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Virtue and Consequences

The views of Jevons and Marshall exemplify a moral double standard: men should pursue their own self-interest whatever it might be, but women should subordinate themselves to the needs of others.

Marshall reframed the classical exclusion of reproductive labor, mapping it onto a new distinc­tion between market and non-market work. The putative motive behind work became the arbiter of its productivity: in the new Marshallian frame­work a woman who provided domestic services in order to earn money was considered productive while a woman who provided them out of a sense of moral duty was not (even though she received a share of her husband's income in return).54 The market/non-market distinction solidified the Victorian concept of separate spheres, soon deeply embedded in the concep­tual infrastructure of economic classification: censuses and national income accounts.

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Source: Folbre N.. Greed, Lust and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas. Oxford University Press,2010. - 304 pages. 2010

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