Feminist Economics Research Paper

The use of the term ‘feminist economics’ appeared in the 1990s with the emergence of a new, extensive, and evolving literature challenging economic theory and research by applying a feminist perspective in all fields of economics. This research, focusing on the relationship between gender and economics, and exploring the extent to which gender bias has influenced economics in all its fields, is based on the idea that conventional economics is neither universal nor impartial, but that its concepts are built on masculine concerns.

Pluralism and diversity are the key characteristics of feminist economics and they appear in every aspect of the subject. The three main approaches to research in feminist economics are as follows:

(a) one group of studies is devoted to the analysis of the under-representation of women in the economics profession and applies discrimination theories to the profession of economics, stressing the consequences of the absence of women;

(b) a second approach, sometimes described as the ‘add women and stir’ approach, consists of studies in which a gender component is simply added into classical economics in order to make it more realistic, but without calling into question the fundamental hypothesis and the tools of analysis; and

(c) a third approach comprises studies that fundamentally re-examine the bases and hypotheses of so-called ‘universal’ and ‘gender neutral’ mainstream economic theories.

1. Feminism In Economics

The contemporary literature on women in economics developed during the course of the 1960s. Its development was linked to a reassessment of the microeconomic analysis of the behavior of households to adapt to the considerable change in family structures that took place and was due partly to the sustained and continued growth of female labor supply. Within couples, two-earner households have in many countries become the majority. An increase in the number of lone-parent families, mainly women raising their children by themselves, has also been noted.

The use of the label ‘feminist economics’ appeared more recently with the emergence of a new school of economic thought still marginal within the traditional discipline of economics.

Over the last decade, there has been an increase in research focusing on the relation between gender and economics, which is due largely to the dynamism of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), established in 1992 in the USA to provide a feminist perspective in the economics profession. IAFFE annual summer conferences, held since 1992, and the publication of a scholarly journal, Feminist Economics, first published in 1995, have contributed considerably to the development of a fruitful challenge of economic theory and research, applying a feminist perspective in all areas of economics. The Association now has over 600 members based in 38 countries.

At the same time, and in a similar vein, the first international conference on feminist economics, entitled ‘Out of the margin: Feminist perspectives on economic theory,’ was held in Amsterdam in 1993 with over 300 participants from more than 20 nations. This proved to be a major event, bringing together a series of groundbreaking papers focusing on the relation of gender to economic science. In 1995, a research network working on issues pertaining to gender and work, called ‘MAGE,’ was created in France, fostering comparative work and cross-disciplinary discussions.

The 1990s also saw the publication of the first anthologies of feminist economics, by Ferber and Nelson (1993), Humphries (1995), Kuiper and Sap (1995), Hewiston (1999) and Peterson and Lewis (1999).

The establishment of the IAFFE in the USA and of MAGE in France and their success testify to the inability of gender-neutral associations to reflect the questions and interests of feminist economists: in these associations, the feminist perspective is anything but mainstream; its sessions generally have a limited audience. The scant interest shown by economists in gender aspects is reflected in the findings of Randy Albelda’s (1995) survey of 400 US-based members of the American Economic Association. The salient results (reported by Hewiston (1999, p. 29)) showed that the surveyed economists believed that feminism had made virtually no impact on the methodology of economics or on economic theory (exceptions: labor market analysis 12.3 percent, and household behavior and family economics 11.1 percent); less than one-fifth believed that more space should be devoted in economic journals to ‘feminist perspectives on economic analysis’; more than 70 percent either strongly disagreed with or had no opinion on the statement that ‘mainstream economics would be enriched if it incorporated more feminist analysis.’

Practitioners of the male sex heavily dominate economic science, and this dominance has heavily influenced the working hypotheses, theories, and methods developed and used. Whereas the discourse associated with research of a high standard is that of objectivity and universalism, the choice of themes covered and methods of analysis would appear to derive inevitably from social constructs which, in the case of economics, are a reflection of tradition: ‘Victorian ideology is at the root of the treatment of women in the neoclassical paradigm’ (Pujol 1995, p. 17). Economic science is not neutral, it is not a universal science, and it is permeated with sexist hypotheses. The pivotal hypothesis of the rational economic man is not an abstract, sexless concept: the rational economic man appeared to be a male, white, and Western person.

