Strengthening heterodox economics by engaging with different perspectives

from Irene Staveren

In the next issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics (last issue of 2010, available online now), there will be a mini-symposium on the relationships between post-Keynesian economics and feminist economics (edited by Colin Danby and myself). It argues that there is a win-win situation from such an engagement and that such cross-fertilizations are under-explored. In my own contribution, I have identified the concepts of gender, the household, and unpaid work/caring as three key feminist economic concepts that would help post-Keynesian economics to deepen its analysis.

From Gender as an Exogenous Variable to Gender as an Endogenous Force in the New Mainstream Economics

from Irene Staveren

I will present a paper at ‘The New Economics as Mainstream Economics’ conference (Cambridge, 28-29 January 2010), titled: From Gender as an Exogenous or Impact Variable to Gender as an Endogenous Force in the New Economics. In the paper I argue that in the old mainstream macroeconomics, gender is often completely absent, either as a variable, or as driving certain institutions, or as underlying the gender division of labour between the paid and unpaid economy, whereas the unpaid economy is often completely ignored in macroeconomic analyses. At most, gender is