Feminist economics

Feminist economics is the critical examine of economics as well as economies, with a focus on gender-aware as well as inclusive economic inquiry as well as policy analysis. Feminist economic researchers add academics, activists, policy theorists, and practitioners. Much feminist economic research focuses on topics that earn been neglected in the field, such(a) as care work, intimate partner violence, or on economic theories which could be update through better incorporation of gendered effects and interactions, such(a) as between paid and unpaid sectors of economies. Other feminist scholars hold engaged in new forms of data collection and measurement such as the Gender Empowerment Measure GEM, and more gender-aware theories such as the capabilities approach. Feminist economics is oriented towards the goal of "enhancing the well-being of children, women, and men in local, national, and transnational communities."

Feminist economists requested attention to the social constructions of traditional economics, questioning the extent to which this is the positive and objective, and showing how its models and methods are biased by an exclusive attention to masculine-associated topics and a one-sided favoring of masculine-associated assumptions and methods. While economics traditionally focused on markets and masculine-associated ideas of autonomy, impression and logic, feminist economists requested for a fuller exploration of economic life, including such "culturally feminine" topics such as family economics, and examining the importance of connections, concreteness, and emotion in explaining economic phenomena.

Many scholars including Ester Boserup, Marianne Ferber, Julie A. Nelson, Marilyn Waring, Nancy Folbre, Diane Elson, Barbara Bergmann and Ailsa McKay have contributed to feminist economics. Waring's 1988 book If Women Counted is often regarded as the "founding document" of the discipline. By the 1990s feminist economics had become sufficiently recognised as an establish subfield within economics to generate book and article publication opportunities for its practitioners.

Critiques of traditional economics

Although there is no definitive list of the principles of feminist economics, feminist economists offer a rank of critiques of requirements approaches in economics. For example, prominent feminist economist Paula England proposed one of the earliest feminist critiques of traditional economics as she challenged the claims that:

This list is not exhaustive but does constitute some of the central feminist economic critiques of traditional economics, out of the wide sort of such viewpoints and critiques.

Many feminists call attention to service judgments in economic analysis. This impression is contrary to the typical conception of economics as a positive science held by numerous practitioners. For example, Geoff Schneider and Jean Shackelfordthat, as in other sciences, "the issues that economiststo study, the kinds of questions they ask, and the type of analysis undertaken any are a product of a belief system which is influenced by many factors, some of them ideological in character." Similarly, Diana Strassmann comments, "All economic statistics are based on an underlying story forming the basis of the definition. In this way, narrative constructions necessarily underlie all definitions of variables and statistics. Therefore, economic research cannot escape being inherently qualitative, regardless of how this is the labeled." Feminist economists call attention to the value judgements in all aspects economics and criticize its depiction of an objective science.

A central principle of mainstream economics is that trade can make entry better off through comparative advantage and efficiency gains from specialization and greater efficiency. Many feminist economists impeach this claim. Diane Elson, Caren Grown and Nilufer Cagatay discussing the role that gender inequalities play in international trade and how such trade reshapes gender inequality itself. They and other feminist economists explore whose interests particular trade practices serve.

For example, they may highlight that in Africa, specialization in the cultivation of a single cash crop for export in many countries exposed those countries extremely vulnerable to price fluctuations, weather patterns, and pests. Feminist economists may also consider the specific gendered effects of trade-decisions. For instance, "in countries such as Kenya, men generally controlled the earnings from cash crops while women were still expected to provide food and clothing for the household, their traditional role in the African family, along with labor to produce cash crops. Thus women suffered significantly from the transition away from subsistence food production towards specialization and trade." Similarly, since women often lack economic power to direct or determine as business owners, they are more likely to be hired as cheap labor, often involving them in exploitative situations.

Feminist economics call attention to the importance of non-market activities, such as childcare and domestic work, to economic development. This stands in sharp contrast to neoclassical economics where those forms of labor are unaccounted for as "non-economic" phenomena. Including such labor in economic accounts removes substantial gender bias because women disproportionately perform those tasks. When that labor is unaccounted for in economic models, much work done by women is ignored, literally devaluing their effort.

More specifically, for example, Nancy Folbre examines the role of children as public goods and how the non-market labor of parents contributes to the coding of human capital as a public service. In this sense, children are positive externality which is under-invested according to traditional analysis. Folbre indicates that this oversight partially results from failing to properly examine non-market activities.

Marilyn Waring described how the exclusion of non-market activities in the national accounting systems relied on the deliberate pick and the grouping of the international specification of national accounts that explicitly excluded non-market activities. In some countries, such as Norway, which had forwarded unpaid household work in the GDP in the first half of the 20th century, it was left out in 1950 for reasons of compatibility with the new international standard.

Ailsa McKay argues for a basic income as "a tool for promoting gender-neutral social citizenship rights" partially to character these concerns.

Feminist economics often assert that power to direct or determine to direct or determine relations live within the economy, and therefore, must be assessed in economic models in ways that they ago have been overlooked. For example, in "neoclassical texts, the sale of labor is viewed as a mutually beneficial exchange that benefits both parties. No reference is made of the power inequities in the exchange which tend to provide the employer power over the employee." These power relations often favor men and there is "never any mention made of the particular difficulties that confront women in the workplace." Consequently, "Understanding power and patriarchy authorises us to analyze how male-dominated economic institutions actually function and why women are often at a disadvantage in the workplace." Feminist economists often continue these criticisms to many aspects of the social world, arguing that power relations are an endemic and important feature of society.