The androcentrism typical of theoretical and applied economic research has engendered bias, particularly in the analysis and design of economic policies, by ignoring the fact that assumptions about gender influence virtually all aspects of economic reasoning. It is this bias, evident in all fields of economic science, which is nowadays being highlighted in publications by feminist economists.

2. Under-Representation Of Women In Economics

The founding fathers of economics generally regarded women as separate beings, confined to household tasks and devoid of rational behavior. By the same token, the contributions of female economists to the history of economic thought have often been played down or ignored. Even today, female economists are under-represented in positions of responsibility, despite the sizeable growth in the number of female economics students, whose examination results often surpass those of their male peers.

2.1 Women In Economic History

In a forceful book, Pujol (1992) conducted an extensive historical study of the treatment of women by the founding fathers of classical and early neoclassical economics. In a later essay (Pujol 1995, p. 18) she analyzed five elements that characterize early neoclassical views of women based on the writings of the founding fathers, Marshall, Pigou, Edgeworth and Jevons:

(a) All women are married, or if not yet, they will be. Similarly, all women have or will have children.

(b) All women are (and ought to be) economically dependent on a male relative: father or husband.

(c) Women are (and ought to be) housewives; their reproductive capacities specialize for that function.

(d) Women are unproductive (whether absolutely or relative to men is not always clear) in the industrial workforce.

(e) Women are irrational, they are unfit as economic agents, and they cannot be trusted to make the right economic decisions.

These elements, which fell within the unstated and undiscussed assumptions, justified the poor position of women in the labor market or their exclusion from it. Pujol (1995, p. 29) argued that ‘approaches to women in the neoclassical paradigm have not changed much since the founding of the paradigm in the last decade of the nineteenth century.’

Pujol (1992) also underlined another important aspect of the under-representation of women in economics, namely the underestimation of the contribution by female economists to the history of economic thought. She showed the influence of Harriet Taylor on the work of John Stuart Mill as well as her personal contribution, and presented various works on the condition of women by Bodichon, Millicent Garret Fawced, Adav Heather-Bigg, Eleanor Rathbone and Beatrice Potter Webb that were ignored by historians of economics.

One example, among many others, of the underestimation of women’s contributions to economics is the scant attention paid to the writings of Margaret Reid (1896–1991), who worked on households, and of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), who focused specifically on gender in economic relationships. ‘Reid’s colleagues at the University of Chicago, Theodore Schultz and Gary Becker, incorporated Reid’s idea of household production into their ‘new home economics’ (Woolley 1999, p. 335). ‘Reid’s contribution has been largely ignored in the histories of the ‘new home economics,’ which Becker is credited with ‘‘fathering’’’ (Lewis 1999, p. 437).

2.2 Women In The Profession

As in most professions in Europe and the USA, there is vertical segregation among economists: women are under-represented in positions of responsibility, in all sectors of activity.

In academic circles they do not occupy the most senior positions and are under-represented in the most prestigious institutions. They do not win prizes: not one woman has so far received the Nobel Prize for Economics; only exceptionally do they chair associations of economists, both in the USA and in Europe; likewise, their representation on the boards of journals is poor.

In the publicity leaflet for Who is Who in Economics (Blaug 1999), only two out of 19 photographs are of women: Joan Robinson and the newcomer Deirdre McCloskey.

This segregation is also to be found in the field of public administration as well as private companies. The glass ceiling, that invisible barrier hindering women’s access to top jobs, is operating efficiently in economics.

Whereas there is everywhere a growing number of female students and graduates (first degrees) in economics, whose examination results are in no way inferior to those of their male peers, fewer women proceed to Ph.D.s and pursue academic careers. The factors put forward in an attempt to explain these behavioral differences include the following:

(a) The absence of women in the classical economics textbooks and the choice of male-oriented or even phallocratic examples to illustrate theories: the white Western male is the norm in economics textbooks, but he is concealed behind a gender-neutral, universal facade. Similarly, few pages deal with gender and inequality: women are excluded as objects of investigation.

