Feminist Economics

Abstract

Feminist economics is a critical and well‐established economics subdiscipline. Over the last 25years, feminist economists have critiqued the gender‐blindness of economic thinking and have developed new analytical frameworks and methodologies to examine gender relations in economic institutions and economic functioning (Floro and Willoughby 2016). The emphasis on gender issues – the concerns about “the persistent and ubiquitous inequalities between men and women that arise from differing social roles and unequal power relations” (Barker and Kuiper 2003, p. 2) – is the distinguishing feature of feminist economics. Feminist economics is at the crossroads of feminism and economics. From feminism, feminist economics inherits its radical political project, namely, denouncing gender inequalities in the distribution of work, incomes, and well‐being – i.e. in the materiality of women’s and men’s lives. From economics, feminist economics inherits the prestige and the object of study, as well as its methodologies and its pretense of objectivity. Economics is not a monolithic science. Mainstream or orthodox economics is defined as the neoclassical paradigm in conceptual terms and the neoliberal paradigm in economic policy. Mainstream economics ultimately asserts the preeminence of market functioning as efficient resource allocator, supported by profit maximizing behavior – or the goodness of human greed (Folbre 2009). Mainstream economics dominates knowledge production, publications, and the access to jobs and promotions at economics departments. In turn, critical approaches under the broad umbrella of heterodox economics comprise a wide range of theoretical traditions, among them Latin American structuralism, post‐Keynesianism, and Marxist economics. In spite of their differences, they all present alternatives to mainstream economics that lead to different policy prescriptions, particularly at the macroeconomic level.