I asked for evidence that economists associate rationality with
masculinity. I should have asked for evidence that current mainstream
economists make that association - some critics clearly do. My point is
that the abstract rational agent of modern mainstream economics has no
particular gender.
The claim (or a claim that is made) seems to be not that men are more
rational than women (that would be really offensive, as Sam Bostaph notes),
or even that economists think that men are more rational, but that
rationality is culturally associated with masculinity and that economists
*therefore* assume that all (abstract, gender-free) agents are rational, in
a certain abstract sense, and what is more, do so without admitting or even
knowing that they are influenced by ideas of masculinity. As applied to
present day economics, that seems implausible to me, though claims about
unconscious motivation are always hard to disprove.
As I noted in my previous post, notions of masculinity, 'manliness', and
the like have been widespread in many cultures and have (therefore) figured
in past economic writings. In the C19 and later, in the West, economic
rationality was often associated implicitly (and I guess explicitly, though
I don't have citations to hand) with masculinity. (In other cultures at
other times, masculinity has been associated with other things - physical
violence, bravery, defence of honour, contempt for economic rationality,
and so on.) A historical question which one could ask, is: was the
rationality assumption adopted in economics because it was deemed masculine
at the time (and therefore good, strong, etc.) or was it adopted for other
reasons and then associated with masculinity (to the extent that it was)
because that was the rhetoric of the time? I suspect the latter.
Tony Brewer
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