Issue #0

Feminism, objectivity and economics

Plot

Julie Nelson extends feminist analysis of the influence of masculine norms on the development of Western science, by scholars such as Evelyn Fox Keller and Sandra Harding, to the specific case of economics. As well as evaluating the abstract core models of neoclassical economics, this book includes case studies on topics including the theory of the family, income tax policy and macroeconomics. However, the book does not simply berate economists for the discipline's failings; alternatives such as discarding all current economic practice, or setting up an economics solely for women or for 'women's issues, ' are explicitly and emphatically rejected. Rather, it presents the outlines of a less gender-biased discipline which would be richer, more useful and more objective. Such a discipline, informed by feminist theory, would be an improved one, for all practitioners and all subjects.