Beyond Patriarchy: The Historical Evolution and Contemporary Application of Feminist Political Economy

By Phoebe Britten. Originally published in the 2023 edition of the Sydney Undergraduate Journal of Political Science. Submitted to the Sydney Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in July 2023.

Introduction

In an epoch where major events in the global economy are focalised solely through the perspective of groups affiliated with privileged factions of society, heterodox economic theories are able to offer new insights by expanding the boundaries of economic analysis.

Notably, feminist political economy serves as a platform envisioning transformative possibilities within economic orthodoxy, seeking to dismantle the heteropatriarchal biases that underpin the formalisation of neoclassical economics. By centering gender disparity as a salient analytical category and subsequently resisting methodological reductionism in econometric modelling, feminist political economy has historically challenged gender biases within economic discourse.

Hence, this paper seeks to interrogate how feminist political economy has developed in reaction to a sense of immobility inflicted by patriarchy, and how such theory is topically confronting economic orthodoxy by reifying gender as a macroeconomic variable of analysis. Firstly, it establishes a theoretical framework to operationalise the core components of economic theory in a modern context. It secondly explores the evolution of feminist political economy and its reaction to underlying patriarchal material conditions within history, solidifying the theoretical orientation as an agent capable of dismantling androcentric legacies within the neoclassical paradigm. Finally, it analyses how feminist political economy can be applied to prevalent issues in 21st century economics, by bringing the voices of marginalised women & gender diverse people to the centre of scholarly labour. However, the theory possesses stark limitations that must be remedied to foreground its ideological efficacy in the future.

Establishing a theoretical framework

Feminist Political Economy (FPE) refers to an aggregation of self-reflexive economic theories that critique the androcentric exclusion of gender by the neoclassical paradigm (Bakker & Gill, 2003). Despite ideological diversity, the theory contains methodological convergence on the concealed ideology of feminist thought (Beneria, Berik & Floro, 2016). Seeking a deconstruction of ‘short sighted productivism’ within economic scholarship (Picchio 2009: 28), feminist political economy contends that the social reproduction of economic life is not mediated by monetary valuations, but rather gendered power-relations institutionalised in the labour market (Agenjo-Calderón 2019; Gálvez-Muñoz 2019). Analogous to many theories within political economy, the discipline utilises the perspective of relational ontology to view the economy as a method of ‘social provisioning’, whereby interrelated agents (markets, households, and the state) collaborate to produce positive living standards for the population (Power, 2004). Thus, feminist political economy epistemologically ‘transcends a reductionist, biased and hierarchical [economic] vision’ by centering the experiences of female-identifying and gender non-conforming persons in its analysis (Rai & Waylen, 2014). 

The historical development of Feminist Political Economy

Feminist Political Economy (FPE) has developed in critique of the material processes of gender discrimination within economic orthodoxy, influenced by first and second wave feminist historiography. Subsequently, it is foundational to acknowledge the ‘epistemological relevance of the historical and social perspective’ of the theory to analyse its role in amplifying the voices of marginalised women in economic debate (Hodgson, 2016).

First Wave - The ‘Woman Question’

Feminist political economy reacted to the state-sanctioned exclusion of women from the economic realm. Responding to the value of individual freedom promoted by the ideology of Victorian classical liberalism, British & French proto-feminists foregrounded legal reform as a means of acquiring economic capital under patriarchy (Becchio, 2019). Women’s exclusion from economic life and subsequent confinement to the ontological complementarity of moral wife and righteous mother, was initially viewed as an essential matter of public utility - where according to Filmer in ‘Patriarcha’ (1680) and Rousseau’s Emilie (1763), female subordination to the domestic sphere was in accordance with ‘God’s Will’ (Scott, 1988). In reaction to this ‘present crisis’ of material inequality, Northern European feminists applied a gynocentric and philosophically liberal epistemology to moral debate within the emerging discipline of political economy (Feiner, 2005). Initially, this was in the form of disseminating the principles of classical political economy amongst women and popularising the conceptualisation of women as rational beings who align with the Smithian homo economicus. Women such as Sophie de Grouchy (1764-1822), Jane Halimand-Marcet (1769-1858) and Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) synthesised the Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) in their publications to promote economic knowledge among ordinary people, successfully ingraining free-market values within the educational system through the formation of the English Woman's Journal (Polkinghorn 1995; Dalley 2010). However, such a fragmentary approach adopted under feminist political economy generated minimal change, as ‘just slotting women in, without changing the rules of the game, would indeed be mere reification of existing social conditions of inequality’ (Braidotti & Butler, 1997). Thus, the theory self-reflexively transitioned into a radical critique of  classical political economy out of the denial of economic agency, transcending its own perspective to cultivate greater social mobility for women.

