I grew up in a family exposed to great contrasts of poverty and wealth, in which women were always the ones expected to ‘make nice.” I’ve long been fascinated by the parallels among unfair inequalities based on gender, sexuality, age, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and class, and the ways in which these inequalities are disguised, justified, or just plain ignored. This fascination has driven my successful and very lucky career as a socialist feminist economist and public intellectual.
A great—and very readable--explanation of how unpaid work, including care for dependents, has been rendered economically invisible. You may consider the “national income accounts” a hopelessly boring topic. This book will change your mind, and economists today are actually paying attention to it. Sooner rather than later the very concept of “income” is going to be redefined.
This is a revolutionary and powerfully argued feminist analysis of modern economics, revealing how woman's housework, caring of the young, sick and the old is automatically excluded from value in economic theory. An example of this pervasive and powerful process is the United Nation System of National Accounts which is used for wars and determining balance of payments and loan requirements. The author has also written "Women, Politics and Power" and is a formidable force in the politics of New Zealand, serving three terms in Parliament and helping bring down a Prime Minister. She holds a doctorate in political economy…
This classic anthology reveals “rational economic man” as a naked and misshapen emperor pretending to be grandly dressed. While unpacking the androcentric (and plain old sexist) assumptions of conventional economic theory, it also provides rich examples of new ways of explaining the links between gender, care, and inequality.
This is the first book to examine the central tenets of economics from a feminist point of view. In these original essays, the authors suggest that the discipline of economics could be improved by freeing itself from masculine biases. Beyond Economic Man raises questions about the discipline not because economics is too objective but because it is not objective enough. The contributors--nine economists, a sociologist, and a philosopher--discuss the extent to which gender has influenced both the range of subjects economists have studied and the way in which scholars have conducted their studies. They investigate, for example, how masculine concerns…
From the author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of two rival secret agents — one Confederate, the other Union — sent to Britain during the Civil War.
The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was ordered to acquire a clandestine fleet intended to break Lincoln’s blockade, sink Northern…
Take a look at gender inequality from the perspective of the Global South. Naila Kabeer combines creative theorizing with insights from field research. She’s not afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom about sweatshops and insists that even factory jobs that are poorly paid by Western standards can increase women’s autonomy and bargaining power.
Reversed Realities uncovers the deeply entrenched, hence barely visible, biases which underpin mainstream development theory and account for the marginal status given to women's needs in current development policy. Naila Kabeer traces the emergence of 'women' as a specific category in development thought and examines alternative frameworks for analysing gender hierarchies. She identifies the household as a primary site for the construction of power relations and compares the extent to which gender inequalities are revealed in different approaches to the concept of the family unit. The book assesses the inadequacies of the poverty line as a measuring tool and provides…
You may not agree with everything in this book (I don’t) but its extraordinarily compelling critique of profit worship built on utter disregard for the well-being of others illustrates powerful synergies between patriarchal and capitalist norms. At the same time, the care collective offers powerful examples of the ways in which people sometimes rally quite effectively around principles of mutual aid.
The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care-childcare, healthcare, elder care-to care for the natural world. We live in a world where carelessness reigns, but it does not have to be this way.
The Care Manifesto puts forth a vision for a truly caring world. The authors want to reimagine the role of care in our everyday lives, making it the organising principle in every dimension and at every scale of life. We are all dependent on each other, and only by nurturing these interdependencies can we cultivate a world…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
It’s a great and up-to-date overview of gender inequality on a global scale, covering paid and unpaid work, public policies, and the impact of patriarchal institutions. It also explains why current trajectories of economic development are both inadequate and unsustainable.
Gender, Development, and Globalization is the leading primer on global feminist economics and development. Lourdes Beneria, a pioneer in the field of feminist economics, is joined in this second edition by Gunseli Berik and Maria Floro to update the text to reflect the major theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions and global developments in the last decade. Its interdisciplinary investigation remains accessible to a broad audience interested in an analytical treatment of the impact of globalization processes on development and wellbeing in general and on social and gender equality in particular.
The revision will continue to provide a wide-ranging discussion of…
Why do patriarchal systems survive? This book examines the contradictory effects of capitalist development, explaining why the work of caring for others is undervalued and under-rewarded in today's global economy. It upends conventional definitions of the economy based only on the market and emphasizes the production of human capabilities in families and communities. The social reproduction of group solidarities creates fractal inequalities that often stabilize hierarchical systems, but sometimes lead to the development of coalitions for progressive change.
A Sumerian tale of irrigation, floods, and the creation of man
By
Ken Goudsward,
Contrary to popular belief, the Atrahasis Epic is not merely a flood myth. In some ways it can be called a creation myth. However, it does not concern itself with the creation of the universe or even of the earth. Rather, the created work in question is one of culture…
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and…
