Feminist economics as better
economics!
Women’s Budget Group
30 January, 2015
Susan Himmelweit
susan.himmelweit@open.ac.uk
Plan for the morning
• Gender budgeting is the practice
• Feminist Economics as the theory
• Let’s do a bit of theory first!
The main assumption of feminist economics
• Gender relations are an important aspect of any economy
• And gender is structural
– differences in men’s and women’s roles not chance
– but an integral part of how the economy runs
– Changes in economy as conventionally understood can affect gender
relations and vice versa
• Gender therefore needs to be taken account in any
understanding of the economy
– Much mainstream economics, and also much not-so-mainstream
economics, is “gender blind”
– Should instead start by assuming that everything has a gender
dimension
• Feminist economics is therefore not economics for women
but better economics
The scope of feminist economics
•
“The economy” as traditionally understood is dependent on many
activities that lie outside its scope
• Feminist economics is the study of all forms of “provisioning” (Julie
Nelson)
• The survival and reproduction of people and society as a whole requires:
– not only paid employment
but unpaid domestic work
too
– not only production for the
market but for direct use
within families and
communities too
– not only the production of
material goods, but
everything that people
need to grow and flourish,
including the provision of
care
The politics of feminist economics
• Economics that focuses on
creating gender equality
• Traditional economics is
ideological and perpetuates
inequality because
– it normalises men’s lives and
ignores much of what women do
• Though in practice also provides
an incomplete picture of what
affects men’s lives
– since men’s existence also
depends on unpaid work,
production for direct use and care
– and many men are involved in
these activities too
• Even if women and feminist
economics are needed to point
that out!
Key differences between feminist and
mainstream economics
Feminist economics
• Doesn’t just analyse market relations – other relations just as
important
– there’s unpaid work too
– cannot assume people behave outside the markets just like they do
within it
• Household is not treated the basic unit of the economy
– Household members can have different interests
– People live in a number of different households in the course of their
lives
• Rejects notion that people have preferences that are independent
and unchanging
– Social norms matter and they change
– Maximising choice doesn’t solve everything
• Rejects a model of work based on the production of physical things
– Characteristics of care provision provide an alternative model that
applies to much other work too
– Need to redefine what is meant by infrastructure and investment
Analysing market relations isn’t enough
• Time spent on unpaid activities affects what else people
can do with their lives
– Cannot assume all workers are wage-workers, and certainly not
all their lives
– Women’s lives tend to be more varied in this respect than men’s
• And what else the economy can do
– also the revenues that can be raised by governments
• Unpaid work within households is equivalent to about 1/3
to 1/2 of GDP - though not counted in it
• The total economy can be growing faster or slower than
that measured by GDP
– Faster in recessions when people are losing their jobs and then
doing more unpaid work
– Slower when people are moving into paid employment
Analysing market relations isn’t enough
• Need to take account of potential effects of policy on unpaid as well
as paid work and how they affect each other
• Cannot assume people behave outside the market just like
economists say they do within it
• Relationship between paid and unpaid activities is not just one way
– Cannot assume that unpaid work adjusts around changes in the
economy
• eg if women go into paid employment that how people are cared fro will
seamlessly adjust
– Cannot assume patterns/norms of unpaid work won’t change
• eg if women go into paid employment the division of labour in unpaid work
will stay the same
• Unpaid activities are neither infinitely flexible and available, nor just
an unchanging background to the paid economy
Households are not individuals
• Mainstream economics and much policy making takes the
household as an indivisible unit
– Eg household means testing
– Couples asked to “choose” who receives payments
• Decisions made by different members of the household are not
necessarily consistent
• Interests of members of same household may differ
• Resources are not necessarily shared equally within households
• Need to recognise:
– People do make decisions in the context of their household/family
– This is not same as saying that in doing so they are all pursuing the
same goals
Households are not individuals
• People live in a number of different households in the course
of their lives
• So what is “best for the household” at point in time may not
be best for all individuals within it
• Eg pension planning based on the couple leaves many widows in
poverty
• US research shows who makes financial decisions may matter a great
deal to outcomes in the long-run
– Need to consider impacts on both households and individuals
• Analysis at both levels can be useful
– Need to take a life-course perspective for individuals
– In particular, women are often the ones who sacrifice their
own longer term interests to “those” of their household
• may not be served well by policies assuming unified interests, equal
sharing or focused too much on household's current circs
People don’t have independent and
unchanging preferences
• Norms matter
• People are not “separated selves” with fixed
preferences
– Identities and wishes are developed in society
• Theory of how norms are formed and influence
behaviour key
– Cannot be reduced to
• individual self-interest
• either simply constraints or preferences
• “Choice” is not a reliable guide for feminist policy
advocacy
– “what women want” depends on current options
– eg part-time work in UK because childcare so expensive
An example:
Changing care norms: UK 1991-9
• Gendered norms about how to care for pre-school children reinforce,
and are reinforced by, gendered economic opportunities
• As those economic opportunities change, so do those norms
12
People don’t have independent and
unchanging preferences
• Economic change can be speeded up or slowed down by
