Feminist Economics: What does it look like?

Can you be a feminist and a capitalist?

...it's a serious question. I've been doing a lot of reading over the last couple of years about race and feminism in the United States: especially how the feminist movement has not prioritized or outright dismissed the perspective of poor women, women of color, and women in marginalized communities:

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria
Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
White Feminism by Koa Beck
How We Get Free by the Combahee River Collective

..among others. And one common point they all have is that a woman who achieves success in a patriarchal system -- like becoming a CEO or winning political office -- does not represent a de facto success for feminism. If she is not also using her position to change that system, to make it more equitable, then she actually represents a failure for feminism because she has embraced patriarchy.

I've started to wonder what this means for someone like me, living in a capitalist -- a runaway capitalist -- country. Ten years ago I would have said that capitalism is the best system for a driven individual to reach their best potential. But now I don't. It seems to me now that capitalism is basically an economics of exploitation, making it inimical to feminist principles. It rewards individual success over communal welfare, and is driven by selfishness, rather than empathy.

What do you think? Am I wrong about that? Does anyone have any recommended books about feminist economics?

i think ur absolutely correct abt the incompatibility of feminism and capitalism.

when u ask abt feminist economics, tho, it depends on what u mean by "economics"

if ur asking for a theoretical-formalism that models economic behavior along the lines of first principles of feminist theory, then im not sure that ur gonna find much out there aside from marxist economics and inflected by some feminist thinkers, like Joan Robinson or Women in Class Society

if u mean "economics" a little more generally--more of a conceptual framework--then i would rec intersectional and post-structural writers like Angela Davis in Women, Race, and Class

The Dialectic of Sex is a fun anomaly from the second wave

oh i almost forgot! theres also the amazing Jane Jacobs who wrote a little on general economics in Systems of Survival

and within the discipline of economics theres also the famous If Women Counted, but imo that books tends to take for granted much of the underlying normative-theoretical motivation of economics vis-a-vis capitalism

>3 sashame: If Women Counted was a real revelation to me when I first read it in college in the 80s.

Check out Julie A Nelson's Economics for Humans which offers a more compassionate economic theory.

Wendy Brown's Undoing the Demos is amazing on how we got here.

The Double X Economy by Linda Scott

Written by the author to provide a data- and evidence-based analysis of women's impact on national and global economies, which she sets to prove is deliberately and systematically erased from high-level policy and decision making because of extreme male bias and fear of losing status and power.

Her main points are that

1) the mechanisms that keep women in economically disadvantaged positions are essentially the same in every country where women are unequal to men. So, the entire world.

2) the exclusion of women from full participation in the economy is one of, if not the major factor in perpetuating poverty, violence, and war. Women are the greatest under-utilized (or disregarded) economic resource for growth in every economy.

3) the reason women remain barred from full economic participation is a lack of good data, a situation deliberately perpetuated by finance leaders and economic policy decision-makers, who were all trained in institutions entrenched in anti-woman assumptions and bias (the author uses the word "contempt"):

"There are few fields as yet untouched by this wave of economic change: economics is one of them. Meanwhile, the absence of consistent gender data has meant that comparing the welfare of women here with those these, or even now with then, has been impossible to do systematically."

The Double X Economy -- Scott's term for the unacknowledged, invisible, but real impact of women's contribution to a country's economic health and prosperity -- is deliberately data-focused because, as she writes in her introduction, economics, and finance people are unmoved by appeals to empathy or a sense of social justice. Apparently to economists "the market" always ultimately self-selects towards an optimal outcome.

It's the first revelation I had when I started reading the book -- that economists were all imbued with the same kind of magical thinking that drives most of the world's religions.

So the author focuses on unpacking the existing data -- most of which has been collected since the turn of the century. For example, why is it that keeping girls in school has a measurably positive impact on a country's Gross Domestic Product? Is male dominance an economically stabilizing or destabilizing factor? (Take a guess.) Which gender invests more of their income in their families and communities' future, and which spends more on "frivolous" items. (Apparently, men are more likely to spend more money on alcohol and guns than women are likely to spend on clothes and cosmetics.)

