Feminist Economics of Inequality, Development, and Growth
Authors: Gnseli Berik a;  Yana van der Meulen Rodgers b; Stephanie Seguino c
Pages 1 - 33

Increased global economic integration, the adoption of market-oriented reforms, and a circumscribed role for the state in managing economies over the last few decades has caused income and wealth inequality to expand both within and between countries (Branko Milanovic 2005; International Labour Organization [ILO]2008).2 This trend is consistent with research findings in feminist economics, which has demonstrated that such policy reforms have worked against development and have generated intergroup inequality in gender, race/ethnicity, and class terms (Diane Elson and Nilfer aatay 2000; Gnseli Berik and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers 2008). Nation-states have attempted to avert rising inequality through a variety of policies (including labor market, social, and fiscal policies). However, much more research is needed to understand the appropriate balance of government regulation and market liberalization to set the stage for growth that reduces intergroup inequality (hereafter, inequality).

In this contribution, we reflect on linkages between inequality, development, and growth from a feminist economics perspective. We examine both the effect of macroeconomic policies and economic growth on inequalities in material resources and well-being and the effects of inequality on economic growth in an effort to identify policies that promote broadly shared development.

We argue that macroeconomic theory and policy should be constructed within the broader framework of human well-being, rather than being solely concerned with how economies function and the achievement of macroeconomic fundamentals such as price stability and robust growth rates. Human well-being requires at a minimum adequate provisioning (through interconnected paid labor and unpaid care activities and entitlements from the state or community); capabilities (the ability to do or be, based on provisioning); and agency (the ability to participate in decision making so as to shape the world we live in). This definition of well-being is consistent with that envisioned by the capabilities approach (Amartya Sen 1999; Martha Nussbaum 2003). This evaluative framework draws on the argument that social conditions and policies should be assessed according to the extent to which people have the capabilities to lead the kind of lives they want to lead and to be the person they want to be, such as the ability to be healthy and to seek education. Accordingly, development - what we refer to as broadly shared development - is synonymous with expansion of capabilities. In this framework, income inequality constrains the achievement of human well-being because it translates into unequal political and social power. This power differential inhibits not only equality of opportunities in access to education and health, but also agency and voice, which are constrained by the social and political institutions that emerge to justify material imbalances.

Do Gender Disparities in Employment Increase Profitability? Evidence from the United States
Authors: Ajit Zacharias a; Melissa Mahoney b
Pages 133 - 161

Gender relations can play a constitutive role in determining the key variables influencing the pace and rhythm of capitalist accumulation. Feminist economists have long recognized the effects of competition between male and female workers on the average level of wages: "Capitalists have indeed used women as unskilled, underpaid labor to undercut male workers, yet this is only a case of the chickens coming home to roost - a case of men's cooptation by and support for patriarchal society, with its hierarchy among men, being turned back on themselves with a vengeance" (Heidi I. Hartmann 1979: 222). However, the effects of such competition on the functional distribution of income or how the accumulation process itself may set the limits to such competition are questions that have not been given sufficient attention. Macrodynamic models that take gender relations explicitly into account are of recent vintage, but they suggest that the secular feminization of market work might boost profitability and growth in high-income countries (Korkut Ertrk and Nilfer aatay 1995; Korkut Ertrk and William Darity, Jr. 2000).

An important strand of the empirical work on the overall dynamics of accumulation in advanced capitalist nations focuses on dissecting the trends in aggregate profitability (Grard Dumnil and Dominique Lvy 1992; Robert Brenner 1998; Ajit Zacharias 2002). However, most of the empirical work on developed capitalist nations does not address the potential effects of gender disparity in pay or the feminization of employment on aggregate profitability. Our main purpose is to make a modest attempt to tackle this much-neglected question in the context of the upward swing of profitability in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Economic reasoning suggests that an important channel through which feminization influences profitability is via the wage share, which fell sharply in the US during this period. The conjunction of the three trends - rising feminization, falling wage share, and rising profitability - makes this period interesting from an analytical standpoint.

When a policy makes everybody miserable (except a handful of lobbyists, banksters and (other) criminals), what you need to do is scrap the policy outright, not twiddle around the edges to make some groups possibly a little bit less miserable.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.