current norms (and vice versa)
– policies that depend on behavioural change may take time to
have effect
• Policies that promote “choice”
– tend to reinforce existing norms
• Often a way just to shift responsibilities
• Positive feedback between norms, behaviour and policy
explains divergence between countries
– Neither economics nor norms alone explains differences
between countries
– Policies may not be immediately transferable
• Eg policies that rely on private philanthropy in societies used to having
a welfare state
How physical things are produced is
not a good model for economics
• Analysis of care is arguably the most distinctive contribution of Feminist
Economics
• Care has some characteristics that are typically ignored by economists:
– Both the supply and demand for care are influenced by social norms, concerning:
• people’s needs for care
• how and by whom that care should be delivered
– care involves a personal relationship between provider and receiver, that
• makes raising productivity difficult
• affects the skills, training, pay and conditions of care workers
– carers’ motivations are intrinsic to the quality of care
• making the quality of care hard to measure or evaluate from outside
• Many other goods share these characteristics to a greater or lesser extent
– Feminist economic analysis of care useful more generally
– Feminist economics as better economics
Care and care norms
• Care helps people do what others can do unaided
• But what is thought essential for people to be able to do is influenced
by “care norms” that:
– differ across societies
– Are gendered within societies
• And responsibilities for care provision also:
– differ across societies
– but tend to be highly gendered within all societies
• women are expected to take more responsibility and provide more unpaid
care than men within families
• within paid work care tends to be seen as more suitable work for women than
men
• That norms about care provision are gendered is seen by many
feminists as the fundamental explanation of gender differences
throughout society
15
Care as a personal relationship: implications for
productivity and costs
• Trends in the production of other goods and services
– rising productivity
– outsourcing
have applied less to care. Why?
• In many industries labour is just an input; then
– labour-saving techniques can lead to productivity growth
– and so costs generally rise less fast than wages
• But in other industries, “those in which the human touch is crucial”,
labour is the effective output too; then
– little scope for raising productivity through introducing labour-saving
techniques (without reducing quality)
– labour costs rise in proportion to wages
• Products of second type of industry become relatively more expensive
16
(Baumol’s “cost disease”)
Baumol’s example: playing a string quartet
In playing a string quarter, neither cutting the
number of players nor playing faster can raise the
productivity of labour
17
Productivity and costs in care
• Care is an example of the second type of industry:
– Care is a hands-on personal service that involves building a
relationship;
– Cannot in general reduce time and increase productivity while retaining
quality;
• Cannot spread a relationship over too many people
• Indeed staff/client ratios taken as index of quality
– labour costs make up nearly all the cost of care
• So total costs of care rise as fast as wages
• The cost of care of a given quality, like listening to live string
quartets, become more expensive relatively to other goods
• Leading to governments’ obsession with containing the costs of care
even before the current crisis
18
Current (unsustainable) systems of care
provision
• Most care is provided “free” by families
– in practice paid for by the opportunity costs of unpaid carers, mostly
women
• Care also available on the market
– at rising costs despite care workers low pay
• Limited state budget for helping where the family and market can’t
provide:
– costs kept down by restrictions on who gets such help, how much help and its
quality
– Increasingly through the market
– Such market solutions used to save costs and promote “choice”
19
Such systems depend on:
• Huge amounts of unpaid care being given mostly by
women
• Low pay in paid care sector
• Gender norms and opportunities that make these
possible:
– women more inclined to take on unpaid caring roles than men (in
most age groups)
– women’s other opportunities more limited than men’s
• Inequality in labour market and in care intertwined:
– makes equal sharing within families expensive
– reinforces gender norms
– slows down change but has not eliminated it
• None of this can be taken for granted
– Current pressures are making such systems unsustainable
20
Unsustainability of current care system
• Rising need for care:
– Demographic pressures
• Falling availability of unpaid care
– Rising employment levels of women
• Employment opportunities for women outside care industry:
– so wages in care cannot lag far behind other industries
• recruitment and retention problems in care industry
• Rising costs of care provision coupled with rising inequality means
proportion who can pay full care costs themselves falls
• Governments' unwillingness to allow state spending on care to rise
to meet rising care need
• Changing gender norms!
21
Nevertheless in the crisis
• Women have born the brunt of austerity
• Cuts have affected women’s:
– jobs
– employment
opportunities
– incomes
– unpaid time
more than men’s
• Feminist economics can help
– expose this
– provide alternative
strategies
An example of WBG analysis:
And another
And some more
Key differences between feminist and
mainstream economics
Feminist economics
• Doesn’t just analyse market relations – other relations just as
important
– there’s unpaid work too
– cannot assume people behave outside the markets just like they do
within it
• Household is not treated the basic unit of the economy
– Household members can have different interests
– People live in a number of different households in the course of their
lives
• Rejects notion that people have preferences that are independent
and unchanging
– Social norms matter and they change
– Maximising choice doesn’t solve everything
• Rejects a model of work based on the production of physical things
– Characteristics of care provision provide an alternative model that
applies to much other work too
– Need to redefine what is meant by infrastructure and investment