The famous woman's rights activists of the nineteenth-century United States, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, have seldom been considered contributors to economic theory.

The issues they pursued, including gender inequality and family law, were not of interest to most economists. Their ideas were presented, for the most part, in speeches and newspaper articles, rather than in weighty tomes.

Yet Stanton and her sister activists were fascinated by a central theme of political economy—the tension between individual self-interest and collective welfare—and, like Mill and Taylor, interpreted this tension in highly gen­dered terms. While U.S. feminists drew inspiration from the abolitionist movement, they also influenced it, emphasizing the corrupting effect that slavery had on family life. They also advanced discussion of three specific economic issues: collective interests based on gender, the economic significance of family work, and the importance of family law and reproductive rights.