Unlearn, Learn and Apply: Why Economics Needs to be Feminist

Why should we engage with feminist economics? Some personal reflections from this year’s International Association for Feminist Economics conference

“If you want to work on economic, social and cultural rights,” I remember my supervisor telling me a few years ago, “you need to know about economics.”

I was looking to find a way to gain theoretical knowledge that would enhance my existing experience in working for women’s and minority rights in Nepal, when I was chosen in 2018 to join the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science as a residential fellow. The modules we followed during our fellowship deconstructed mainstream economics, and allowed us to become familiar with such concepts as “doughnut economics”, de-growth and other alternative approaches. Economics can sound intimidating, and a lack of grounding in the traditional approaches to the discipline might seem like a reason for social justice campaigners not to apply to the programme. But in fact, like me, many of the participants on the programme came with little or no knowledge of economics.

Taking the advice of a Fellow from the previous year’s cohort, I signed up to the course Feminist Economics and Policy: An Introduction during my fellowship studies on the MSc in Inequalities and Social Science. Exposure to this alternative approach to economics gave me the confidence to participate in the 28th Annual Conference of International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) in Glasgow in June of this year. I embarked on the journey to Glasgow from London accompanied by my husband and young child – adhering, you might say, to the principle of care work redistribution.

Pre-conference and mentoring workshops

My experience began in a pre-conference session on 26 June, organised by IAFFE and the Young Scholars Initiative of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, which included a mentoring workshop for young scholars. Finding myself in a room full of renowned feminist economists whose articles I had read in my Feminist Economics course seemed both unreal and wonderful, and took some time to sink in.

During the pre-conference, Diane Strassmann, the co-founder of IAFFE, gave a keynote speech in which she discussed why it is so important to engage with feminist economics, and, most importantly, how to become a feminist economist. She highlighted that economics before feminism meant groups of white men hanging out together, whereas feminist economics would challenge the mainstream to take gender dimensions into account and provide critical scrutiny for making economics better. If gender equality is a priority, we need to rethink why gender has for so long been discounted and not seen as central to economics.

Feminist economics has brought much to the table in terms of rethinking economic theories. Mainstream economics is gendered: it disproportionately focuses on paid work, where market prices do not correspond to social values. It ignores the fact that market and home life are interconnected, and does not consider the exploitative relationships where power matters. While theorising inequality, it is important to understand that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does not reflect human well-being. Aggregated measures of prosperity are flawed if outcomes are not shared equally. Gendered social norms matter, as household gender roles influence economic behaviour. It is important to consider family perceptions of paid and unpaid work and decisions about who gets what, and how unpaid and paid work are connected.

The keynote address was followed by mentoring sessions on labour market, the care economy, inequality and development, and feminist economic thought. Mentors including James Heintz, Naila Kabeer, İpek İlkkaracan, Carmen Diana Deere, Ashwini Deshpande, Nancy Folbre and Radhika Balakrishnan provided feedback on young scholars’ research. I participated in the session on feminist economic thought, where participants grappled with the issue of how intersectionality can be applied in our work. Feminist economics still needs to confront issues of intersectionality: although it can be challenging, it is also an opportunity.

The intersection of inequalities

Initially I assumed that to know and apply feminist economics in your work you need to be an economist, but the IAFFE Conference, with its participation of feminists from all around the world, showed me otherwise. The theme this year was Solidarities and Challenges at the Intersection of Inequalities, and it offered much food for thought.

I was excited to learn how we can make economics more feminist and find ways to address gender inequalities. The opening plenary included an impressive panel on Solidarities & Challenges at the Intersection of Inequalities. Naila Kabeer, the outgoing president of IAFFE and Professor of Gender and Development at LSE, began the opening panel by emphasising that focusing on the intersection of inequalities can lead to a profound understanding of how the multiplicity of power works, and how domination and oppression are reinforced.

