Feminist Economics

The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics presents a comprehensive overview of the contributions of feminist economics to the discipline of economics and beyond. Each chapter situates the topic within the history of the field, reflects upon current debates, and looks forward to identify cutting-edge research. Consistent with feminist economics’ goal of strong objectivity, this Handbook compiles contributions from different traditions in feminist economics (including but not limited to Marxian political economy, institutionalist economics, ecological economics and neoclassical economics) and from different disciplines (such as economics, philosophy and political science). The Handbook delineates the social provisioning methodology and highlights its insights for the development of feminist economics. The contributors are a diverse mix of established and rising scholars of feminist economics from around the globe who skilfully frame the current state and future direction of feminist economic scholarship. This carefully crafted volume will be an essential resource for researchers and instructors of feminist economics.

Safe drinking water counts for nothing. A pollution-free environment counts for nothing. Even some people - namely women - count for nothing. This is the case, at least, according to the United Nations System of National Accounts. Author Marilyn Waring, former New Zealand M.P., now professor, development consultant, writer, and goat farmer, isolates the gender bias that exists in the current system of calculating national wealth. As Waring observes, in this accounting system women are considered 'non-producers' and as such they cannot expect to gain from the distribution of benefits that flow from production. Issues like nuclear warfare, environmental conservation, and poverty are likewise excluded from the calculation of value in traditional economic theory. As a result, public policy, determined by these same accounting processes, inevitably overlooks the importance of the environment and half the world's population. Counting for Nothing, originally published in 1988, is a classic feminist analysis of women's place in the world economy brought up to date in this reprinted edition, including a sizeable new introduction by the author. In her new introduction, the author updates information and examples and revisits the original chapters with appropriate commentary. In an accessible and often humorous manner, Waring offers an explanation of the current economic systems of accounting and thoroughly outlines ways to ensure that the significance of the environment and the labour contributions of women receive the recognition they deserve.

The 1993 publication of Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson's Beyond Economic Man was a landmark in both feminist scholarship and the discipline of economics, and it quickly became a handbook for those seeking to explore the emerging connections between the two. A decade later, this book looks back at the progress of feminist economics and forward to its future, offering both a thorough overview of feminist economic thought and a collection of new, high-quality work from the field's leading scholars.

Comprehensive reference work introducing readers to the field of feminist economics. It addresses key concepts as well as feminist economic critiques and reconstructions of major economic theories and policy debates.

Unravelling the complex relationship between gender inequality and trade, this is the first book to combine the tools of economic and gender analysis to examine the relationship between international trade and gender relations. It brings together fourteen contributions from a variety of economic perspectives, including structuralist, institutionalist, neoclassical and Post-Keynesian by a range of authors including Lourdes Benería, William Darity, Marzia Fontana and Mariama Williams to demonstrate what feminist economics has contributed to the analysis of international trade, through theoretical modelling, econometric analysis and policy-oriented contributions. It includes evidence from industrialized, semi-industrialized, and agrarian economies, using country case studies and cross-country analysis. Arguing that trade expansion and reduction of gender inequality can be combined, but only if an appropriate mix and sequence of trade and other economic policies is implemented, this book is key reading for all students of international economics, gender and cultural studies and politics and international relations, amongst other disciplines.

Many questions arise of an economic nature that are only partially addressed by standard economic analysis. These lacunae give rise to particular lines of critique in economics, including a wide-ranging and increasingly cogent feminist approach to reenvisioning economics. This book provides a comprehensive description of this intriguing new area of feminist economics. It includes discussion of what constitutes feminist economics and how feminist economics is different from other approaches. The intellectual origins of the area are explicated, and the current state of the subfield outlined. Specific topics covered include conflict over terminology, pedagogy, and content in the field of economics, measurement of the unmeasured economy, the role of caring labor in the economy, heteronormativity in economics, feminist approaches to economic development, multiple approaches to empiricism, modeling of intrahousehold relationships, consideration of the role of property rights in reifying gender roles, differential effects of international trade and finance by gender, and feminist approaches to public finance and social welfare.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Hewitson (business, La Trobe U., Australia) uses a feminist poststructuralist approach to expose the masculinity of the allegedly unsexed figure of the neoclassical "rational economic man". Employing a wide range of poststructuralist writings, she argues that neoclassical economics does construct sexual differences and that the notion of the exchanging agent, commonly perceived as a universal and sexless individual, cannot accommodate sexual differences, thus concluding that neoclassical economics cannot accommodate women's differences.