This book offers a historical exploration of the genesis of feminist economics and gender economics, as well as their theoretical and methodological differences. Its narrative also serves to embed both within a broader cultural context. Although both feminist economics and gender neoclassical economics belong to the cultural process related to the central role of the political economy in promoting women’s emancipation and empowerment, they differ in many aspects. Feminist economics, mainly influenced by women’s studies and feminism, rejected neoclassical economics, while gender neoclassical economics, mainly influenced by home economics and the new home economics, adopted the neoclassical economics’ approach to gender issues. The book includes diverse case studies, which also highlight the continuity between the story of women’s emancipation and the more recent developments of feminist and gender studies. This volume will be of great interest to researchers and academia in the fields of feminist economics, gender studies, and the history of economic thought.

This book dramatizes the history of self-interest by describing a centuries-long debate over greed, lust, and appropriate gender roles in terms that ordinary readers will enjoy. Ranging from the 18th century to the present, it offers a deft and engaging critique of economic history and the history of ideas from a feminist perspective.

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.

The economics profession is belatedly confronting glaring gender inequality. Women are systematically underrepresented throughout the discipline, and those who do embark on careers in economics find themselves undermined in any number of ways. Women in the field report pervasive biases and barriers that hinder full and equal participation—and these obstacles take an even greater toll on women of color. How did economics become such a boys’ club, and what lessons does this history hold for attempts to achieve greater equality? Gender and the Dismal Science is a groundbreaking account of the role of women during the formative years of American economics, from the late nineteenth century into the postwar period. Blending rich historical detail with extensive empirical data, Ann Mari May examines the structural and institutional factors that excluded women, from graduate education to academic publishing to university hiring practices. Drawing on material from the archives of the American Economic Association along with novel data sets, she details the vicissitudes of women in economics, including their success in writing monographs and placing journal articles, their limitations in obtaining academic positions, their marginalization in professional associations, and other hurdles that the professionalization of the discipline placed in their path. May emphasizes the formation of a hierarchical culture of status seeking that stymied women’s participation and shaped what counts as knowledge in the field to the advantage of men. Revealing the historical roots of the homogeneity of economics, this book sheds new light on why biases against women persist today.

When does the pursuit of self-interest go too far, lapsing into morally unacceptable behaviour? Until the unprecedented events of the recent global financial crisis economists often seemed unconcerned with this question, even suggesting that "greed is good." A closer look, however, suggests that greed and lust are generally considered good only for men, and then only outside the realm of family life. The history of Western economic ideas shows that men have given themselves more cultural permission than women for the pursuit of both economic and sexual self-interest. Feminists have long contested the boundaries of this permission, demanding more than mere freedom to act more like men. Women have gradually gained the power to revise our conceptual and moral maps and to insist on a better-and less gendered-balance between self interest and care for others. This book brings women's work, their sexuality, and their ideas into the center of the dialectic between economic history and the history of economic ideas. It describes a spiralling process of economic and cultural change in Great Britain, France, and the United States since the 18th century that shaped the evolution of patriarchal capitalism and the larger relationship between production and reproduction. This feminist reinterpretation of our past holds profound implications for today's efforts to develop a more humane and sustainable form of capitalism.

The past decade has witnessed a paradigm shift at the World Bank from a focus on structural adjustment to a focus on poverty reduction. As evidenced by the Bank’s 2001 report, Engendering Development: Through Rights, Resource and Voice, an increased attention to gender issues has been an important part of this process. This book brings together a range of responses from feminist economists and other social researchers on the issues raised in this report. With contributions from highly esteemed scholars such as Eudine Barriteau, Diane Elson, Gale Summerfield, and Zafiris Tzannatos, this anthology critically examines the relationships between gender, growth, development, and the World Bank by: developing a history of the World Bank’s perspectives on gender empirically evaluating the impacts of the Banks’ policies on three different regions of the world exploring the ideological and methodological commitments of the report from a variety of feminist and interdisciplinary social science perspectives enquiring into future directions for feminist economics research. Highlighting the importance and challenge of taking gender into account in development theory and policy, this book’s complex and nuanced analyses of the social relations of gender in a global context make it an important resource for policymakers, activists and scholars alike.

The transformation of women's lives over the past century is among the most significant and far-reaching of social and economic phenomena, affecting not only women but also their partners, children, and indeed nearly every person on the planet. In developed and developing countries alike, women are acquiring more education, marrying later, having fewer children, and spending a far greater amount of their adult lives in the labor force. Yet, because women remain the primary caregivers of children, issues such as work-life balance and the glass ceiling have given rise to critical policy discussions in the developed world. In developing countries, many women lack access to reproductive technology and are often relegated to jobs in the informal sector, where pay is variable and job security is weak. Considerable occupational segregation and stubborn gender pay gaps persist around the world. The Oxford Handbook of Women and the Economy is the first comprehensive collection of scholarly essays to address these issues using the powerful framework of economics. Each chapter, written by an acknowledged expert or team of experts, reviews the key trends, surveys the relevant economic theory, and summarizes and critiques the empirical research literature. By providing a clear-eyed view of what we know, what we do not know, and what the critical unanswered questions are, this Handbook provides an invaluable and wide-ranging examination of the many changes that have occurred in women's economic lives.