The opposite of celebration: A tax justice reflection

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 provides the answers, one layer at a time. Each piece examines a different dimension of tax justice through a feminist political economy lens. Together, they reveal the architecture of a system designed by the powerful, for the powerful. And they show what it takes to change it.

Some examples reappear across pieces. This is deliberate. Certain mechanisms—presumptive tax, the taxation of necessities, the unpaid care economy, the invisibility of informal workers—are so foundational that they deserve to be seen from multiple angles. Each time we return to them, we see another layer of how they operate.

This series focuses on women. Not because they are the only ones made invisible by the system, but because their exclusion exposes tax injustice most clearly. Men are also excluded, also unseen. And women are not a single story. The market trader, the rural farmer, the woman with a disability—each faces different barriers. This article reflects on the question that arose when I shared one of these pieces on International Women’s Day.

On International Women’s Day 2026, I did something different.

I usually send messages on this day. Words about achievements, about greatness, about advancement. The typical fare. The expected performance.

This year, I had just finished writing an article. Part of this series. It is called “The Maternal Tax.” It documented what women pay to give life in a system that takes everything and returns nothing.

Instead of sending happy messages, I shared the article. I paired it with an image that read:

I felt uncomfortable calling it a celebration. The article was not about achievement. It was about extraction. About women who pay taxes their whole lives and receive nothing—not a bed, not drugs, not dignity.

So I asked the question: “What is the opposite of celebration?”

And readers answered.

One said: “The reality that many women still live.”

Others offered their own words:

Silence. Oppression. Injustice. Unfinished work. Erasure. Inequality. Neglect. Exploitation. Complacency. Nothing.

These are not random words. They are a diagnosis. They are what this series has documented. And they are not answers. They are questions wearing masks.

Let us unmask them. Beneath each word lies a tax injustice that this series has traced.

Whose silence funds the system?

The opposite of celebration is silence. But whose silence? Not the silence of women who have nothing to say. The silence of a system that records payments but not payers. The silence of tax authorities that collect from market women for decades and leave no trace.

She pays. Every dawn. Market fees, garbage fees, toilet fees. Thirty years of coins. The system records nothing. When she needs a loan, the bank asks for proof. She has receipts in a plastic bag. The system is silent. It has no record she exists.

Whose silence is this? Who benefits when her contribution leaves no trace? Who designed a tax system that hears women’s money but not their names?

That silence is the architecture of the economic ghost. It is Part 4, Part 5, Part 9 of this series made visible.

Who is oppressed by the tax code?

The opposite of celebration is oppression. But oppression is not only soldiers and prisons. It is also presumptive tax that taxes turnover, not profit (Part 2). It is VAT on cooking fuel and sanitary pads (Part 3). It is joint taxation that tells women their labour is not worth it (Part 3).

The tax code is not neutral. It was written by men, for men, assuming male breadwinners and female dependents. Women who do not fit this mould are squeezed until they break.

Who does your tax code assume you are? If you are not a formal employee with a continuous work history, what does the code say about you? What does it say your labour is worth?

Whose injustice is normalised?

The opposite of celebration is injustice. But injustice that is normalised ceases to shock. We have normalised that a woman pays taxes her whole life and delivers on a concrete floor (Part 8). We have normalised that the minister flies out for treatment while the clinic has no Misoprostol (Part 8). We have normalised that a woman works for forty years and retires with nothing (Part 7).

We have normalised redistribution in reverse. From the poor to the rich. From the woman who cannot afford private care to the system that ensures she never will.

When did this stop being shocking? When did we decide that some women’s lives are just the cost of doing business?

Whose work remains unfinished?

The opposite of celebration is unfinished work. The work of making women count. The work of linking market fees to pensions. The work of ensuring that forty years of taxes add up to something.

Feminist political economy asks: whose work is valued? Whose work is counted? Whose work is compensated? For most women, the answer is: not hers. Her work is valued in markets, counted in ledgers, compensated in coins. But when she stops working, the value stops. The counting stops. The compensation stops.

Why is her work only valued while she is working? Why does it disappear when she needs it back? Why is her unpaid care work—the very foundation of the economy—never counted as a tax contribution?

That unfinished work is what the vision article calls for: to redefine tax so that care is counted.

Who decides what is erased?