An interesting and very dense book filled with charts, graphs, and cited studies. Also not particularly Western based although it is focused on the countries where the data comes from -- so Europe, North and South America, Africa, some Middle East, and India. But not so much China or Russia. I'm about a quarter of the way through. I'll post more as a get further along.

>6 southernbooklady:

If you feel like commenting further, I'm interested.

>7 LolaWalser: My first reaction is that I am woefully naive about economics. For example, I was shocked, and then shocked I was shocked, to read that many NGOs that run microlending programs have a "domestic violence response unit" of some kind because men are so quick to become resentful and violent when their wives are given access to money and they are not, or when their wives become financially successful and the husbands no longer control all the family's financial decisions.

I was also pretty shocked by the sheer level of contempt for women displayed by men in economic and financial institutions, and in academic institutions for the same:

Male economists' animus toward women has recently been the subject of essays in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, and The Economist. Press attention was sparked by a study that revealed in shocking detail, what economists say about women in private. A million posts from an online discussion group where economics students and faculty gossip about their colleagues were analyzed to see whether, in unguarded moments, economists spoke about men and women differently. The words most frequently used about a female colleague were hotter, lesbian, sexism, tits, anal, marrying, feminazi, slut, hot, vagina, boobs, pregnant, pregnancy, cute, marry, levy, gorgeous, horny, crush, beautiful, secretary, dump, shopping, date, nonprofit, intentions, sexy, dated, and prostitute.. The words used in connection with males were mathematician, pricing, advisor, textbook, motivated, Wharton, goals, Nobel, and philosopher

Wow. That's stunning and then . . . not surprising. I hate this.

What's worst to me is how, when you point out this sort of thing, people will react as if it's women who need to up and prove themselves in this sort of environment. It's just taken for granted this is how it is and how men are. Like it or leave it. But no mention of how this is part of actual warfare, a deliberate tactic to deny women access.

>10 LolaWalser: the second chapter of the book, "Behind the Big Data" skewers British and US business schools and economics/finance departments in universities: in general less than 30% of faculty are women, mostly in untenured posts. The situation gets worse in finance departments, where on average 80% of the faculty is male, and 90% of full professors are male.

She also notes that the male faculty, especially in the highest positions, are generally older than you'd expect -- nearing or even past retirement age:

These older professors had begun teaching in the 1970s, during the early years of the women's movement, and would have felt the impact of the first "affirmative action" programs directly. Starting in 1972 the US government's diversity policies put intense pressure on universities to hire women. Somehow, this handful of high-end business schools had come through four decades during which diversity had been powerfully prioritized--and had never changed. That would have been possible only if that had consciously mounted a resistance. These guys had learned how to stonewall gender equality, of that I was sure.

This has created an environment where women faced constant hostility in the classroom, hostility which was not only tolerated but even encouraged. I think there are probably a lot of parallels with the experience of women in the military and armed forces.

At the same time, it has meant these schools have never seriously questioned the assumptions they make about their data, because their model of the economy is still based on something put together just after WWII in the 50s, when Milton Friedman was the patron saint of capitalism. Apparently, he still is.

This is one of the reasons, for example, that the smallest economic unit considered in many governmental reports is "the household" -- a figure which tends to subsume the woman's economic contribution into that of the man's. And also perpetuates the idea that you can divide activity into "women's work" and "men's work" -- the latter having real value because it is paid, whereas unpaid work is nonexistent work by definition in the economic model.

And it has an effect on how research is evaluated by these institutions, which in turn has an effect on hiring:

The evaluation of professors' qualifications--whether for hiring, tenure, or promotion--swings on the faculty's opinion of the candidate's research. In the extreme-market stance Friedman's philosophy good research must adhere to the premise that markets are right and fair. Only quantitative methods are acceptable. Sample sizes must be astronomical by the standards of other disciplines--millions, not hundreds or thousands, of data points. Only monetary data, like stock prices and earnings rations, collected in the normal course of business, counts

What this means, I think, is that statistical data -- the kind of thing you get from sitting at a computer searching databases and running algorithms-- has more value and sway than fieldwork. Scott got started in her field in one of those early programs to get sanitary pads to girls in villages in West Africa as a way for them to stay in school. Statistics said girls dropped out of school about the time they started menstruating. Assumptions said that they did this because a) school was too hard and b) they were more interested in getting married and having a family than in school anyway and c) family and cultural pressure were to get them married as soon as possible because if a girl was no longer a virgin she was essentially unmarriageable and a drain her family's resources.

