How (the meaning of) gender matters in political economy

New Political Economy

Volumn 10, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 499-521

  Peterson, V Spike ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER; POLITICAL ECONOMY;

EID: 31344443389     PISSN: 13563467     EISSN: 14699923     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13563460500344468     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. Torry D. Dickinson & Robert K. Schaeffer, Fast Forward: Work, Gender, and Protest in a Changing World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 23.
2. Joanne Cook & Jennifer Roberts, 'Towards a gendered political economy', in: Joanne Cook, Jennifer Roberts & Georgina Waylen (eds), Towards a Gendered Political Economy (Macmillan, 2000), p. 3.
3. Pertinent clarifications: I view 'feminist political economy' as a blend of feminist work primarily but not exclusively in economics, development studies, political economy, international relations and international political economy. My treatment here of political economy and 'new political economy' is very much shaped by my specialisation in international relations (IR) theory, my research on globalisation, and my belief that today's political economy is significantly global political economy. References in this article focus on feminist publications since 1995; for earlier work, see 'gender' articles in New Political Economy, especially Georgina Waylen, 'Gender, Feminism and Political Economy', New Political Economy, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1997), pp. 205-20, and note 8. I prefer 'global political economy' (GPE) to international political economy (IPE) in so far as it emphasises transnational dynamics and transdisciplinary analysis. In this study I characterise scholarship on gender as 'feminist' and do not engage recent claims that gender can or should be studied apolitically. I recognise that phenomena characterised as 'economic' are favoured here at the expense of more 'politically' oriented analyses; a substantial and expanding literature - especially in feminist IR - addresses the latter. For accessibility, I deploy conventional (though problematic) references to 'advanced industrialised countries', 'developing countries', 'Third World' and so on. Finally, slashes between words indicate similarity rather than contrast.
4. Review of Radical Political Economics has had seven such issues; see especially 'Feminist Political Economy', Vol. 33, No. 4 (2001).
5. V. Spike Peterson, 'On the Cut(ting) Edge', in: Frank P. Harvey & Michael Brecher (eds), Critical Perspectives in International Studies: Millennial Reflections on International Studies (University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 148-63;
6. Marianne A. Ferber & Julie A. Nelson (eds), Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics (University of Chicago Press, 1993);
7. especially, Gabrielle Meagher & Julie A. Nelson, 'Survey Article: Feminism in the Dismal Science', The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2004), pp. 102-26,
8. and Georgina Waylen, 'You Still Don't Understand: Why Troubled Engagements Continue Between Feminists and (Critical) IPE', Review of International Studies (forthcoming).
9. Feminist interventions raise not only political/public, but personal/ private issues that are 'disturbing' (from religious beliefs and sexual relations to who cleans the toilet and how value and power are masculinised). To the considerable extent that the implications are experienced as personally threatening, they generate defensiveness and resistance that shape receptivity to feminist critiques.
10. Important overviews and coverage of early critiques include: Diane Elson (ed.), Male Bias in the Development Process (Manchester University Press, 1991);
11. Antonella Picchio, Social Reproduction (Cambridge University Press, 1992);
12. Michèle A. Pujol, Feminism and Anti-feminism in Early Economic Thought (Edward Elgar, 1992);
13. Ferber & Nelson, Beyond Economic Man;
14. Isabella Bakker (ed.), The Strategic Silence: Gender and Economic Policy (Zed, 1994);
15. Nancy Folbre, Who Pays for the Kids? (Routledge, 1994);
16. Edith Kuiper & Jolande Sap (eds), Out of the Margin: Feminist Perspectives on Economics (Routledge, 1995);
17. Julie A. Nelson, Feminism, Objectivity and Economics (Routledge, 1996)
18. Ellen Mutari, Heather Boushey & William Fraher IV (eds), Gender and Political Economy: Incorporating Diversity into Theory and Policy (M. E. Sharpe, 1997);
19. Jean Gardiner, Gender, Care and Economics (Macmillan, 1997);
20. Cook, Roberts & Waylen, Towards a Gendered Political Economy;
21. and Lourdes Benería, Maria Floro, Caren Grown & Martha MacDonald (eds), special issue on 'Globalization', Feminist Economics, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2000).
22. Post-1995 histories of the women/gender and development literatures include Joya Misra, 'Gender and the world-system: Engaging the feminist literature on development', in: Thomas Hall (ed.), A World-systems Reader: New Perspectives on Gender, Urbanism, Cultures, Indigenous Peoples, and Ecology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), pp. 105-27;
23. Shirin M. Rai, Gender and the Political Economy of Development (Polity, 2002)
24. and Lourdes Benería, Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if People Mattered (Routledge 2003).
