Feminist Economics

Feminist contributions to economics took many different forms, and opin­ions differ as to which were the most important. One notable feature was attention to the intellectual history of the discipline, reflected in many of the sources cited in preceding chapters.

Empirical research on the sexual wage differential had long been under­way. However, standard human capital models (briefly described in the preceding chapter) generally interpreted women's lower levels of job market experience as an independent variable—looking at their effects, but not their causes. In the 1990s, research began to look more directly at the costs of specializing in care provision. Studies of pay standards revealed that most women's jobs were typically paid less than men's independently of the characteristics of their workers. Jobs that involved care for others seemed especially underpaid.¹⁰ Research also began to show that women who took time out of paid employment to care for a child paid a greater price in lifetime earnings than the standard models could account for. 11 Mary Astell and Poulain de la Barre would not have been surprised by these results (see discussion in Chapter 2).

For decades, most national statistical agencies assumed that all households had one “head” that could only be a female if no adult male family member was present in the home. Political mobilization spearheaded by Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder in the U. S. in the 1980s lead to new wording and definitions based on “householders” and “reference persons”.¹² The U.S. Census Bureau also developed a new survey monitoring enforcement of child support respon­sibilities that increased pressure for legislative change in that area.1³

During the same time period the World Bank and other multilateral agencies began to develop and field household-based surveys that devoted more attention to the economic contributions of women and children outside of market employment—the Living Standards Measurement Surveys.¹⁴ Economists and other social scientists began to use these data to explore bargaining and inequality within the family.15 William Thompson, Anna Wheeler, John Stuart Mill, and Harriet Taylor could have predicted their results.

Surveys of time use based on detailed diary data had long been adminis­tered by academic researchers, but no national statistical agencies supported such efforts.