A Herstory of Economics. Edith Kuiper. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Edith Kuiper
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Экономика
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781509538447
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about women is not a coincidence. They were part of a male-dominated tradition of economics in which women’s concerns and interests did not have a place. Although Luxemburg and Robinson themselves had little to do with it, their place in the field as token women takes the light away from other women who wrote about their economic views, experiences, concerns, and interests and who thus missed out on the attention they deserved. It took until only a few decades ago for this to change.

      The book introduces the reader to a wealth of works by both women economic writers and women economists, the difference being that the former wrote about economic topics but did not have an academic status. For many of these women, their lack of academic status was caused by the fact that universities were closed to them. This only changed at the end of the nineteenth century, after which female economists were able to enter the discipline and start to publish in academic journals. The reader will meet a diverse group of women who put their economic thoughts and experiences on record; their insights are out there waiting to be rediscovered. Synthesizing my extended exploration of their works, I highlight a set of themes that emerged from bringing these writings back into the limelight.

      This book aims to meet the need for a more accessible text on women’s economic writing that can be used in courses on the history of economic thought – a book that introduces students, as well as a general audience interested in the development of our economic thinking, to the work of women economic writers and economists. Each of the nine chapters of the book addresses a theme, while telling the stories of these women and analyzing their work along chronological lines. It has not been possible, by any means, to cover all women economic writers and economists in the UK and the US. To maintain some coherency, I had to step away from discussing the work of some of the great women whom you might expect to appear in these pages; Mary Robinson, Madame De Staël, Helen Bosanquet, and Emma Goldman come to mind, but there are (many) others. This does show, though, that there is still more work out there that deserves to be analyzed and brought into the herstory of economics.

      The themes distilled from these women’s economic writings coincide with some of the main debates in the academic field of political economy, which, by the end of the nineteenth century, came to be known as “economics” or “economic science.” Together, the chapters in this book cover the period from 1700 to 2020. While the story in each one unfolds in a chronological manner, each chapter also focuses on a specific period in which the main theme of that chapter surfaced in economic debates inside and outside academia. The last chapter brings the main findings together, thereby collating some of the lessons that can be learned by listening to our foremothers and reading their work.

      Presented in this book is a rarefied group of women. In the eighteenth century, even those upper-class and aristocratic women who had learned to read and write saw their lives strictly regulated by laws and social norms that limited their ability to study, write, and publish. Practically all women in the UK were excluded from higher education and universities over most of the past four centuries, and it was against the law to teach enslaved people to read and write in the US. Because of these restrictions, most of the women who were able to read and write and who left economic texts for posterity were upper-class and aristocratic women. Some working-class and enslaved women did manage, against all the odds, to learn how to read and write, including on economic issues, and some of their texts are included in this overview.

      Women economic writers wrote predominantly in non-academic genres: pamphlets, letters, diaries, household books, poems, etc. Quite a few of them commented on, translated, and engaged with the work of the male academic economists of their time. Again others focused fully on the day-to-day interests and concerns of women, which they wanted to become more widely known. Others were involved in politics, activism, and public debates. Rather than aiming to make a name for themselves, these women articulated their views in order to make their point as a contribution to their cause.