Women and the Economy: A Reader

This reader is designed for use as a primary or supplementary text for courses on women's role in the economy. Both interdisciplinary and heterodox in its approach, it showcases feminist economic analyses that utilize insights from institutionalism as well as neoclassical economics. Including both classic and newer selections from a broad range of areas, each section includes an introduction with background material, as well as discussion questions, exercises, and lists of key terms an further readings. 1: Methodologies for Studying Women and the Economy; 1: Rethinking Economics Through a Feminist Lens; 2: Revisiting Class; 3: Feminist Economics; 2: The Rise and Fall of Separate Spheres; 4: Breadwinners and Other Workers; 5: Industrialization, Female Labor Force Participation, and the Modern Division of Labor by Sex; 6: Men and Monotony; 7: Exploring “Present Through the Past”; 8: Marriage, Children, and Women's Employment; 3: Households and Social Reproduction; 9: The Economic Risks of Being a Housewife; 10: For Love or Money—Or Both?; 11: Student Attitudes Toward Roles of Women and Men; 12: The Household as a Focus for Research; 4: Mainstream Approaches to Labor Market Outcomes; 13: The Earnings Gap and Family Choices; 14: Race and Gender Wage Gaps in the Market for Recent College Graduates; 15: Motor Bus Deregulation and the Gender Wage Gap; 16: “That Single-Mother Element”; 5: Heterodox Approaches to Labor Market Outcomes; 17: The Political Economy of Labor Market Discrimination; 18: Black Women's Breakthrough into Clerical Work; 19: Gender as More Than a Dummy Variable; 20: Just Checking It Out; 6: Policies Affecting Women, Work, and Families; 21: Single, with Children; 22: The Minimum Wage Increase; 23: The Challenge of Comparable Worth; 24: Curing Child Poverty in the United States; 25: Why Americans Need Family Leave Benefits and How They Can Get Them; 7: The Gendered Impact of Economic Development and Globalization; 26: Gender and International Labor Standards in the World Economy; 27: Globalization, Gender, and the Davos Man; 28: Development, Gender, and the Environment; 29: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women