25. Esther Boserup, Women's Role in Economic Development (St. Martin's Press, 1970);
26. Nilufer Çaǧatay, Diane Elson & Caren Grown (eds), special issue on 'Gender, Adjustment and Macroeconomics', World Development, Vol. 23, No. 11 (1995);
27. Kathleen Cloud & Nancy Garrett, 'A Modest Proposal for Inclusion of Women's Household Human Capital Production in Analysis of Structural Transformation', Feminist Economics, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1997), pp. 151-77;
28. Saskia Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents (New Press, 1998)
29. and 'Women's Burden: Counter-geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival', Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 2 (2000), pp. 503-24;
30. Elisabeth Prügl, The Global Construction of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century (Columbia University Press, 1999);
31. Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, second edition (University of Toronto Press, 1999);
32. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work (Stanford University Press, 2001)
33. Deborah M. Figart, Ellen Mutari & Marilyn Power, Living Wages, Equal Wages: Gender and Labour Market Policies in the United States (Routledge, 2002);
34. Caren Grown, Diane Elson & Nilufer Çaǧatay (eds), special issue on 'Growth, Trade, Finance, and Gender Inequality', World Development, Vol. 28, No. 7 (2000);
35. Rita Mae Kelly, Jane H. Bayes, Mary E. Hawkesworth & Brigitte Young (eds), Gender, Globalization, & Democratization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001);
36. Susan Himmelweit, 'Making Visible the Hidden Economy: The Case for Gender-impact Analysis of Economic Policy', Feminist Economics, Vol. 8, No.1 (2002), pp. 49-70;
37. and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Duke University Press, 2003).
38. For example, in a comprehensive study, Hewitson persuasively argues that 'neoclassical economics produces femininity as that which must be excluded for it to operate'. Gillian J. Hewitson, Feminist Economics: Interrogating the Masculinity of Rational Economic Man (Edward Elgar, 1999), p. 22.
39. For recent examples, see Cecile Jackson (ed.), Men at Work: Labour, Masculinities, Development (Frank Cass, 2001);
40. Frances Cleaver (ed.), Masculinities Matter! Men, Gender and Development (Zed, 2002);
41. Rai, Gender and the Political Economy of Development
42. Benería, Gender, Development and Globalization;
43. and Suzanne Bergeron, Fragments of Development: Nation, Gender and the Space of Modernity (University of Michigan Press, 2004).
44. Jacqui M. Alexander & Chandra T. Mohanty (eds), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (Routledge, 1997);
45. Uma Narayan & Sandra Harding (eds), Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World (Indiana University Press, 2000);
46. Rose Brewer, Cecilia Conrad & Mary C. King, 'The Complexities and Potential of Theorizing Gender, Caste, Race, and Class', Feminist Economics, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2002), pp. 3-17;
47. Geeta Chowdhry & Sheila Nair (eds), Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class (Routledge, 2002);
48. Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders.
49. Çaǧatay et al., 'Gender, Adjustment and Macroeconomics';
50. J. K. Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (Blackwell, 1996);
51. Zillah R. Eisenstein, Global Obscenities: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Lure of Cyberfantasy (New York Press, 1998)
52. and Against Empire: Feminisms, Racisms, and the West (Zed, 2004);
53. Grown et al., 'Growth, Trade, Finance, and
54. Marianne H. Marchand & Anne Sisson Runyan (eds), Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites and Resistances (Routledge, 2000);
55. Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Nicholas G. Faraclas & Claudia von Werlholf (eds), There is an Alternative: Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization (Zed, 2001);
56. Dickinson & Schaeffer, Fast Forward;
57. Suzanne Bergeron, 'Political Economy Discourses of Globalization and Feminist Politics', Signs, Vol. 26, No. 4 (2001), pp. 983-1006;
58. Kelly et al., Gender, Globalization, & Democratization;
59. Sheila Rowbotham & Stephanie Linkogle (eds), Women Resist Globalization: Mobilizing for Livelihood and Rights (Zed, 2001);
60. Nancy Naples & Manisha Desai (eds), Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics (Routledge, 2002);
61. Martha Gutierrez (ed.), Macro-Economics: Making Gender Matter - Concepts, Policies and Institutional Change in Countries (Zed, 2003);
62. and Valentine M. Moghadam Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
63. Drucilla K. Barker & Edith Kuiper (eds), Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics (Routledge, 2003).
64. As it is typically deployed, however, constructivists (on my reading) fail to address adequately the relationship between language, power and knowledge. In particular, they resist poststructuralist claims that the meaning of all words, 'things' and subjectivities is produced through/by discursive practices that are embedded in relations of power; that language produces power by constituting the codes of meaning that govern how we think, communicate and generate knowledge claims - indeed, how we understand 'reality'. Operations of power are not extricable from the power coded into our meaning systems and their social, 'material' effects. Hence, knowledge projects that presume analytical adequacy and political relevance must address the power that inheres in governing codes, which requires, I believe, the adoption of poststructuralist/ postmodernist insights.
