Call for proposals for an online workshop in February 2024

To submit as Cambridge Companion to Women’s Economic Thought

Organized by Miriam Bankovsky, [log in to unmask]","type":"person"}">Rebeca Gomez Betancourt, and Marianne Johnson

The teaching of economics and its history in schools and universities has not often included the economic thought of women and LGBTQA+ people, a phenomenon that also extends to the voices courted by media and by governments. The reasons why are both complex and simple – simple because quantifiably, there are few women and openly LGBTQA+ economists. The story becomes complex when we try to explain why this has been the case at different points in time and across different locations. 

Historically, myriad structural and socio-cultural factors have interacted to impact the ability of women to study, practice, and publish economics. Some of these factors have worked to surface the contributions of women to economic thought; for example, the rise of home economics as the empirical study of consumption or the role of women in governmental agencies during the Second World War. More commonly, however, the contributions of women – from Jane Marcet to Elinor Ostrom – have been obscured, marginalized as ‘not economics.’ 

Unsurprisingly, inclusion and recognition deficits for women in economics are heightened when their subject position intersects with other forms of social marginality or disadvantage, including race, sexuality, and gender. Economists who are lesbian, gay, transgender, non-binary, Black, or Indigenous have often brought lived experiences of marginality to their economics, generating new ideas, methods, and theories. Even when their work appears to carry no immediate or direct relation to lived experiences of marginality, there remain visibility deficits. There exists no clear disciplinary sense of how women, including socially marginalized women, have contributed to disciplinary thinking or what these contributions consist of.

This online workshop will facilitate general discussion on these and related topics, resulting in a volume that will build on the small/recent body of work that has featured selections of women’s economic thinking in history. This includes Kirsten Madden’s and Robert Dimand’s edited handbook of women’s economic thought (2019), the first biographical dictionary of women economists by Robert Dimand, Mary Ann Dimand and Evelyn Forget (2000) and their book on women economists (1995). More recently, the History of Political Economy (2022) and Œconomia (2022) have collected discrete studies of individual economic thinkers in special issues. Ann Mari May (2022) and Edith Kupier’s (2022) volumes illustrate the many challenges women faced securing advanced training in economics and employment in academe. Also important to note is Gidandomenica Becchio’s History of Feminist and Gender Economics (2020), which explores the engagement of feminism with economic thought. 

To these collections, we would like to add a volume on the theme of women and the economics of social cooperation and organization. We encourage authors to think beyond single biographies and to present work in ways that uncover broader systemic themes and groupings and to imagine ways in which their contribution can support the inclusion of more women into contemporary economic teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level. 

A subsidiary theme is how, why, and to what impact women have worked around the edges of what might be considered mainstream economics in their effort to address social cooperation and organization. This could include activists, home economists, sociologists, political scientists and individuals in fields that tend to have a high interdisciplinary quotient such as development economics.

Possible topics might include

• Socialist cooperative revolutions to domestic labor: chapters might consider how domestic labor is treated and valued in economic thought or the alternatives that have been proposed to traditional divisions of labor in the production of household output. Another approach would be to examine the history and impact of the time-use surveys of farm, town, and college women produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Home Economics in the 1930s.

• Women’s labor market economics: topics might include a women’s minimum wage, payments for household labor, and/or women in the labor market. Women who worked on early labor topics are also of interest, including, Theresa Schmid McMahon, who was both a labor activist and professional economist, or Frances Perkins, the first woman cabinet member in the United States,  who served as the Secretary of Labor during the New Deal.

• Consumer and agricultural economics: we are also interested in chapters on how family units and households are conceptualized for statistical use. Chapters could deal with agricultural and consumer economists, and their use of demand studies to understand the determinants of prices and incomes as well as consumption choices. Topics might include household production theory, hedonic price theory, definitions of poverty thresholds, or works explaining consumer behavior and consumer welfare.

• Welfare state and women and the family: for individuals such as Alva Myrdal or Barbara Wooten, the welfare state was envisioned to free women from the constraints of home production and allow them to enter the labor force on equal terms with men. State subsidized child care, extended school days, school lunches, and even communal kitchens, particularly when combined with labor-savings devices, all proposed to reduce the in-home labor time of women with significant implications for labor markets, national income, and quality of life. We are interested in chapters that would examine individual contributions, broad analyses of the welfare state, and/or discussion of specific policies.

