Evelyn Forget says:  
<I wonder if one aspect of a "feminist critique" of economics ought not to  
be a  
tremendous reluctance to indulge in "pure theory".  
  
  
Pat Gunning asks:  
"Eric, when the economist says that, other things equal  
and given the definitions of the terms, a rise in  
demand will lead to a rise in price, I wonder which  
value is being introduced or disguised."  
  
  
Real world example: the demand for nurses has increased tremendously in my  
province over the last several years. At the same time, the typical nurse is  
working fewer hours at less than full-time wages. Nursing graduates are  
leaving the province because (despite the documented scarcity) they can't  
find  
full-time jobs at what they consider a competitive wage. Why aren't  
full-time  
jobs being created?  
  
Any economist can understand it: New grads are a minority in the  
profession. The nursing union has been able to exploit the scarcity by  
demanding part-time (lower waged) jobs that the majority of its members  
prefer  
because, by combining part-time jobs, they can attain a flexibility in hours  
worked that full-time jobs don't allow. That is, they choose to take part of  
their wage in increased leisure. There is nothing here inconsistent with  
either rationality or economic theory.  
  
I think, though, that gender might be relevant. When asked why they prefer  
lower waged part-time jobs, nurses typically cite the difficulty of  
accessing  
affordable daycare for shift work, working shifts while being a single mom,  
and, generally, their difficulty meeting what they consider an inflexible  
demand for household labour.  
  
This seems to me gendered, and (while it's clearly a policy matter) it turns  
out that perfectly rational women sometimes make different decisions than  
equally rational men. (That is, neither the objective nor the constraints on  
the utility function are gender-blind). If we ignore the gendered division  
of  
labour (both in the market and in the household) economists simply reinforce  
the view held by other social scientists of the (ir)relevance of our  
theory.>  
  
  
  
  
The theoretical part of this posting is the use of the theory of demand and  
of the effect of barriers to entry on market structure.  Coupled with  
knowledge gained from market studies, it is used to explain the historical  
structure of a particular market.  It is no proof of the irrelevance of  
theory; instead, it shows that theory alone cannot explain the structure of  
particular labor markets.  You need to know something about the participants  
for that explanation.  
  
Sam Bostaph