(b) A classroom environment unfriendly to women, the shortage of female lecturers to act as role models, the examination process, the intensive use of mathematical tools and abstract modeling have also been mentioned; however, the superior examination results of young women in mathematics do not corroborate this last explanation.

Moreover, in the same way as women occupy a traditional role in civil society, if female economists are to be acknowledged and valued by their male colleagues they must confine themselves to narrowly circumscribed fields: home production, voluntary work, discrimination. Women economists have often written about so-called ‘women’s issues such as women’s labor force activity and wages, which seemed of little interest to male economists and benefit from a lower level of reward than other fields.’

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology established a committee on women faculty to understand and ameliorate the long-term effects of discrimination in academia: their key conclusion is that (Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1999, p. 3) ‘gender discrimination is subtle but pervasive and stems largely from unconscious ways of thinking that have been socialized into all of us, men and women alike. … Our first instinct is to deny that a problem exists, or to blame it on the pipeline or the circumstances and choices of individual women.’ These conclusions could probably be extended to most faculties and universities in the world.

3. Consequences Of Women’s Underrepresentation In Economics

Women’s under-representation engenders bias and error in the foundations, development and applications of economic science. The androcentric bias in basic neoclassical hypotheses is substantial: historically the entire theory of utility is based on the rational behavior of a Homo economicus who may choose to allocate his time to paid work or leisure. Only in recent economic research have male economists realized that life does not boil down to only a choice between paid work and leisure.

Women and the family are invisible in the economic analysis of human behavior: even when gender is central to the subject under investigation it is often ignored, as evidenced by studies of poverty.

3.1 Sex Discrimination

The question of inequality between the sexes has not been the subject of any key works of normative economics; instead, discrimination between men and women is either included in the broader issue of social inequality or ignored.

Discrimination has mainly been the subject of writings in applied and comparative economics, which have quantified it and measured its development but have left extensive shady areas in respect of its causes and dynamic. Two approaches have been followed in formulating the models appraised: human capital theory, which explains the differences evident between men and women on the labor market through differences in the investment in human capital—education, training, experience, health—and discrimination theories, which analyze the differences between individuals whose production capacity is identical— discrimination exists when persons of equal capacity and with the same skills are treated differently because of their sex (Blau and Ferber 1992).

The factors explaining the segregation of men and women are to be found in the theories of labor supply and demand, institutional theories, and transaction cost theories (Jonung 1998, pp. 36–71). Labor-supply theories highlight the differences between the preferences and aptitudes of men and women, the socialization of roles and the domestic division of labor, all of which affect decision making; demand theories explain segregation in terms of the differing investment in human capital and the notion of discrimination that colors the attitude of employers towards women. Transaction-cost theories point to the incomplete information available to employers, which leads them to adopt discriminatory attitudes based on observations of average behavior; and finally, institutional theories stress the legal and social constraints, the traditions that influence individual decision making.

3.2 Household Economics

For feminist economists, existing economic theory and analysis are unsatisfactory when it comes to studying intrafamily relationships and the distribution of resources within the family unit. According to the neoclassicists, the household or family is a black box: it matters little who produces or who consumes resources; this share-out is a technical matter or one of preference, something of no concern to economic analysis.

The situation of households is characterized by global earnings or global consumption managed by an altruistic head of household who looks after the interests of his loved ones and behaves as a rational economic agent.

This simplistic view can be found in most European level comparative studies on poverty or earnings inequality. The hypothesis is that resources are shared equally among the members of a household: poor individuals belong to poor households. Households are classified according to the age, occupation, and sector of activity and educational level of the head of the household. Rarely does the composition of the household feature, other than through the simplistic application of a scale of equivalence.

However, certain studies have underlined the importance of power in the distribution of earnings and consumption within households, not merely of preferences and abilities, the sole elements to impinge on the reasoning of economists. Recent empirical research has confirmed that the allocation of resources among family members depends on age and gender. Studies conducted in Asia and Africa have emphasized the high rates of female mortality due to the systematic deprivation of resources suffered by women within households (not necessarily poor ones; see Sen (1989)).

