time tax. The reproductive tax. Forty years of nothing. Tax violence. Each article is a file of evidence. Each is a tool for advocacy.

Remember the woman with receipts in a plastic bag – fifteen years of payments, nothing official. 

Remember Idah Nantale – surgery, no bed, four nights on the ground. 

Remember the market trader who paid for forty years and retired with nothing.

When we knock on a ministry door, we do not come empty‑handed. We bring their stories. We bring the data. We bring the demand.

This is not theoretical. It is lived reality—and it must change.

The work is here. The question is whether you will be part of it.

The woman in Kampala asked where her money goes. This series has answered, layer by layer.

Now the question returns to you.

Will you educate yourself? Speak up? Organise? Vote? Support the movements?

Will you be in the room when the next tax law is drafted? Will you sit at the table when budgets are planned? Will you demand that the system that takes from her finally gives back?

She is waiting. Don’t make her wait any longer.

The work is here. The question is whether you will be part of it. The research to build the evidence. Constructive engagement to open dialogue. Civic diplomacy to build public pressure. Strategic coalitions to create collective power. Lived experience to make the issue impossible to ignore.

What comes next?

The series has laid out women’s lived reality of taxation. The evidence is gathered. The problem is clear.

The next series, The Tax System That Counts Us: A Feminist Lens on Policy, Law, and Power, will go deeper into the mechanics. This 14-part series moves from lived experience to formal rules. While the first series highlighted the human impact of tax injustice, this series asks:

• Who decides what is taxed?

• Who counts as a taxpayer—and who is erased?

• How are taxes collected, enforced, and spent?

Each article blends evidence, policy analysis, and feminist insight, showing why these rules matter, who they affect, and what change is possible.

For more, see [link].

The series is now being developed into a book, The Economic Ghost: Tax Is Not Math. It Is Power, which expands and deepens the analysis. For more, see [link].