In reaction to the 1848 U.S Seneca Falls ‘Declaration of Sentiments’ professing the spiritual equality of men and women, feminist political economy sought to trespass theoretical boundaries by dismantling the sexual division of labour. This was in vehement opposition to W.S Jevons and Alfred Marshall’s devaluing of female labour power as a crucial prerequisite for social utility. Both political economists affirmed the male monopoly over the most remunerative professions, holding that women’s comparative advantage in generating human capital via non-market reproductive work legitimised labour force discrimination (Jevons, 1883; Marshall, 1890). Recontextualising J.S Mill’s utilitarianism, Taylor Mill used theory as a vessel to critique such economic orthodoxy in the Enfranchisement of Women (1891), rejecting the economic premise that female workers would ‘steal jobs’ from men as a consequence of Say’s law - rather, insisting on the necessity of reducing the gender wage-gap to raise general levels of marginal productivity (Mill, 1851; Pujol, 1992). This divergence of feminist political economy as a theoretical orientation away from symbolic representation to the ferocious targeting of material inequality, was solidified by Barbara Leigh-Smith Bodichon in the formation of the Women’s Employment Bureau which expanded trade unionism to female coteries under the Factory Act 1870 UK (Fraser, 2003). However, factions of feminist political economy began to develop in alignment with the anti-capitalist values of Fabian socialism, applying principles of Robert Owen’s cooperativism movement to secure financial entitlements for unpaid domestic labour (Becchio, 2015). Inspired by Friedrich Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), figures such as Rosalind Nash and Mabel Atkinson used leftist media such as The New Statesman to promote a minimum income for women undertaking domestic labour, thus exhibiting the sophisticated dialogue between the theory, ideology and material experiences of cultural subordination in social and political time and space (Cox, 1981; Madden & Persky, 2019).

Similarly, albeit inspired by the formation of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), political economist Millicent Fawcett developed the theory to amplify a feminist perspective in publicly debating Sidney Webb in The Economic Journal (Groenewegen, 2000). Fawcett poignantly refuted Webb’s claim predicated on the Marshellian efficiency-salary, holding that the gender wage gap was ‘a general consequence of the inferiority of the female sex’ (Webb, 1891). Instead, she powerfully contended that meritorious labour power remuneration was disproportionate for women as the labour market continuously relegated female workers to low-wage jobs, thus hegemonizing a de-facto occupational segregation (Fawcett, 1982). Thus, it can be discerned that feminist political economy emerged in response to material inequality within the Victorian social realm, departing from the goal of incremental inclusion within the confines of classical liberal theory towards substantive reform to the sexual division of labour. 

