Rethinking the Dismal Science - Feminist Economics

Rethinking the Dismal Science

Academic disciplines are much like cartography, defining established boundaries and pressing the limits of knowledge into new domains. But could you trust the assumptions and methodologies of a discipline that, like an atlas drawn before the discovery of the Americas, leaves out half the picture? Although many women working in economics wonder exactly that about their own discipline, Feminist Economics, an academic journal housed at Rice, is helping bring change. For the past nine years, the journal has been surveying economic regions formerly considered terra incognita and, in the process, is encouraging reassessment of incomplete maps of our economic world.

Interest in the journal was so strong at the outset that, six months before the first issue appeared in May 1995, Strassmann already had received 46 submissions.

Diana Strassmann, the editor of Feminist Economics, began seriously questioning the problematic nature of mainstream economic theory while a first-year graduate student at Harvard University. As she listened to one of her professors argue forcefully that a married woman should remain at home with her children, she suspected that he simply was unenlightened about the possibility of equitable gender roles in the family. Later, though, she learned something interesting about him: He was married to a woman with a Ph.D. in economics who stayed at home with their young children.

“This professor presented his views as the objective conclusions of scientific, detached research,” Strassmann says, “but he clearly had a personal stake in assigning family gender roles. I began to see that maybe I couldn’t trust the knowledge of the discipline to be as free from personal experience as I had been led to believe it was.”

The Dismal Science

Although economics is descriptively termed a social science, Thomas Carlyle dryly referred to it as the “dismal science,” and a London Times writer once decreed that old-line macroeconomics was really “macho-economics.” The founding fathers of economics—and they were exclusively men—built the field on what they believed to be rigid, empirical objectivity, and since then, the discipline has valued “science”
over “social.”

“Contemporary mainstream economics is dominated to an astonishing degree by one analytic framework that traces its roots to the philosophical work of Adam Smith in the 18th century,” Strassmann says. “Neoclassical economic theory assumes that relations among people are governed by self-interest. The central character of economics is the autonomous ‘economic man.’ Standard theory presents this person as having wishes and needs along with a set of resources. Faced with choices, each with an attached price, he dispassionately considers the various possibilities for satisfaction and carefully weighs their costs against their relative degrees of potential satisfaction.”

To explain and predict the behavior of economic man, mainstream economists have developed mathematical models that present equations with mathematically expressed definitions, assumptions, and theoretical developments clearly laid out. Strassmann laughingly relates that a standing joke in the profession is that economists have “physics envy” and sometimes try to compensate by using complex math even when the point is obvious. “Students learn that no model is perfect,” she says, “but they also learn that it is bad manners to excessively question the simplified assumptions that ground economic models.”

As more and more women entered higher education during the latter half of the 20th century, however, academic disciplines that had been dominated by men, such as economics, found themselves with greater numbers of women who brought with them new perspectives and ideas that challenged the status quo. These women stressed that equality was not simply a matter of equality under the law but also of philosophical and social equality in daily life. Critical of past and current social relations, they saw a need to promote women’s rights and interests that traditionally have been ignored by the so-called mainstream.

Economics may have been the last of the social sciences to enter into dialogue with its feminist critics, in part because so few women worked in the field. It wasn’t until 1992 that Strassmann and other feminist economists had enough critical mass to found the International Association for Feminist Economists (IAFFE). Their first conference was held that same year, and today, IAFFE boasts approximately 600 economists and noneconomists from 48 countries working to promote research and policy recommendations on economic issues of central importance to women.

Strassmann, who had been on the Rice economics faculty since 1983, stopped teaching in 1992 when she accepted a position as senior research fellow in Rice’s Center for the Study of Cultures. Soon after IAFFE was incorporated, she and other members began talking about the need for an official academic journal. Initially, she coordinated a discussion group that focused on how such a journal might be structured, then she wrote a proposal for potential publishers. As the project came closer to fruition, she was asked to serve as editor. In the years since, she has continued in her position with the Center for the Study of Cultures, but this upcoming year, she also will join the faculty of the Program for the Study of Women and Gender, which is part of the School of Humanities.

