Sumitra, surely you realize that many others besides women were locked 
out of all sorts of endeavors in Smith's time. Smith, in his 
contribution to economics as a science of the study of how the consumer 
role benefits from the market system and/or from market intervention, 
was not writing so much about the societies of his time as he was about 
a hypothetical situation of "natural liberty."

Relating this to the quote from Michele Pujol, it surely is irrelevant 
whether the brewer, baker, and butcher are male or female; whether the 
pin factory manager is male or female; or whether women or men, acting 
in their own interest, often benefit others in this "hypothetical 
situation."

As for the the sexual division of labor, it seems to me that some 
aspects of what Michele has in mind are not part of a market economy 
(which assumes the use of money). The fact that, in this quote at least, 
she makes no distinction between market and non-market actions or 
transactions suggests that she has not paid sufficient attention to the 
what economics, as I defined it above, is about. Economics, as I defined 
it, also does not pay direct attention to barter systems, human 
development, higher-level primate cultures, and a host of other things 
that some people regard as important. But that is not a critique of 
economics; it is more a lament by one who had some ideological agenda.

I submit that so-called feminist economists, like most economists 
(including, sadly, the historians of the subject), simply don't care 
very much about the definition of economics. They have discovered other 
ways to make headway in today's diverse economics profession.


On 4/4/2011 11:28 PM, Sumitra Shah wrote:
> I would like to suggest that 'founding father' captures the gendered reality of the times. Since women were locked out of the public sphere and all manner of intellectual and scientific endeavors, it had to be a father figure.
>
> But feminist economists have criticized not just the implication of such a 'masculine' development of the discipline, but have attributed the continuing gendered nature of economics to its origins. Michele Pujol in her Feminism and Anti-feminism in Early Economic Thought, uses Smith's designated status to great ironic advantage. She writes:
>
> "Smith was the founder of the classical school and the 'father' of modern economics...His writings gave an indication of the initial treatment women received from the pen of an economist who set out to develop a theory of the workings of the nascent capitalist system. They thus offer an invaluable perspectives on the origin of the contemporary economic approaches to women and of the failure of Smith's 'sons' to analyze the characteristics and role of the sexual division of labor (productive and reproductive) to the capitalist system (p. 15).
>
> Sumitra Shah

-- 
Pat Gunning
Professor of Economics
Melbourne, Florida
http://www.nomadpress.com/gunning/welcome.htm