Scott's account of their boots-on-the-ground effort to find a way for girls to stay in school after they went through puberty was a long arduous process of negotiating with village councils, talking to women, talking to relief groups and organizations, etc, etc. made it clear that these assumptions were all wrong. That girls wanted to stay in school and the most immediate obstacle to their ability to do so was that girls who went through puberty were considered sexually available by men. ("Ripe" is the word one man used in an interview). Access to sanitary pads actually gave girls extra time in school simply by allowing them to hide they had periods.

This is the sort of thing that would be completely overlooked in a "statistical" approach, which would just note that girls dropped out of school without verifying why. But it is also somehow considered "soft" research because of its specificity.

>11 southernbooklady: Please keep talking (if you'd like to). This is fascinating and infuriating and suddenly obvious in a way it hadn't been before.

>10 LolaWalser: And it's women who are exaggerating how bad it is, being too sensitive, playing the victim, etc

"The indiscriminate drive for more growth is a defining feature of patriarchal economics; it should not be our main goal." (14)

Okay. I'm buying this book.

>13 susanbooks: one thing I've learned recently is that in a capitalist system, "success" is determined not by profitability or longevity, but by growth. Because investors want their dividends to keep growing, I guess. So you basically have to grow until you outstrip your resources, and then you fail. It does not seem like a sustainable system to me.

July 28th was "Earth Overshoot Day". It comes earlier and earlier every year.

https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/earth-overshoot-day/

Capitalism is neither sustainable nor reformable. What a Pyrrhic victory the "winning" of the Cold War has turned out to be...

>14 southernbooklady: and god forbid success be defined by usefulness or contribution to the public good. If someone isn't getting rich & someone else isn't being exploited, then what use is it?

>15 LolaWalser: Scott's main interest is not to critique economic systems per se, but to prove that the systems in place would work better, if women were equal participants. So she goes into detail about the problems of banking systems and lending practices but does not ever dispute the need for banks and loans. She has a lot of really interesting use case scenarios about women as producers of goods and the obstacles they face getting their products to a wider market but doesn't challenge the need for multinational corporations and global distribution systems. And she has a really good, detailed expose of how women have been shut out of property ownership but doesn't critique the concept of property ownership at all. I'd say she's a capitalist in the same way most people would say they are in favor of democratic representative government. If you can have a non-patriarchal capitalist economy, that's what she's going for.

Oh, and she devotes a whole section of the book to research that proves women are not inherently "bad at math" because of their biology -- apparently because she runs up against that wackadoodle belief all the time from men in her field. Seriously. What in the hell?

>17 southernbooklady:

That's disappointing. That sounds like another appeal to women's supposedly "nicer" nature, when we have plenty of examples that liberal women have no qualms when it comes to defending their financial interests. Patriarchal or not, capitalism is ultimately a self-destructive system, a cul-de-sac. Exploitation, profiteering and consumerism aren't compatible with a decent way of life, or life in general in the end.

Banks, incidentally, aren't necessarily "capitalist". Credit unions for example, solidarity trusts etc.

>19 LolaWalser: Yeah, I tagged it "know your enemy" both for what she talks about & for who she is. She serves on a WalMart advisory board. I'm really looking forward to reading it but I don't get the impression that she's a comrade.