65. For elaboration, see V. Spike Peterson, 'Transgressing Boundaries: Theories of Knowledge, Gender, and International Relations', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1992), pp. 183-206,
66. and A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive, and Virtual Economies (Routledge, 2003);
67. for a succinct defence of poststructuralism against its most frequent criticisms, see Hewitson, Feminist Economics;
68. and for discussion of poststructuralism/postmodernism in economics, see Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism;
69. Carole Biewener, 'A Postmodern Encounter', Socialist Review, Vol. 27, Nos. 1 & 2 (1999), pp. 71-96;
70. Stephen Cullenberg, Jack Amariglio & David F. Ruccio (eds), Postmodernism, Economics and Knowledge (Routledge, 2001);
71. Nitasha Kaul, 'The anxious identities we inhabit', in: D. Barker & E. Kuiper (eds), Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics (Routledge, 2003), pp. 194-210;
72. and Eiman O. Zein-Elabdin & S. Charusheela (eds), Postcolonialism Meets Economics (Routledge, 2004).
73. Ferber & Nelson, Beyond Economic Man;
74. Marilyn Power, 'Social Provisioning as a Starting Point for Feminist Economics', Feminist Economics, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2004), pp. 3-20;
75. Drucilla K. Barker & Susan F. Feiner, Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization (University of Michigan Press, 2004).
76. On sexualities, see M. V. Lee Badgett, 'Gender, Sexuality, and Sexual Orientation: All in the Feminist Family?', Feminist Economics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1995), pp. 121-40;
77. Rosemary Hennessey, Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism (Routledge, 2000).
78. Poststructuralism is particularly associated with cultural studies, where cultural and literary phenomena are, appropriately, the central focus. Early poststructuralist theory necessarily highlighted discourse and culture to criticise and counteract orthodox understandings of 'reality' as pre-discursive, or independent of intersubjective meaning systems. But poststructuralism/postmodernism explicitly rejects conventional dichotomies and categorical separations in favour of relational/contextual analysis that exposes how cultural codes produce, and are produced by, material 'reality'. Moreover (see note 15), it affords critiques of how power operates that would advance the project of 'not just understanding the world but changing it.'
79. On Sen and economic rights respectively, see Bina Agarwal, Jane Humphries & Ingrid Robeyns (eds), special issue on 'Amartya Sen's Work and Ideas: A Gender Perspective', Feminist Economics, Vol. 9, No. 2/3 (2003);
80. Laura Parisi, Gendered Disjunctures: Globalization and Women's Rights, dissertation, University of Arizona, 2004.
81. Microcredit loan programmes get mixed feminist reviews; see, for example, Anne Marie Goetz & Rina Sen Gupta, 'Who Takes the Credit? Gender, Power, and Control over Loan Use in Rural Credit Programs in Bangladesh', World Development, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1996), pp. 45-64;
82. S. Charusheela, 'On History, Love, and Politics', Rethinking Marxism, Vol. 12, No. 4 (2000), pp. 45-61;
83. Winifred Poster & Zakia Salime, 'The limits of microcredit', in: Nancy A. Naples & Manisha Desai (eds), Women's Activism and Globalization (Routledge, 2002), pp. 189-219;
84. Suzanne Bergeron, 'Challenging the World Bank's narrative of inclusion', in: Amitava Kumar (ed.), World Bank Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), pp. 157-71.
85. For reasons of space, in this section I cite only key references not already identified herein; for elaboration of argumentation and extensive citations, see Peterson, A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy;
86. 'Getting real: The necessity of critical poststructuralism in Global Political Economy', in: Marieke de Goede (ed.), International Political Economy and Poststructural Politics (Palgrave, forthcoming).
87. Peter Drucker, 'Trading Places', The National Interest (Spring 2005), p. 103.
88. Guy Standing, Global Labour Flexibility: Seeking Distributive Justice (Macmillan, 1999);
89. and Christa Wichterich, The Globalized Woman: Reports from a Future of Inequality (Zed, 2000).