• Feminist economics: the field of feminist economics is relatively recent, compared to other sub-disciplines of economics (Orozco Espinel & Gomez Betancourt 2023). However, the presence of women economists in this field goes back decades before the 1990s. We welcome contributions focusing on diversity, equality, sorority, gender-aware, and inclusive economic analysis. We are particularly interested in the role played by activists, policy theorists, and practitioners on topics neglected in economics, such as care work, intimate partner violence, or economic theories. The idea is to give a better picture of economic reality by incorporating gendered effects and interactions, such as those existing  between paid and unpaid sectors of economies.

• LGBTQ economics: postmodern, post-structuralism, literary theory, critical cultural studies as treated by Deirdre McCloskey or Lee Badgett are of interest. Another approach would be to consider the impact of definitions of the ‘household’ in empirical ventures such as the Survey of Consumer Purchases or for governmental use in tax assessment or welfare payments. Similarly, we are interested in conceptions of ‘the family’ in economic models in labor economics, macroeconomics, and other fields. 

• Women’s contributions to sub-fields of economics: a common perception, supported by some evidence, suggests the segregation of women into particular subfields of economics, including education, labor economics, and economic development (Beneito, Bosca, Ferri, and Garcia 2021). Chapters that consider the evidence and reasons for this segregation, as well as empirical assessments of the existence of segregation represent some potential topics.  We are also interested in chapters that surface the contributions of women in areas less considered such as econometrics, money, and macroeconomics. Network analyses would be welcome.

• Global South women – The history of economics has been taught mainly via the reference point of a white male from the Global North. In this seminar and book, we seek to pay attention to the voices from the Global South, often absent in the historiography of economics, and to fill in the absence and/or devaluation of women and men of color in the history of economics discipline. The characters of this book would be diverse and multifaceted, studying the role of women and men of color in other parts of the world. Country case studies are welcomed. We also look forward to works that argue that economics in the Global South largely depends on improved reproductive rights, gender equitable laws on ownership and inheritance, and education policies.

• Colonialism, economic development, and the commons: the experience of women in economics has not been homogeneous across the globe, as levels or degrees of marginalization and discrimination exist. Chapters examining colonial, neocolonial, and post-colonial contributions of Global North women such as Joan Robinson, Ursula Hicks, and Mary Jean Bowman would be welcome, as would be comparisons of women working in economic development in the North compared to the South. Also of interest are critical examinations of Elinor Ostrom’s empirical field work on the commons and social decision-making.

Important dates and process:

We seek proposals for presentations in a virtual workshop to take place in February 2024. From these presentations, we anticipate inviting individuals to contribute chapters for a book to be published in the Cambridge Companion Series. Details about the series can be found at this website: 

https://www.cambridge.org/core/publications/collections/cambridge-companions

Submission of proposals for workshop presentations: please send an abstract of maximum 500 words before December 1st, 2023 to Marianne Johnson ([log in to unmask]) and/or Rebeca Gomez Betancourt ([log in to unmask]fr). 

Acceptance of proposals for workshop presentation: acceptances will be communicated to their authors on December 15, 2023.

Submission of drafts for discussion in the workshop: drafts must be shared by January 31st, 2024. Participants will be invited to deposit drafts into an online folder. Details to be provided.

Workshop: virtual workshop to be scheduled in February 2024.

Invitation to contribute chapters: presenters invited to contribute chapters for the Cambridge Elements will be notified by March 1, 2024.

References

Becchio, Giandomenica. 2020. A History of Feminist and Gender Economics. New York: Routledge. 

Beneito, Pilar, Jose Bosca, Javier Ferri, and Manu Garcia. 2021. Gender Imbalance Across Subfields in Economics: When Does it Start? Journal of Human Capital 15(3): 469 - 511.

Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Cléo, Evelyn Forget, and John Singleton (eds.). 2022. New Historical Perspectives on Women and Economics. History of Political Economy 54(Supplement). 

Dimand, Mary Ann, Robert W. Dimand, and Evelyn Forget. Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics. Brookfield: Edward Elgar. 

Dimand, Robert W., Mary Ann Dimand, and Evelyn Forget. 2000. A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists. Northampton: Edward Elgar.

Kuiper, Edith. 2022. A Herstory of Economics. New York: Polity. 

Madden, Kirsten and Robert W. Dimand. 2019. Routledge Handbook of the History of Women’s Economic Thought. New York: Routledge.

May, Ann Mari. 2022. Gender and the Dismal Science: Women in the Early Years of the Economics Profession. New York: Columbia University Press. 

Mosca, Manuela, Magdalena Malecka, and Astrid Angenjo Calderòn (eds.). 2022. Women, Economics, and History. Œconomia 12(2).