Second Wave - Academic Formalisation

Feminist political economy as a theoretical orientation reflected on the minimal change that was achieved by appropriating the philosophy of classical liberalism to achieve gender equality. Thus, it rebelled against a previous approach of dissociative feminism - instead using ‘second wave’ feminism and the formalisation of neoclassical economics to propel the discipline to new frontiers. The closure of WWII institutionalised Post-Fordism within the Global North, facilitating the growth of a global middle-class that saw women restricted to the normative performance of social reproduction in the domestic sphere (Walby, 1994). In response to this, Freidan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique’ (1963) and Hanisch’s seminal essay ‘The Personal is Political’ (1969) implanted the philosophical ‘patriarchy of consent’ within economic dialogue, beckoning institutions to dismantle the hidden cultural inequities that coerce women into complying with heteropatriarchal capitalism and ‘economics imperialism’ (Freidan, 1963; Hanisch, 1969; Lazear, 2000; Puleo, 2000). Subsequently, feminist political economy reacted to this material condition of cultural discrimination, and progressively gained an identity as a heterodox orientation that critiqued the exclusion of gender within neoclassical models.

Using the Committee on the Status of Women in Economics Profession (CSWEP) in 1971, the theoretical orientation platformed the perspective of women by problematising the mythology behind the optimising nature of free choice (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993). Feminist-economists began to challenge the Cartesian notion of rationality that underpins logical thought within the neoclassical school, and postulated that the institutionalisation of ‘passivity’ and ‘irrationality’ as female gender norms hindered women’s economic participation (Harding, 1986). Theory therefore shifted towards a collective rejection of the Smithian ‘homo economicus’ - contending that because women have been culturally moulded to be ‘submissive’, they therefore cannot fulfil the role of the ‘maximiser’ who is free to make optimal choices in the context of economic scarcity (Smith, 1759; Young, 2011) . This led feminist political economy to officially deviate from the neoclassical paradigm, shifting from a scientific ‘Robinson Crusoe’ model of the economy, towards the recognition of economic agents as relational subjects influenced by gender, social class and race. Influenced by the sociological perspective of American Institutionalism, feminist political economy rapidly became a discursive theory whereby the gendered power relations behind economic growth and consumption were focalised in macroeconomic analysis (Bergmann, 1990). This was solidified in the creation of the globalised Feminist Economics journal and the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), reflecting how the theory became subject to academic formalisation to dismantle heteropatriarchal influences in economics.

The introduction of Beckerian ‘new family economics’ was a key historical period that pioneered feminist political economy, allowing the theory to tangibly dismantle the Procrustean epistemology behind econometric modelling in favour of ethical and pluralistic methodologies (Blau & Winkler, 2001). In the ‘Theory of the Allocation of Time’ (1965), Gary Becker repurposed human capital theory to analyse the household as a specialised economic unit, contending that women possessed comparative advantage in unpaid domestic labour due to their lower wages, lower opportunity cost and differentiated social capital to men (Becker, 1965). This ‘voluntary discrimination’ model was then implanted into neoclassical statistical apparatus, despite its failure to account for dynamism in household structures and its subsequent status as a tool that ‘internalised gender inequality and misogyny as a ‘natural’ outcome of specialisation in reproductive labour’ (Ferber & Nelson, 2003). The formalisation of this material process, endorsed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the awarding of the 1992 Nobel Prize to Becker, facilitated the development of feminist empiricism within the theory (Ferber & Nicosia, 1972). Encapsulated in Sen’s capability model and the OECD Social Institutions & Gender Index, feminist economists began to construct material indicators in the Journal for Consumer Research to account for gender injustice and human wellbeing as variables of analysis in economic policy (Robeyns, 2003; OECD, 2007). This theoretical shift away from Beckerian home economics generated Pearson & Elson’s ‘Plan-F’ - a reflexive fiscal strategy prioritising the gendered impact of financial crisis via alternative tools, epitomised in Senguino’s endogenous growth theory (Pearson, 2015). By adopting a phenomenological approach to macroeconomic analysis, the theoretical orientation solidified the integration of feminist ethical values in opposition to the reductive analysis of market inefficiencies within economic research.

Operationalising theory in a modern context - contributions and limitations

Whilst feminist political economy is innately linked to the material processes of its historical context, it successfully demonstrates empirical validity by critiquing the patriarchal epistemology behind modern economic phenomena. However, ideological disunity and an essentialist conceptualisation of ‘gender’ may undermine its theoretical efficacy to a minor extent. (Dolfsma et al., 1996).