A New Voice

Part of the impetus for creating the journal was that mainstream economics journals were not receptive to feminist economics, calling this sort of work sociology or something other than real economics. Clearly this was a major impediment to scholars in feminist economics, and Strassmann felt that a journal for the emerging field would enable researchers to maintain credibility within economics as a whole.

Creating a brand new journal of the highest caliber from scratch was no easy task. Strassmann says that Rice’s backing and encouragement during the journal’s formative period was pivotal, as has been its continuing assistance in providing professional staff ever since. At first, the tasks seemed monumental: defining the journal’s mission, developing its format, choosing a name, finding a publisher, hiring a staff, signing on associate editors, and establishing an editorial board—all before the real editorial work could even begin.

It turned out that the choice of publisher was one of the most important steps. After a bidding war among three reputable academic publishers, Routledge was selected, and Strassmann says that the company has been very supportive, providing design and advice and helping her tighten the journal’s format. And in the end, the publisher’s working title, Feminist Economics, was settled on as the most unaffected and unqualified description of the new publication’s serious and legitimate nature.

A strong editorial staff was important, too. Strassmann initially enlisted 12 associate editors from around the world, and since then, that number has grown to 21. Economists of international repute who serve on the 40-plus member editorial board include Nobel Prize winners George Akerlof, Kenneth Arrow, William Baumol, and Amartya Sen. The board also includes well-known feminist scholars from fields outside of economics, including Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Fraser, Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, Nancy Hartsock, Helen Longino, Martha Nussbaum, and Patricia Williams. The journal’s in-house staff presently consists of editorial assistant Cheryl Morehead, who has been with the journal since its first year of publication; staff assistant Eva Chan, who joined six years ago; and managing editor Amy Rowland, a new PhD from Rice who came on board in July 2003. Over the years, the journal has hired many Rice students, both undergraduate and graduate.

Interest in the journal was so strong at the outset that, six months before the first issue appeared in May 1995, Strassmann already had received 46 submissions. In her inaugural editorial, she stated that the new journal would be a forum to support and disseminate ideas that were traditionally marginalized by mainstream economics journals. “By opening the gates that have for so long protected economic theories from fundamental critique,” she wrote, “and by subjecting all ideas addressed in this forum to critical scrutiny, Feminist Economics will encourage the emergence of a more intellectually resilient economics.”

Philosophy

The journal’s in-house staff presently consists of editorial assistant Cheryl Morehead, who has been with the journal since its first year of publication; staff assistant Eva Chan, who joined six years ago; and managing editor Amy Rowland, a new PhD from Rice who came on board in July 2003.

In writing of the gates that protect economic theories from fundamental critique, Strassmann gets to the core of feminist criticism of mainstream economics. “A popular view among mainstream economic practitioners,” she says, “is that explanations based on self-interested individualism and contractual exchange merit their high status in economics because of their obvious logic or superior power. This explanatory approach, however, is unusual for disciplines that study empirical phenomena. Most other empirical disciplines, such as the physical and biological sciences, define themselves in terms of the domain to be explained.”

The result is that economics often operates on suppositions rather than according to evidence, and the field relies heavily on models that, like maps, highlight certain aspects of a situation while suppressing others. Take the model that assumes that individuals, self-interested by nature and limited only by economic constraints, freely and dispassionately consider various factors and carefully weigh costs versus satisfaction in order to maximize their happiness. Feminist economists question many of the corollary values of this model. Does maximum efficiency necessarily bring about maximum happiness? Is maldistribution of resources perhaps more of a problem than actual scarcity? And do individuals truly function as independently from one another as neoclassicists maintain? Racial and gender discrimination, inequities in educational and cultural opportunities, and other social ills also put this model’s accuracy and utility in doubt.

Another model is that, in the marketplace of ideas, the best ideas rise in value according to merit. This view does not take into account exclusionary practices by entrenched market forces that can wield powerful resources to limit or exclude from the marketplace good—or better—ideas that may be in direct competition with their own. Thus, mainstream economics tends to ignore issues of values, power, and social construction.