In one of the few studies on distribution within American households, Lazear and Michael (1988) reveal that the division of consumption between parents and children alters radically with the number of adults in the household: as the number of adults rises, the children’s share declines proportionately. Furthermore, access to paid work considerably changes the share-out of power within the household. On average, women earning an income have more decision-making power within the family, and this share of the power increases in step with their earnings (England and Kilbourne 1990).

Findlay and Wright (1996, pp. 335–351) have assessed, for Italy and the USA, the way in which an unequal distribution of resources within households affected the measurement of poverty. They conclude that the conventional methods of gauging poverty within households lead to a systematic underestimation of female poverty and an overestimation of male poverty.

The criticisms of feminist economists have addressed the lack of analysis of the household as an economic entity, but they have also addressed the problematic analysis of the household in the new home economics: ‘For feminists, the minimum requirement is a model of the household that allows for the conflict of interests and patriarchal power relations within and outside the family’ (MacDonald 1995, p. 185). New home economics, an example of the ‘add women and stir’ type of studies, is based on an implicit hypothesis of women’s natural superiority in nursing and housekeeping which justifies, from the point of view of efficiency, the division of labor within the family. It used to treat the sexual division of labor in the family as if the differences were biologically predetermined and not socially constructed. The neoclassical model or child support model disadvantages women by obscuring and justifying men’s neglect of their parental responsibilities.

Bargaining theories and game theory are also becoming increasingly popular in dealing with intrahousehold allocations: the game theory model of household decision making is an interesting approach to overcome the restrictive assumptions of household intrafamily consent and formally develop a more realistic family behavior pattern. One application is the treatment of ‘fertility as a prisoner’s dilemma’ (Ott 1995, p. 89). However, formal modeling limits the reality of analysis and the ‘cooperative conflict’ approach developed by Sen (1990) and Agarwal (1994) which incorporate qualitative, historical, and cultural variables provides an interesting alternative to gametheoretic models.

3.3 Labor Economics

Labor economics, along with the new home economics, is the first field to incorporate gender into the neoclassical framework. Gender has been included in the models without challenging the theoretical foundations; it was merely a matter of arriving at a more accurate analysis of observable reality.

The mainstream understanding of women’s employment in labor economics is ‘men as breadwinners and women as second earners.’ The concentration of women in low-wage occupations and atypical employment appears to be a result of their own choice.

In fact, there is circular reasoning at work here: women choose less well-paid posts which enable them to take on the domestic chores for which they have a preference and are made in the knowledge that the performance of domestic chores reduces the earnings which they could command from employers.

Numerous econometric studies (Silvera and Sonnac 1996) have attempted to explain the persisting wage gap between women and men: even when controlling for differences in working time, educational attainment, training, tenure, occupations, sectors, etc., an unexplained gap amounting to 11–14 percent of women’s wages remains. This gap, a measure of pure discrimination, exists even in the countries where protective laws concerning wage equality are in application. However, and contrary to neoclassical principles, women’s lower wages are not associated with lower unemployment rates: in nearly all European Union countries women’s unemployment rates are considerably higher than men’s.

3.4 Data And Methods In Empirical Economics

The same bias is evident in the development of statistical tools: to include a feminist perspective in empirical economic analysis, new kinds of data and indicators have to be constructed, and there is a need for more qualitative data and for panel data sets.

The available data concerning the labor market, for example, are constructed around standard male practice: full-time paid work without interruptions. In most cases these are individual data with no information as to the individuals’ household or lifestyle.

The data available from national statistical agencies to study women on the labor market are inadequate in many ways (MacDonald 1995, p. 188):

(a) there is a preponderance of cross-sectional data, and very few panel data;

(b) the level of aggregation makes it impossible to study issues of segmentation within occupations;

(c) labor force data are collected on the individual, with information on the family context either missing or inadequate;

(d) the use of categories such as ‘personal or family reasons’ versus ‘economic reasons’ in labor force surveys, to classify reasons for not looking for work or for working part-time, embed gender biases in the data;

(e) skill measures have been shown to be gender biased (Boyd 1990); and

(f ) it is difficult to measure changes in the quality of jobs.