Lee Badgett, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, flagged the cost of homophobia and transphobia in considering how we can move forward: there are people missing, and we need to undo the violence against members of the LBGTIQ community. We can do more with economics, she emphasised. She spoke of the need for more data and the importance of working with LBGTIQ organisations, urging us to fight against the stereotypes which kill LBGTIQ people.

The relationship between gender and class in the privatisation of waste management was the focus of a contribution by Melanie Samson, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She encouraged us to look at the ways that labour is embodied by the black women and men reclaimers who are not paid enough for their labour in capitalism.

Nina Banks, Associate Professor of Economics at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, looked at the intersection of race and invisibility of black women’s work. Their higher labour market participation means a greater work burden on black women, whose 250 years of unpaid work during the enslavement era was not recognised. She emphasised the importance of archival data and records in seeking to better understand the lives of racialised women. Feminist economists need to be self-critical, and to employ intersectional frameworks to address biases and safeguard the interest of people who are at the margins.

There are faultlines in the understanding of inequality, observed Ashwini Deshpande, Professor of Economics at Ashoka University in India. People have multiple identities, but are made invisible on the basis of one identity, and there is no consensus around “disadvantage multipliers”. Dalit women, for example, are triply discriminated on the basis of gender, caste and class. These disadvantages should not be viewed as linear, but as a matrix of hierarchies with overlapping identities that determine oppression or privilege.

Concurrent sessions on social reproduction

The conference included valuable sessions on household care and unpaid work; gender, assets and labour markets; social and economic policies; gender and the macro economy; and gender budgeting intersecting with environment, discrimination, bargaining power, empowerment, collective action and well-being. What struck me was the great efforts made feminist economists in rethinking macroeconomics in order to provide alternatives to working towards a gender-just economy. More work on these subjects can be found at Care Work and the Economy.

Of particular interest was a session on contemporary feminist political economies of work. It raised key issues such as how social reproduction is being commodified in new ways, at the cost of the labour exploitation of poor and vulnerable women. Examples from Cambodia of the commodification of breastmilk, surrogacy services and associated altruism and the labour exploitation of women in sweatshops in India and in agriculture in Uzbekistan, spoke to the fact that that women have internalised the idea that they are doing altruistic service and not work. Their work is not considered work – and therefore deemed valueless.

It is not enough to problematise these issues. It is essential to consider how public policies can be made useful to achieve gender equality in reality. One of the presenters shared a case study from Australia about how a systems approach can aid workplace gender equality in the context of construction work, looking beyond the solutions that typically focus on “fixing women” rather than addressing the root causes. She highlighted that it is important to compare the whole and understand how the system is functioning to address the “wicked problems.” She suggested that three steps in the journey to gender equality are: understanding the issue; creating a plan for action and learning; and making the changes.

A presenter from Action Aid shared a case study from Ghana that illustrates the pushback on macroeconomic policies and public services for women’s rights. Young women are subsidising invisible tax through their unpaid work, she said, noting that macroeconomic policies need to be informed by strong data, social spending needs to be prioritised, and development needs to be financed through fair and efficient systems and not those of the International Monetary Fund, which levies conditionalities on countries that are mostly invisibilised.

Conversations around care and workers showed that countries may differ but realities are similar. Around the world, the gendered pattern of paid and unpaid care work remain unrecognized, undervalued and unrewarded. Women are still predominantly working in subsistence farming as farmers and domestic workers. Recommendations were made around looking at gender-transformative interventions in the long term, understanding cultural expectations, involving men as change agents, introducing women empowerment programmes, paying for child care facilities, and reducing drudgery work.

Feminist economists envisioning alternative worlds

One of the roundtable sessions focused on advancing feminist economic alternatives to catalyse change for women’s economic rights. Proposals by Inna Michaeli from AWID included economic self-determination from local to global, substantive equality and justice, the just distribution of resources, and solidarity and social movement(s) from local to global. It is essential to build collective understanding through interaction with institutions to avoid co-option. We need to be consistent in terms of what we mean by economy, how we organise it and how we dismantle power and knowledge. Alternatives are everywhere, and there should be solidarity in resistance.

Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, shared her experience of “engendering” the Government of India and its planning commission in terms of gender budgeting. Her suggestions were to pick a few constituencies and find social and political resonance. There is a need to be clear in messaging and be strategic in advocacy, she said.

Some important questions were raised by Dzodzi Tsikata, Research Professor in Development Strategy at the University of Ghana. Who is making policy, and negotiating at different levels? What do we mean by feminist movement(s)? She emphasised the barriers to alternatives. Radhika Balakrishnan, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, said she was wary about the IMF’s surveillance of macroeconomic policies, and the fact that gender equality is now used as a disciplinary tool in politics. She said that although we want to be taken seriously, how do we ensure that we are not co-opted?

Naila Kabeer of LSE highlighted the importance of genuine grassroots democracy where people’s organising can push back structural barriers through agency and participation. Rather than imagining an ideal world, she urged, let us fight against injustices first. Crystal Simeoni, Head of Advocacy and Economic Justice lead at FEMNET and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity 2019-2020, pointed out that feminist leadership is not to be found in macroeconomics. She encouraged us to have the audacity to disrupt, and to be accountable to the people we are working with and working for.

Of particular value was a contribution by Roos Saalbrink of the global women’s rights organisation Womankind Worldwide, who shared recent developments in the International Labour Organization convention on sexual harassment, which came about as a result of concerted efforts by women’s rights activists. She spoke of the need to challenge capitalist structures and encouraged everyone to join the Women’s Global Strike on 8 March 2020.

Gender equality in Scotland

The Gender in Scotland’s Economy panel featured gender equality champions including Christina McKelvie, Scotland’s Minister for Older People and Equalities; its Auditor General Caroline Gardner, the Chair of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, Dame Susan Rice; and women’s rights activists. The minister spoke of her government’s commitment to use a gender lens to inform future programmes. Scotland has a Gender Pay Gap Action Plan and an equal pay audit, and is developing a national gender equality index. As a country, it is leading by example.

The panel reflected the strengths of government partnering with feminist organisations and how efforts are underway to have gender-responsive budgeting at the heart of initiatives. The Auditor General rightly observed that a budget is not a neutral document, and has gendered consequences. Emma Ritch, the Executive Director of Engender, highlighted that feminist political leadership creates space for action. If political leadership have feminist leaders who are receptive to advocacy, then powerful changes can be made. Talat Yaqoob, the Director of Equate Scotland and a member of the Women 50-50 campaign, claimed that progress is not linear. Intersectional analysis is necessary to understand how progress is working for different women.

Creating changes in policy and institutions

This panel featured the insights and experiences of feminist economists who have been in positions, institutions and locations where they were able to influence policy-making.
They emphasised that research and academic work are important as they create the language that policymakers understand. Panel member Diane Elson, Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Essex and a prominent feminist economist, noted that budgets reflect the political and economic power of a country and it is difficult to bring changes to that sphere. She suggested that we need to expect to see partial and distorted outcomes from our struggles and must not be disappointed. Budgeting should be about robust taxation and expenditure and seeing how gender impacts intersect with race, class and ethnicity. It is important to see how we can bring changes within institutions and navigate the entry points.

Some final thoughts: envisioning a feminist economy

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded last month to scholars Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. It was revealing that so much coverage of this award had a strongly gendered perspective in the positioning of the winners, with Duflo frequently described as Banerjee’s wife instead of someone who has made an unquestionably important contribution to the discipline in her own right. Surely the most significant news is that Duflo has become only the second woman ever to win this award (Elinor Ostrom was the first, in 2009).

This year’s Nobel Prize is yet another reminder of the ongoing need to make economics more feminist. Feminist economics addresses neglected issues such as care work, explores the relationship between paid work and unpaid work, and challenges the power relations within the household. Many of us, including those working in social change, may be intimidated by the word economics, but every aspect of our lives revolves around it. If we want a feminist future, we must imagine our economy through the feminist economics lens.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.