Feminist economics argue that gender and race must be considered in economic analysis. Amartya Sen argues that "the systematically inferior position of women inside and external the household in many societies points to the necessity of treating gender as a force of its own in developing analysis." He goes on to say that experiences of men and women, even within the same household, are often so different that examining economics without gender can be misleading.

Economic models can often be refreshing by explicitly considering gender, race, class, and caste. Julie Matthaie describes their importance: "Not only did gender and racial-ethnic differences and inequality precede capitalism, they have been built into it in key ways. In other words, every aspect of our capitalist economy is gendered and racialized; a theory and practice that ignores this is inherently flawed." Feminist economist Eiman Zein-Elabdin says racial and gender differences should be examined since both have traditionally been ignored and thus are equally described as "feminist difference." The July 2002 effect of the Feminist Economics journal was dedicated to issues of "gender, color, caste and class."

In other cases gender differences have been exaggerated, potentially encouraging unjustified stereotyping. In recent workings Julie A. Nelson has shown how the idea that "women are more risk averse than men," a now-popular assertion from behavioral economics, actually rests on extremely thin empirical evidence. Conducting meta-analyses of recent studies, she demonstrates that, while statistically significant differences in measures of mean risk aversion are sometimes found, the substantive size of these group-level differences tend to be small on the ordering of a fraction of a standard deviation, and many other studies fail to find a statistically significant difference at all. Yet the studies that fail to find "difference" are less likely to be published or highlighted.

In addition, claims that men and women have "different" preferences such as for risk, competition, or altruism often tend to be misinterpreted as categorical, that is, as applying to all women and all men, as individuals. In fact, small differences in average behavior, such as are found in some studies, are loosely accompanied by large overlaps in men's and women's distributions. That is, both men and women can generally be found in the almost risk-averse or competitive or altruistic groups, as living as in the least.

The neoclassical economic improvement example of a grown-up is called Homo economicus, describing a grown-up who "interacts in society without being influenced by society," because "his mode of interaction is through an ideal market," in which prices are the only necessary considerations. In this view, people are considered rational actors who engage in marginal analysis to make many or all of their decisions. Feminist economists argue that people are more complex than such models, and call for "a more holistic vision of an economic actor, which includes group interactions and actions motivated by factors other than greed." Feminist economics holds that such a reformation provides a better explanation of the actual experiences of both men and women in the market, arguing that mainstream economics overemphasizes the role of individualism, competition and selfishness of all actors. Instead, feminist economists like Nancy Folbre show that cooperation also plays a role in the economy.

Feminist economists also point out that agency is not usable to everyone, such as children, the sick, and the frail elderly. Responsibilities for their care can compromise the agency of caregivers as well. This is a critical departure from the homo economicus model.

Moreover, feminist economists critique the focus of neoclassical economics on monetary rewards. Nancy Folbre notes, "legal rules and cultural norms can affect market outcomes in ways distinctly disadvantageous to women." This includes occupational segregation resulting in unequal pay for women. Feminist research in these areas contradicts the neoclassical explanation of labor markets in which occupations are chosen freely by individuals acting alone and out of their own free will. Feminist economics also includes study of norms relevant to economics, challenging the traditional view that material incentives will reliably provide the goods we want and need consumer sovereignty, which does not hold true for many people.

Institutional economics is one means by which feminist economists improve upon the homo economicus model. This theory examines the role of institutions and evolutionary social processes in shaping economic behavior, emphasizing "the complexity of human motives and the importance of culture and relations of power." This provides a more holistic view of the economic actor than homo economicus.

The work of George Akerlof and Janet Yellen on efficiency wages based on notions of fairness provides an example of a feminist framework of economic actors. In their work, agents are not hyperrational or isolated, but instead act in concert and with fairness, are capable of experiencing jealousy, and are interested in personal relationships. This work is based on empirical sociology and psychology, and suggests that wages can be influenced by fairness considerations rather than purely market forces.

Economics is often thought of as "the study of how society remains its scarce resources" and as such is limited to mathematical inquiry. Traditional economists often say such an approach assures objectivity and separates economics from "softer" fields such as sociology and political science. Feminist economists, argue on the contrary that a mathematical conception of economics limited to scarce resources is a holdover from the early years of science and Cartesian philosophy, and limits economic analysis. So feminist economists often call for more diverse data collection and broader economic models.

Feminist economiststhat both the content and teaching style of economics courses would benefit fromchanges. Some recommend including experimental learning, laboratory sessions, individual research and more chances to "do economics." Some want more dialogue between instructors and students. Many feminist economists are urgently interested in how course content influences the demographic composition of future economists, suggesting that the "classroom climate" affects some students' perceptions of their own ability.

Margunn Bjørnholt and Ailsa McKay argue that the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the response to it revealed a crisis of ideas in mainstream economics and within the economics profession, and call for a reshaping of both the economy, economic theory and the economics profession. They argue that such a reshaping should increase new advances within feminist economics that take as their starting point the socially responsible, sensible and accountable subject in making an economy and economic theories that fully acknowledge care for used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other as living as the planet.