------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW -------------- 
Published by EH.NET (August 2004) 
 
Robert Dimand and Chris Nyland, editors, _The Status of Women in  
Classical Economic Thought_. Cheltenham UK: Edward Elgar, 2003. ix +  
315 pp. $95 (hardcover), ISBN: 1-8440644-78-8. 
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by Ingrid H. Rima, Department of Economics,  
Temple University. 
 
 
Robert Dimand and Chris Nyland have brought together fifteen essays,  
six of which have been previously published in leading journals, to  
examine little known insights that eighteenth and nineteenth century  
classical economists had about the relatively inferior status of  
women in their societies. Despite their disparate national  
backgrounds and areas of contemporary specialization, the  
contributors' essays "hang together" surprisingly well. This is  
surely attributable to the skill of the editors, both in inviting  
contributions and guiding their cohesiveness. The leitmotif that  
links them is their recognition that classical economists were  
neither without interest or voice relating to the status of women.  
The historical origins of modern day gender conservatism is quite  
clearly attributable to classical thinkers who, like Jean-Baptiste  
Say and William Nassau Senior, were politically rather than  
philosophically oriented. Given the political unrest implicit in the  
class inequalities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the  
concern of Say and Senior was directed chiefly to maintaining civil  
stability and order in spite of the harsh working conditions of  
unmarried single mothers and widows. Their argument, which still has  
present-day adherents, was that the lower wages of women (and their  
associated poverty) is in large part a reflection of the fact that a  
man's wage is necessarily a requisite for a family, rather than a  
single person. Counterarguments were being expressed in the writings  
of reformers like Mary Wollstonecraft in her _A Vindication of the  
Rights of Women_ (1792), and Priscilla Wakefield's "Reflections on  
the Present Condition of the Female Sex" (1798), which extended the  
relevance of Smith's productive labor to women. Editor Dimand  
provides further details about her work in his chapter 10. Along with  
the insights provided by Evelyn Forget about the alternative work  
opportunities provided for unmarried women in quasi-convent  
communities established by the state, and favored by J. B. Say, we  
learn that the harsh era of post-Napoleonic France was not without  
influential socially concerned classical thinkers. 
 
While the great English jurist Jeremy Bentham shared the concerns of  
most conservative English thinkers who feared the repetition in  
England of the revolutionary attitudes that prevailed in France, he  
also recognized that English law excluded women from their rightful  
freedoms and opportunities. Even though Bentham's Utilitarianism  
provided a philosophical foundation for greater gender equality as a  
modus operandi for realizing greater social "happiness," it was the  
fear that these revolutionary attitudes were capable of crossing the  
English Channel that prevailed. The essays in this volume thus  
establish that the conventional wisdom that classical thinkers, with  
few exceptions, which included John Stuart Mill and his wife,  
Harriet, focused almost exclusively on the economic role of men, and  
were unconcerned with women, is patently untrue. Each of the  
contributors, Annie L. Cot, Evelyn Forget, Peter Groenewegen, Thomas  
Heenan, and David Levy, in addition to the two editors, provide  
analyses that enlighten us about the nature of classicists' interest  
in the sources of gender inequalities, and the possibilities for  
readdressing them. 
 