90. Manuel Castells, The Information Age, Volume 1, The Rise of the Network Society, second edition (Blackwell, 2000).
91. Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contested Identities (Routledge, 1996);
92. Manuel Castells, The Information Age, Volume 2, The Power of Identity (Blackwell, 1997);
93. Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents and 'Women's Burden'.
94. See, respectively, S. Charusheela, 'Empowering work? Bargaining models reconsidered', in: Drucilla K. Barker & Edith Kuiper (eds), Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics (Routledge, 2003), pp. 287-303;
95. Naila Kabeer, 'Globalization, Labor Standards, and Women's Rights: Dilemmas of Collective (In)action in an Independent World', Feminist Economics, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2004), pp. 3-36, for problematising 'Western' claims that 'work is empowering' or that enforcing global labour standards serves the interests of export workers in poor countries.
96. Wichterich, The Globalized Woman.
97. On erosion of women's wellbeing and social capital through 'overworking' women, see David H. Ciscel & Julia A. Heath, 'To Market, To Market: Imperial Capitalism's Destruction of Social Capital and the Family, Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2001), pp. 401-14;
98. Martha MacDonald, Shelley Phipps & Lynn Lethbridge, 'Mothers' Milk and Measures of Economic Output', Feminist Economics, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2005), pp. 63-94.
99. For the most comprehensive analysis of the crisis of social reproduction, see Isabella Bakker & Stephen Gill (eds), Power, Production and Social Reproduction: Human In/security in the Global Political Economy (Palgrave, 2003).
100. Debates on how to theorise, define, measure and evaluate informalisation are addressed in Peterson, A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy, ch. 4.
101. The underground economy has been estimated to be worth US$9 trillion (The Economist, 28 August 1999, p. 59);
102. the value of 'housework' to be US$10-15 trillion (Mary Ann Tetreault & Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Global Politics as if People Mattered (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), p. 25).
103. The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics (United Nations, 2000), pp. 120-7.
104. Jean, Pyle, 'Critical globalization studies and gender', in: Richard P. Appelbaum & William I. Robinson (eds), Critical Globalization Studies (Routledge, 2005), pp. 249-58.
105. A variety of sources provide the following estimates (in US dollars, per year) - of 'white collar crime' in the US: $200 billion; of profits from trafficking migrants: $3.5 biAlion; of money laundering: as much as $2.8 trillion; of tax revenue lost to the US by hiding assets offshore: $70 billion; of tax evasion costs to the US government: $195 billion. See Peterson, A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy, pp. 196, 201.
106. Peter Drucker, 'The Global Economy and the Nation-State', Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 5 (1997), p. 162.
107. Lourdes Benería, 'Globalization, Gender and the Davos Man', Feminist Economics, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1999), pp. 61-83;
108. Charlotte Hooper, Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics (Columbia University Press, 2001);
109. Stacey Mayhall, Riding the Bull/Wrestling the Bear, dissertation, York University, 2002.
110. These claims are variously documented in Nahid Aslanbeigui & Gale Summerfield, 'The Asian Crisis, Gender, and the International Financial Architecture', Feminist Economics, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2000), pp. 81-104;
111. Nahid Aslanbeigui & Gale Summerfield, 'Risk, Gender and the International Financial Architecture', International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2001), pp. 7-26;
112. Grown et al., 'Growth, Trade, Finance, and Gender Inequality'
113. Thanh-Dam Truong, 'The Underbelly of the Tiger: Gender and the Demystification of the Asian Miracle', Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1999), pp. 133-65;
114. Robert O'Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte & Marc Williams, Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2000);
115. Ajit Singh & Ann Zammit, 'International Capital Flows: Identifying the Gender Dimension', World Development, Vol. 28, No. 7 (2000), pp. 1249-68;
116. Mario Floro & Gary Dymski, 'Financial Crisis, Gender, and Power: An Analytical Framework', World Development, Vol. 28, No. 7 (2000), pp. 1269-83;
117. and Irene Van Staveren, 'Global Finance and Gender', in: Jan Aart Scholte & Albrecht Schnabel (eds), Civil Society and Global Finance (Routledge, 2002), pp. 228-46.
118. Women are the primary consumers of goods and services designed to 'improve' individual appearance: From cosmetics, hairstyles and clothes to dieting programmes and surgical procedures. This reflects the tremendous pressure on girls and women to appear aesthetically and sexually attractive as a measure of their social/economic value, and subjects them disproportionately to the disciplining effects of marketisation and resource depletion on 'unnecessary' expenditures.
119. For example, consumerism's commodification of culture has effects worldwide on how people think (due to the global, though always locally-mediated, exposure to advertising and marketing messages), what resources they have (due to naturalising the ideology of elite consumption), and what work they do (due to production processes driven by Northern consumption).