Neoclassical economic models are based on individualistic behavior as opposed to treating people as living in relationships, Strassmann maintains. For example, models that are used to predict national output and general equilibrium assume that people who participate in markets represent the needs of everyone in the family. The reality is far different, say feminist economists, observing that mainstream economics fails to recognize the limitations of a model that cannot note a wide variety of contexts. The problems go beyond spousal and child abuse to unequal distribution of resources, including food, within the family. “One of the reasons Amartya Sen was such an inspiration to feminist economists,” Strassmann says, “is that he points to extraordinary evidence of unequal distribution within the family. Economists can have models of theoretic behavior within the family, but unless we consider the implications for policy, we’ll come up with policies that aren’t reasonable.

Theoretical Conjectures

When Strassmann first heard feminists from other disciplines apply the word “theory” to ideas presented in verbal form and without the slightest pretense at mathematical modeling, she had to remind herself that other disciplines do not have the same rigorous requirements that economics does. She eventually saw, however, that these alternate theories are not necessarily antiformalization or against mathematical quantification, per se. Instead, their proponents desire ways to present a more complete picture, saying that neoclassic explanatory tools like scarcity, selfishness, and competition rather than abundance, cooperation, and altruism don’t address significant motivations for human economic behavior, thus potentially misconstruing the human subject.

“There has been the desire among economists for many years to pretend that economic ideas can be apolitical, that there can be a pure objectivity behind it,” Strassmann says. “But much economic theory reflects an implicit political agenda, and it’s not really possible to do research about society without a starting point that has certain basic presuppositions. The Taliban, for example, would say that women are not entitled to hold jobs, and that’s a political belief basically. The feminist presupposition is that all people should have an equal opportunity to be participants in economic life. If you have a society where women or people from particular ethnic groups can’t have jobs, then there’s a real loss in the potential standard of living.”

Strassmann cites the work of Sen, who disagrees with traditional economic approaches that use output or income as measures of how well off people are. “These approaches don’t recognize that resources within a country may be distributed in a highly unequal manner,” Strassmann says. “Sen shows that they are not good measures of individual well-being. He also criticizes utility-based measures of well-being for not considering that people’s preferences may adapt to their life circumstances and not reflect their actual well-being. Sen’s pioneering work on the capability approach considers instead what individuals can achieve and become. Capabilities includes such things as good health and the avoidance of premature death as well as more complex issues such as self-respect, literacy, the ability to appear in public without shame and the right to take part in community and political life. In short, Sen considers well-being in the context of whether people can make choices and attain their potential in whatever they might like to be.”

Strassmann is loath to formally define feminist economics or to philosophically confine the journal she edits. Feminist economics, she stresses, is not a definition but a terrain with a multiplicity of economic features. “At issue,” she says, “is not merely the merits of one theory over another, but the relative merits of entire research agendas and disciplinary identities.”

Some economists have expressed concern that approaches borrowed from the humanities or the “softer” social sciences will detract from the rigor and objectivity of economic science and give voice to those without proper training. “One of the standard arguments,” Strassmann notes, “says that the only legitimate way to argue is with the models, and if you don’t have another fully developed model, you don’t have the appropriate tools to disagree with the models currently in use. But how can you work out a fully developed model if you haven’t been allowed to talk about it first?

“At this early stage in feminist inquiry in economics,” she continues, “it’s to be expected that some ideas will be less completely developed than already existing theories. But if economic ideas marginalize whole hosts of important phenomena, you have to think about how the field might be reconstructed in a way that’s more responsive to the interests and needs of a larger percentage of the population.” Feminist economics, she says, is indeed making the field more rigorous through detailed research on a whole host of neglected phenomena.

Topics

The diverse and complex viewpoints of feminist economics mean that some really interesting debates are going on concerning issues such as welfare reform, child care, family planning, economic development, domestic abuse, sexual harassment, discrimination and affirmative action, pay equity, family leave, and the feminization of poverty.

One issue of concern to feminist economists is that economic calculations that affect the well-being of whole populations can be distorted if issues of gender are not taken into account. For example, work done by women in the home—say baking bread, making clothes for their families, or caring for the young and elderly—often does not figure in calculations of gross national product, whereas the same tasks performed in a specific industrial setting—a commercial bakery, a garment factory, or a daycare center—do. This, in essence, renders invisible much work done by women and skews figures not simply of productivity but of economic worth.

