Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization

Chapter 1. "Economics," She Wrote

1. “Economics,” She Wrote It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. Today, women’s contribution to economic well-being is more than matched by the injustices that accompany their work. Virtually all international organizations agree that gender equity is necessary for economic growth and prosperity, yet inequality and exploitation haunt the lives of women and girls everywhere. Today, many women do “men’s” work, but the invisible, devalued, and poorly paid work remains “women’s” work. In the poor nations women and girls suffer disproportionately from malnutrition and disease, and even in the most prosperous nations women encounter glass ceilings and sticky ›oors. Women, regardless of geographic location, are especially prone to hardship and poverty.1 Unpaid household labor is now recognized as crucial to every economy, yet all over the world unpaid domestic work is still the province of women. Women and men now engage in paid labor in nearly the same proportions, but the responsibility for child and dependent care still falls mainly to women. Women add more to household income than ever before, so women’s total work time exceeds men’s by at least two hours per day. The unprecedented growth in career opportunities for educated, privileged women is accompanied by rapidly increasing numbers of poor women employed as domestics, caring for the children of the privileged. Globally, women-owned businesses are increasing at a rapid rate; female entrepreneurs are, however, disproportionately located in the informal sector, beyond the reach of labor organizations that could mitigate the harsh exploitation of the poorest of the poor. The formal, political power of women has reached an historic high, and still 70 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion poor living on less than one U.S. dollar per day are women. It is a season of hope; it is a season of despair. Feminist economists explain these facts without romanticizing the existing unequal distribution of resources between women and men, with- out assuming the naturalness of women’s subordinate social status, and without rationalizing the oppression and exploitation of the world’s least privileged peoples. Reigning interpretations of economic inequality—by gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and nation—trace social inequalities back to different individual choices, abilities, and resources. Analyses that follow this logic are, in our view, thinly disguised apologies for the existing social hierarchies of gender, class, privilege, and power. Feminist economists reject such essentialist justi‹cations and instead root economic inequality in social processes of inclusion, valorization, and representation. Our feminist perspective allows us to reframe the criteria for evaluating economic performance. Five criteria are especially important. First, participants in an economic system should insist on a system that is fair. Fairness as we see it is a question that goes beyond opportunity to consider outcomes . For example, when people follow the economic rules—work responsibly at their jobs and contribute to the community through tax payments and volunteer work—will they reap the bene‹ts or will race, class, and gender block their full participation in the economy? Likewise, will people who do not have access to market incomes be able to enjoy a socially acceptable standard of living? Second, we ask whether an economic system is likely to provide an improved quality of life over time. Here we explicitly include in our vision of the quality of life such criteria as leisure, health, education, and the conditions of work so that this metric goes far beyond the traditional market basket of goods and services as a measure of well-being. A third and closely connected dimension of the economic system involves economic security. Can participants in the economy expect to be able to support themselves and their families? Or, as is the case in the United States today, will the economic security of the many be sacrificed by policies that bene‹t the few? A fourth concern recognizes the potential wastefulness of economic activity. We can no longer ignore the extent to which production and consumption may waste human and nonhuman resources. Our last question is perhaps the most contentious: To what extent does the economy provide opportunities for work that are meaningful ? Is it written in stone that most jobs must involve hateful activities that drain the creativity and humanity out of the people who do them? Or can we envision an economy where work validates the inherent dignity of every human being? These are not new questions in economics or in any other inquiry into social...