National accounting ignores all non-monetary aspects: women’s traditional contribution to growth— domestic work and child rearing—are never quantified. To develop alternative indicators of economic and social welfare is an important component of feminist economic research.

Bias in measuring economic growth, ignoring domestic work, leads to wrong political decisions insofar as no account is taken of cost when policies negatively affect home production. The fact that no value is attributed to home production, and that it is statistically overlooked, leads to an inferior allocation of public expenditure.

3.5 Policies

One example of the adverse effects of mainstream economics on economic policy is the structure of social protection systems. These often refer back to the neoclassical patriarchal model: a single main income provider per household. This reference engenders discriminatory practices, which can adversely affect the female supply of labor and can keep women in a situation of dependence. The existence of discriminatory measures, the trend in family structures, and the contradictions between the labor market and social security systems are three elements that lie behind the issue of individualizing social security entitlements.

As they operate at present, Europe’s social security systems exert a discriminatory effect on women by two means. First, these systems do not ensure adequate protection for workers in atypical circumstances, among whom women are over-represented: such persons are often deprived of proper protection, mainly with respect to unemployment and pensions. Second, the absence of individual entitlements and the proliferation of derived rights forces women into relationships of dependence tinged with insecurity, which discourage them from entering the official labor market and results in inequalities between the benefits received according to family circumstances. Europe’s taxation and social security systems contain various ‘inactivity traps’ which were deliberately set and still exist: derived rights in social protection systems are an incentive for women to remain at home or to engage in undeclared work, since marriage automatically confers on a spouse the healthcare and pension benefits enjoyed by the partner. The advantages granted to the home-based spouse by the tax system, namely due to dependents’ allowances, as well as all the allowances linked to inactivity, such as career breaks, constitute inactivity traps that affect a far larger number of persons of working age than the unintentional traps that are currently being singled out for corrective action (Jepsen et al. 1997, pp. 81–98).

Whereas the Welfare State gave men their independence in the market, it also reinforced the economic dependence of women on men by ignoring the sexual division of labor.

4. The Future: A Reconstruction Of Concepts

Ferber and Nelson (1993, p. 8) identified five, not necessarily mutually exclusive, responses to perceived inadequacies in the academic discipline:

(a) Affirmative action: based on the idea that the central problem is the under-representation of women and acting to correct this by monitoring but not criticizing the discipline itself.

(b) Feminist empiricism: not calling into question the tools but rather the way in which they are used and the manner in which the issues are addressed: ‘It is not the theory that is patriarchic, but the questions male economists have asked and the conclusions they have drawn and particularly the policy implications based on the research’ Gustafsson (1990, p. 6); Ferber and Nelson (1993, p. 8) noted that ‘Casual conversation suggests that most feminist economists currently adhere to this view.’

(c) Feminist difference: the replacement of male bias by a feminist bias, not a quest for objectivity but subjectivity, emotion, holistic approach (less well represented).

(d) Feminist postmodernism: to deconstruct traditional conceptions, the key point: is gender a meaningful categorization?

(e) Feminist constructionism: analyzing the social production of gender identity.

Whatever the classification, the reconstruction of economic concepts underpins the work of feminist economists: the concepts used for analysis and the way concepts are linked together in the theory may be better suited to explain the activities of some groups than others: they are culturally biased and show a tendency to treat male values and practices as universal. A gendered view applied to all parts of economics questions the hypothesis, methods, and data used.

The aim is also to take greater account of complex social constructs that have been ignored or inadequately incorporated into economic modeling. This means taking account of societal variables often neglected by economists, and implies a reconstruction of traditional databases that are unsatisfactory for gender mainstreaming.

Feminist economics also considers gender as a central category for analysis: a feminist reconstruction of economic theory can improve all the different fields; this new economics will not just address feminist issues, but will be better economics.

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