>19 LolaWalser: That sounds like another appeal to women's supposedly "nicer" nature

There is some of that. You could say one way to look at her book is that she is arguing for the presence of women as a mitigating influence on the extreme aggression fostered by unfettered patriarchal capitalism. I've just hit the part of the book where she talks about investing with a "gendered lens" (there's a Bloomburg index fund or something) and the upshot is that the presence of women in positions of authority and on corporate boards, coupled with a strategy that prioritizes considerations of gender when investing in projects makes for a better, well, world. She gives an example of investing in a public transit system that includes features which make it safe for women to use at night -- better lighting, extra alarms and emergency signals, etc etc. Such a system would be cost effective for a city because it would reduce crime, and encourage productivity since women would not be afraid to use it.

It sounds a little simplistic to me. My experience is that anyone who succeeds in a capitalist environment is not then very motivated to dismantle the system that made them rich.

But my take is that Scott is focused on the near and middle distance -- what can be done to give women agency, financial independence, and economic power and standing right now, and give to their daughters in the near future. And she is trying to convince...not the old men clinging to their directorships, or the younger ones those men have mentored and bullied and pushed into treating the economy as some kind of giant shark tank, but the others -- women and men -- who like me are products of, and benefited from the social reforms of the 60s and 70s. Who have aspirations not just of a better life, but of a better world.

The banking and property ownership chapters are really interesting. There is a lot of effort going into just convincing bankers that women can have their own accounts without the permission of their husbands. There is a lot to think about in the book.

>20 susanbooks:

She serves on a WalMart advisory board.

Ouch! Good habit, checking on authors.

>21 southernbooklady:

It does sound like she notices sexism, which is always useful, but in the end I for one don't expect anything of real improvement to come from that side. Capitalism (I know I'm a broken record) doesn't provide for everyone, it needs and generates a vast underclass. Boy boss or girl boss, the "bossism" remains a problem.

>22 LolaWalser: the military analogy comes to mind again. You don't create peace by reforming the Army, you just make war marginally less awful. For a few. Likewise, you don't eradicate poverty by reforming capitalism, you just make it marginally less exploitive. For a few.

Yeah, sorry, that's just utterly meaningless to me. I mean, it fits with the outlook of this entire site, the mostly boomerish/genxish liberalish middle class--"the few", in other words, so it may seem "reasonable",
I don't know. But the fact that there's a vast majority of people out there drowning day to day, that's not visible in these schemes to help "the few", and I just can't accept that degree of ignoring the reality, lack of ethics or whatever it is. The problem is that capitalism doesn't "help the few" without actively harming multitudes. That's how it functions--through exploitation of the masses. That "the few" may also include women doesn't make it any better.

The problem is that capitalism doesn't "help the few" without actively harming multitudes. That's how it functions--through exploitation of the masses. That "the few" may also include women doesn't make it any better.

Because it can't be said enough or so well.

Okay back from a couple of weeks taken up with work (the irony is not lost on me) to report that I did finish The Double X Economy. It was not ground-breaking stuff, but I think she did make her case that women are a squandered resource in a patriarchal capitalist economy (is there a matriarchal capitalist economy?). I would have like more statistics, studies, cited research, etc. The book is maybe too much for the layman reader. I would have dug my way through much more data if it had been provided.

I did appreciate some of the focus she spent on microlending organizations and programs and the specific obstacles they face in helping women achieve financial independence. I was a little doubtful of her example of the Avon Cosmetics business model as a shining example of female empowerment. And the one "action" she recommended to demonstrate the power of women in the market place: that every woman should commit to spending 80% less each year until gender equity is achieved (she's talking about women with the discretionary income to spend, of course, although she doesn't say so) ...well that sounded very "Lysistrata" to me. I mean, Americans, in particular, should spend less because we think we need so much stuff we really don't. It's not sustainable. Scott does not seem to have an answer for how to achieve a slower-growing, sustainable economy although she does say it has to happen.

Next up on the economics reading list are these two books:

Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism by Kristen R. Ghodsee

Thank you for posting your thoughts. I'm looking forward to hearing more.

>26 southernbooklady: i would personally rec Jane Jacobs' systems of survival if u want a *general* treatment of economics that touches more explicitly on gender, rather than a work focusing on cities and national economies, but most of what she writes is great anyway! let us know how u like it!