The hidden value of household economics is just one of the important themes taken up by the journal. Another subject that generates a lot of interest is garment factories, often known as sweatshops. Most people are inclined to think that sweatshops are bad, but a recent journal article features a heterodox viewpoint by Bangladeshi economist Naila Kabeer. She argues that the relevant comparison is not the disparity between how much these garment factory workers earn and what they would make in an industrialized nation. Instead, she asks, what is the quality of life of the women who have jobs as opposed to those who don’t?

Kabeer points out that many women who work in garment factories have been better able to feed their children, to leave abusive marriages, and to become contributing economic members of their societies. While Kabeer is not defending the work conditions in the factories, she wants to caution people not to artificially inflate standards to such a degree that the factories can’t operate. If that were to happen, she says, some of these people would be worse off.

An International Perspective

Kabeer’s article and many others point to an often-overlooked truth: What is reality in Baltimore is not reality in Botswana. Feminist Economics strives to avoid pitfalls such as assuming that cultural, economic, or legal details of a particular country are familiar to and accepted by people elsewhere. Nor does the journal promote contributions to the literature solely from limited geographic regions.

Strassmann believes that an international perspective is essential for the vitality of the field. “The exclusion of non-Western voices from participation in the construction of much economic theory has led to theories that claim a false universality for Western economic phenomena,” she says. “For example, while most mainstream economic models treat income as the primary determinant of economic well-being, property and land rights are far more important in many parts of the world. Women’s lack of land rights in many places has been a key source of gender inequality and a barrier to women’s well-being.”

Taking the international approach, an upcoming theme issue titled Lone Mothers will examine the economic issues faced by single mothers throughout the world. Funded by a Ford Foundation grant of nearly $65,000, it will highlight the importance of understanding the economic consequences of women’s dependence on gender-segregated labor markets as well as matters such as caregiving, family structure, and welfare policies, among others.

Also in the works is a special issue on gender and aging funded by a $64,000 grant from the Swedish International Development Agency. The issue will look not just at the status of women who are aging but at aging in general. And another upcoming special issue examining women and the distribution of wealth has garnered their largest grant yet—$120,000 from the Ford Foundation.

The journal also would like to tackle at greater length, at some point in the future, neglected areas such as economic issues related to sexual orientation. “I’ve heard that articles about discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation have been rejected from economics journals on the grounds that it wasn’t the kind of discrimination of interest to economists,” Strassmann says. “We did publish a group of exploratory articles on lesbian, gay, and bisexual economics in a past issue, more as an inducement for further research rather than as any sort of definitive study. We’d like to publish more on this topic.”

The Bottom Line

Feminist Economics must be doing things right. In 1997, it was voted the best new journal by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, and the Social Science Citation Index, the most prestigious index for scholarly social science journals, consistently gives Feminist Economics solid marks among journals of both economics and women’s studies—a significant achievement considering only about 8 percent of all journals published worldwide are covered by the index.

One real-world measure of the journal’s increasing influence is the fact that it has 369 institutional subscribers, with only about half of those in North America. The rest are spread over every inhabitable continent. Another is that growing demand has prompted the publisher to reprint early issues that had gone out of print, and now the journal’s entire catalog is available. Perhaps even more satisfying is that now that Feminist Economics has given a stronger voice to alternative views, mainstream economics journals are taking note.

All this is gratifying to Strassmann. “It’s fundamental to academic inquiry to talk to other people, to examine your own ideas, and to consider that other people might know something or have ideas that you don’t,” she says. “You also have to be willing to consider that your own insights might not necessarily be the most useful for people elsewhere.”

For the discipline of economics, this means refining economic models to incorporate women’s realities within the family and marketplace, understanding the nearly global imbalance between the sexes, and rectifying women’s perpetual second-class economic position. “To the extent that the field of feminist economics improves the welfare of women as a class,” Strassmann says, “it will have achieved one of its important goals.”

But, she stresses, feminist economics is as much about challenging stereotypes as it is about women. “Rigid gender roles can be a burden to men, too” she says. “We take the position that equality and social values are shared and that making society more equitable will enhance the well-being of everyone—women, children, and men included.”

by Christopher Dow