Feminist Economists

Feminist Economists

Feminist economics is the critical study of economics including its methodology, epistemology, history and empirical research, attempting to overcome pervasive androcentric (male and patriarchal) biases. It focuses on topics of particular relevance to women, such as care work or occupational segregation (exclusion of women and minorities from certain fields); deficiencies of economic models, such as disregarding intra-household bargaining; 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 ultimately seeks to produce a more gender inclusive economics.

Feminist economists call attention to the social constructions of traditional economics, questioning the extent to which it is positive and objective, and showing how its models and methods are biased towards masculine preferences. Since economics is traditionally focused on topics said to be "culturally masculine" such as autonomy, abstraction and logic, feminist economists call for the inclusion of more feminine topics such as family economics, connections, concreteness, and emotion, and show the problems caused by exclusion of those topics. Inclusion of such topics has helped create policies that have reduced gender, racial, and ethnic discrimination and inequity, satisfying normative goals central to all economics.

Many scholars including Ester Boserup, Marianne Ferber, Julie A. Nelson, Marilyn Waring and Nancy Folbre have contributed to feminist economics. By the 1990s it had become recognised as an established field within economics.