Feminist Economics Challenges Mainstream Economics
By Diane Elson, PhD

A feminist alternative would make social reproduction the dominant domain, with production and finance acting to serve it. The macroeconomic policy objective would be decent work for all, with an equal sharing of unpaid work between women and men, supported by public policy which recognises the importance of this work. In analysing how to move to this alternative from where we are no, we argue that feminist macroeconomics will need to build on and extend heterodox macroeconomics, while challenging neoliberal macroeconomics.

Introduction to Feminist Economics:
Household, Market and State
By Tatjana Djuric Kuzmanovic, PhD

Gender is a complex category using economic structure, symbols and identities to express culturally and socially constructed differences between men and women. Decision on who is to generate income outside family and how the family income is to be allocated are strongly gender structured and based on power relations. They greatly influence not only the relations within households and enterprises, but also market relations and the state’s economic policy, and thus the total economic and social development of any national economy.

Briefing Paper on the ‘Feminisation of Poverty’
By BRIDGE

The term the ‘feminisation of poverty’ originates from US debates about single mothers and welfare, dating from the 1970s.  Recently there has been much discussion, in both academic and development policy circles, of the phenomena.  However, there is little clarity about what the feminisation of poverty means, or about whether such a trend can be empirically verified.  The feminisation of poverty has been linked to firstly, a perceived increase in the proportion of female-headed households (FHHs) and secondly, the rise of female participation in low return urban informal sector activities, particularly in the context of the 1980s economic crises and adjustments in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.