Feminist Economics
New School for Social Research: Economics
Course Reference Number: 7154
Credits: 3
Feminist economics might be imagined as a way of radically reconceptualizing and reorienting the study of economics rather than just an approach to make gender inequalities visible. Taking such a position, this course surveys foundational and contemporary feminist scholarship on epistemology, methodology and economic theory in order to trace their evolution over time and explore their transformative potential. The course begins with an introduction to feminist epistemology and its insistence on the constitutive role of power relations in knowledge production. This grounds our discussion on economic methodology and feminist proposals to produce a more critical, reflexive and engaged economics that dovetail on critiques of methodological individualism, deductivism and mathematical formalism. We will survey important theoretical interventions made by feminists on the gendered nature of standard microfoundational assumptions such as free choice and rationality, new ways of conceptualizing discrimination and expanding the boundaries of the discipline to include socio-cultural norms and non-market spheres in the analysis. We will revisit historical debates on “the unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism” and household economics and engage with contemporary discussions on social reproduction, the care economy, the gender wage gap, occupational segregation and gender and globalization, asking all the while, what makes this research feminist?
College: New School for Social Research (GF)
Department: Economics (GECO)
Campus: New York City (GV)
Course Format: Seminar (R)
Max Enrollment: 10