In the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), the theory was highly applicable in analysing how Keynesian fiscal policies disadvantaged feminised industries and entrenched unpaid labour. Focalising the relationship between austerity politics, reduced public expenditure and social reproduction, mass school closures in Italy and Spain saw women’s unpaid labour increase by 28% (Del Boca, 2020;  Farré, 2020). Despite the commitment of $140 billion in net capital injections under the JobSeeker/JobKeeper strategy to lower unemployment in Australia, women still exhibited a higher propensity for employment displacement due to their overrepresentation in industries that are susceptible to economic downturns, such as hospitality and tourism (Wood, Griffith & Crowley, 2021). Thus, a feminist political economy perspective illuminates the systematic failure of Keynesian models to consider gender and androcentric hierarchy as a salient category of analysis. Instead, feminist economists postulate that the economic crisis reinforces inequities in capital accumulation along gendered lines, extending that marginalisation of institutionalised by wage labour must be addressed by dismantling the sexual division of labour, remunerating female-identifying persons for social reproduction and introducing wage subsidies for feminised industries. 

In reaction to inflationary pressures reaching 7% in the global economy in 2023, feminist political economy successfully illuminates the disproportionate impact of the cost-of-living crisis borne by women and gender diverse minorities. As a result of circulating fictitious capital due to excessive Quantitative Easing (QE), inflation has arguably legitimised gender discrimination by burdening women with the unpaid labour of family-budgeting under the household unit (Agenio-Calderon, 2019). Using the framework of ‘social provisioning’ to interrogate gendered power dynamics within economics, inflationary pressures have led to the proliferation of informal labour markets for non-cisgender bodies due to greater wage volatility and diminished job security in periods of crisis.

Ideological disunity, in conjunction with the dogmatic paradigm of gender essentialism, are key limitations to the application of feminist political economy in a contemporary context. Concerning the issue of the ‘feminisation of poverty’, radical segments of the theory emphasise the impact of racial & ethnic variances on the distribution of material resources and social responsibility for care labour, refuting the neoclassical conceptualisation of ‘comparable worth’ (Brenner, 1987). This starkly contrasts to the liberal feminist conception of meritorious distribution of economic returns, only seeking to implant gender equality within the confines of capitalist economic orthodoxy. This irreconcilable division has hindered the theoretical orientation in uniting to construct tangible solutions to issues such as the gender pay gap and labour market reform, acting as a critical drawback to its efficacy.

Similarly, the failure of feminist political economy to diverge from gender essentialism as an ontological mode of analysis by subsuming all ‘female experiences’ into singular categories, ignores the gendered social relations that mediate the economic participation of transgender and non-binary bodies (Shannon, 2021). Feminist political economy as an academic theory is yet to address the unique disadvantages experienced by non-cisgender individuals under the neoclassical paradigm, that subsequently manifest into higher rates of poverty and food insecurity due to social ostracism. Despite advocating for the institutionalisation of an agency-driven paradigm within economic thought, the theory fails to account for experiences of female-identifying persons within topical macroeconomic discourse. In order to remedy this challenge for the future, Crenshaw’s academic framework of intersectionality must be applied to account for the totality of intersecting identities under economic orthodoxy. Therefore, while feminist political economy offers innumerable benefits through its ethical-political commitment to gynocentric ontology, such theoretical limitations can reduce its efficacy in a modern setting.

Final reflections

In examining the historical development and contemporary application of feminist political economy, it can be conceptualised as an effective mode of analysis to dismantle heteropatriarchal biases within the neoclassical economic paradigm. The theory has exhibited adaptability over time and space, corresponding to shifting material conditions characterised by institutionalised gender discrimination. By prominently situating gender and the sexual division of labour as fundamental categories of academic inquiry, feminist political economy emerges as an invaluable instrument for shaping forthcoming public policies that authentically prioritise the inclusion of women & gender diverse minorities in economic discourse.

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