Feminist Economics

Edited by a leading scholar in the field, this is a new title in the Routledge Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Economics. It is a four-volume collection of historical and contemporary work in the flourishing field of feminist economics, an innovative and dynamic area of scholarship that broadens the scope of economic inquiry and allows a richer and more complex view of the ways in which economies function. The first two volumes of the collection consist of work done before the founding of the International Association for Feminist Economics in 1991 and are organized historically. The final two volumes consist of cutting-edge contemporary work in feminist economics and are organized thematically.

This new Routledge title, edited by two leading scholars, is a four-volume collection of canonical and the very best cutting-edge work in feminist economics, an innovative and dynamic area of scholarship that has broadened the scope of economic inquiry and has allowed a richer and more complex understanding of the ways in which economies function.

Volume I (‘Early Conversations, 1800–1960’) gathers foundational work produced before the professionalization and specialization of the social sciences by writers who were variously categorized as journalists, reformers, and—occasionally—as economists. Their writing provides important historical background on subjects such as household production, women’s participations in paid labour, and gender equality, subjects that remain central to feminist economics today.

Volume II (‘Households, Labour, and Paid Work’) brings together the best work by professional economists examining various aspects of women’s labour both within and outside the domestic sphere. Topics include reproductive labour, caring labour, women’s labour force participation, the gender wage gap, occupational segregation, and the economics of the family.

Volume III (‘Engendering Development and Economic Well-Being’) assembles work with a specifically international or global perspective. Among the topics covered are: women and development; the gendered effects of structural adjustment; property rights; economic transformation; and measures of economic well-being.

The final volume in the collection (‘Epistemological and Methodological Considerations’) focuses on a feminist rethinking of economics. Volume IV collects the best scholarship on methodology, the history of economics, and postmodern and postcolonial critiques of both feminist and conventional economics.

Fully indexed and with a comprehensive introduction to each volume newly written by the editors, and an invited introduction to the final volume written by Gillian Hewitson, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Feminist Economics is an essential reference work. It is destined to be valued by scholars and students of economics—as well as those working in allied disciplines such as women’s and gender studies—as a vital research resource.