The opposite of celebration is erasure. The erasure of women from taxpayer registries. The erasure of their payments from official records. The erasure of their lives from the statistics that matter.

She existed. She paid. The system has no record. She is the economic ghost.

Who decides what is recorded and what is erased? Who decides which payments count as proof and which disappear into a plastic bag? Who benefits when women are ghosts?

This erasure is not an oversight. It is Part 4, Part 10, Part 15 of the series made policy.

Whose inequality is policy?

The opposite of celebration is inequality. Not accidental inequality. Designed inequality. Policy inequality.

The gap between the woman who delivers on a concrete floor and the minister who flies out for treatment is not a gap. It is a transfer. Her taxes paid for his flight. Her labour subsidised his comfort. Her life is worth less because the system made it so.

Why is her inequality policy? Why is her life the line item that gets cut? Because the tax system is built to extract from the powerless and protect the powerful (Part 2, Part 13).

Who is neglected by design?

The opposite of celebration is neglect. But neglect is not absence of attention. It is allocation of attention elsewhere.

The generator has no fuel because the money went elsewhere. The ambulance will not move because the money went elsewhere. The clinic has no drugs because the money went elsewhere.

Elsewhere is not nowhere. Elsewhere is ministers’ travel. Elsewhere is contracts for the connected. Elsewhere is debt repayment. Elsewhere is a choice.

Who chooses elsewhere? Who decides that her clinic gets nothing and his flight gets funded? That is the broken social contract (Part 14).

Whose exploitation is economic growth?

The opposite of celebration is exploitation. The extraction of taxes from women who will never see a return. The use of their money to fund an economy that counts their contributions as revenue and their lives as cost.

Feminist economists have a name for this. They call it the care economy. The unpaid work that makes all paid work possible. The labour that GDP does not count. The contribution that tax systems ignore.

When we say “economic growth,” whose labour are we counting? Whose are we ignoring? Who is exploited so that growth can happen? This is the care tax, the time tax, the labour tax (Part 4 of the triple tax series).

Whose complacency is privilege?

The opposite of celebration is complacency. The comfort of those who are not affected. The luxury of looking away. The privilege of performing celebration while others perform survival.

If you can read this and feel nothing, ask yourself: whose taxes fund your comfort? Whose unpaid work makes your day possible? Whose exploitation is the foundation of your ease?

Complacency is not neutral. It is a choice. It is a decision to benefit from injustice and say nothing.

Whose nothing is someone’s everything?

The opposite of celebration is nothing. Forty years of work adding up to nothing. Thirty years of receipts proving nothing. A lifetime of taxes buying nothing. A woman who paid her whole life receiving nothing.

Nothing is what the system offers. Nothing is what she has to show. Nothing is what remains when the extraction ends and she needs care.

But here is the question feminist political economy asks: whose nothing is this? Is it really nothing? Or is it everything she had, transferred to someone else, counted in their something, while she is left with nothing?

Her nothing is someone’s something. Her extraction is someone’s accumulation. Her death is someone’s statistic. Her life is someone’s externality.

Whose something is built from her nothing? That is the question at the heart of tax justice.

The question that remains

I asked: What is the opposite of celebration?

Readers answered. Silence. Oppression. Injustice. Unfinished work. Erasure. Inequality. Neglect. Exploitation. Complacency. Nothing.

These are not answers. They are questions. Each one demands: who? whose? why?

Who benefits from her silence? Whose oppression is written into tax codes? Why is her injustice normalised? Whose work remains undervalued? Who decides what is erased? Whose inequality is policy? Who is neglected by design? Whose exploitation drives growth? Whose complacency is privilege? Whose something is built from her nothing?

The opposite of celebration is not a word. It is an investigation. It is a demand. It is the work of tracing her contributions to their destination and asking why she never receives.

This series has been about tax justice. The readers’ words are not metaphors. They are the language of a tax system that extracts from women without accountability. The opposite of celebration is a fiscal reality.

On International Women’s Day, I shared an article about the maternal tax. I asked what the opposite of celebration is. Readers answered. Their words are the evidence.

Now the question returns to you.

What is the opposite of celebration?

Not in the abstract. In your life. In your tax system. In your economy. In your silence or your speech.

What is the opposite of celebration?

And what will you do about it?

The next article explores tax violence as the culmination of all failures of the tax system.

Note: This 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].