The secondary theme of the collection -- namely that the cultural and  
economic transformation of the status of women lends itself to  
explanation in terms of Adam Smith's "stages of social history" view  
of economic progress -- is presented with less assurance than the  
first. The origin of Smith's stages of social history perspective is  
attributed by editor Nyland to one John Millar, a fellow Scotsman and  
faculty member at Glasgow. Smith is said to have developed the stages  
of history perspective in his _Lectures on Jurisprudence_ (1766).  
Nyland explores the theme in two chapters: Chapter 5, "Adam Smith's  
Stage Theory and the Status of Women," and Chapter 6, "Women's  
Progress and the End of History." The essential conclusion of Chapter  
5 is that with the achievement of the commercial stage "productivity  
and wealth accumulation reaches a stage that makes possible very  
important changes in the state of society and particularly in  
relation to women" (p. 117). Yet, Millar is reported to have opined  
that "an end point to the rise of women had (by then) been reached"  
(p. 120). Thus, in chapter 6 "Women's Progress and the End of  
History," the focus shifts to Malthus's views on the importance to  
society of preserving the traditional form of marriage, leading  
Nyland to an ambivalent assessment of the likely ongoing progress of  
women and the inference that the social evolution of women may well  
require a society that has developed beyond capitalism. Nyland  
further suggests Smith's "stages of economic development" perspective  
for explaining the possibilities for changing the status of women has  
been obscured partly because his Lectures languished unpublished for  
more than a century, so that "he never published the [stages of  
history] argument" (p. 6). This is not entirely accurate; the sequel  
to the _Lectures_ (1766) was his magnum opus, _The Wealth of Nations_  
(WN) (1776), which carries forward the theme of stages of social  
history in its Book III "of the Different Progress of Opulence in  
Different Nations." This is the briefest and least studied part of  
the five books comprising _The Wealth of Nations_, and has yet to  
receive the critical attention it deserves. With this book, Smith is  
returning to the "stages of social history" theme introduced earlier  
in his _Lectures on Jurisprudence_ (1766) to speculate about the  
origin of economic surplus and its role in the relationship between  
"the higher and lower orders" of the economic hierarchy. 
 
Joseph Schumpeter once observed that the materials of Book III of  
_WN_ would have made an excellent starting point for an historical  
sociology of economic life (Schumpeter 1954, p.187.) Smith's focus in  
the _Lectures_ is on the societal aspects of economic behavior, and  
on the institutions within which the economic process is carried out  
during the stages of economic development that preceded the nascent  
industrial economy of the England of his own day. This differs from  
the perspective of the four other books, in which Smith's focus is on  
the relationship between _economic_ rather than social classes. 
 
Class conflict (of which gender conflict is surely an integral part)  
is the likely outcome when the stationary state "in which that full  
complement of riches which the nature and its institutions permits it  
to acquire" (Smith 1776, I, viii, p. 82) -- in which there are no  
ongoing additions to the economic surplus -- has been attained. When  
the growth process becomes attenuated at some future time that is  
still too distant to contemplate, with the emergence of a stationary  
state (which Smith describes China as having already achieved), the  
inference can be made that gender conflict is as likely to become  
aggravated as class conflict. The prospect for both gender and class  
conflict in a "slow growth" or "no growth" economy seems inevitable  
as those who are poor come to recognize they are involved in a  
zero-sum game. 
 
A difficulty that is encountered in understanding Book III is that it  
is often necessary to interpolate passages from the _Lectures_ and  
from other Books of _WN_ to develop Smith's underlying historical  
perspective and their relationship to class enmity. Thus it seems  
that the extension of Smith's stages of social history perspective to  
incorporate gender conflict (as well as class conflict) requires a  
linking of the argument to the growth of society's social surplus,  
which is ongoing until the advent of the stationary state. The  
conflict to which the classical economists addressed themselves is  
among social classes -- workers (women as well as men), capitalists  
and landlords. Book III extends the stages of history analysis from  
the _Lectures_ to anticipate that class conflict is the likely  
outcome when the stationary state is reached. It is surprising to  
encounter the renaming of the classical stationary state, which is so  
central to classical thinking, especially after Smith, as "the end of  
history stage." 
 
Be that as it may, this is a small distraction that does not take  
away from the recognition this volume provides about the  
contributions of classical thinkers to the origins of gender conflict. 
 
References: 
 
Ingrid Rima (1998) "Class Conflict and Adam Smith's Stages of Social  
History", _Journal of the History of Economic Thought_, 20 (1). 
 
Joseph Schumpeter (1954), _History of Economic Analysis_, Oxford  
University Press, New York. 
 
Adam Smith (1937 [1776]) _The Wealth of Nations_, Modern Library, New York. 
 
 
Ingrid Rima's publications include _Development of Economic  
Analysis_, Routledge (sixth edition), 2000. 
 
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