Economic and financial crises have become perennial features of today’s global economy. Macroeconomic theories of crisis, including the global crisis that unfolded in 2008, emphasize the role of financial deregulation; capital flow imbalances; and growing debt, fueled by income and wealth inequality. These approaches tend to be divorced from feminist thinking which analyzes broader distributional dynamics transmitted through structural channels and government policy responses, with an emphasis on gender, race, class and ethnicity. This volume brings together innovative thinking from heterodox macroeconomists and feminist economists to explore the causes, consequences, and ramifications of economic crises. By doing so, it highlights aspects of the economy that are frequently overlooked or ignored, such as the impact of crises on the vast amount of unpaid work which women perform relative to men. The collection of international studies assembled here takes an innovative approach to analyzing a range of issues, from the subprime mortgage crisis to the gendered effects of austerity to the role of the International Monetary Fund in governing an unstable global economy. In so doing, it looks beyond causes and consequences and points to new directions for macroeconomic and financial policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Economics.

This book is about the neglect of gender and race in explanations of the Global Financial Crisis. It is also about the sexual scandals and gendered austerity policies that have relegated public debate, and the crisis itself. We need to look at the activities and the privileges of the advantaged - the "TED women" of the crisis -- as much as the victimization of the disadvantaged - to fully grasp the interplay between gender and economy in this age of restoration.

The excellent list of themes and chapters in this volume reflects the maturity reached by feminist economics in its different dimensions. Based on the notion of social provisioning for all as the basic objective of economics, they represent a challenge to conventional economic thought and they show the importance of understanding theory, institutions, empirical work, and policy from a gender perspective. The global perspective provided through themes and authors is a very useful contribution to the literature. Lourdes Bener'a, Cornell University, US Standard economics has a narrow and distorted vision of what the economy is, and how it works. Gender scholars are on the forefront of developing better, more encompassing models of human provisioning for well-being. This volume presents a wonderful sampling of these new theoretical and empirical developments. Paula England, New York University, US This is an impressive collection that delves deeply and broadly into the myriad ways that gender shapes and alters economic lives and illuminates complex facets of the economic and social provisioning process across the globe. The chapters, by an exciting variety of researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners from numerous fields, present a consistent and persuasive vision of economic well-being as critical to the flourishing of all people. Myra H. Strober, Stanford University, US In the aftermath of global economic downturn, it has never been more important to understand how gender relates to economic life and well-being. This interdisciplinary collection of original research details key areas of intersection, provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of research and proposes avenues for further investigation. The Handbook illuminates complex facets of the economic and social provisioning process across the globe. The contributors academics, policy analysts and practitioners from wide-ranging areas of expertise discuss the methodological approaches to, and analytical tools for, conducting research on the gender dimension of economic life. They also provide analyses of major issues facing both developed and developing countries. Topics explored include civil society, discrimination, informal work, working time, central bank policy, health, education, food security, poverty, migration, environmental activism and the financial crisis. Economists, sociologists and political scientists will find this book to be an invaluable research tool, as will academics, researchers and students with an interest in economics particularly feminist economics gender studies and global studies.

Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective brings together feminist economists and feminist political economists from different countries located in North America and Europe to analyze the ‘strategic silence’ about gender in fiscal and monetary policy, and financial regulation. This silence reflects a set of assumptions that the key instruments of financial governance are gender-neutral. This often masks the ways in which financial governance operates to the disadvantage of women and reinforces gender inequality. This book examines both the transformations in the governance of finance that predate the financial crisis, as well as some dimension of the crisis itself. The transformations increasingly involved private as well as public forms of power, along with institutions of state and civil society, operating at the local, national, regional and global levels. An important aspect of these transformations has been the creation of policy rules (often enacted in laws) that limit the discretion of national policy makers with respect to fiscal, monetary, and financial sector policies. These policy rules tend to have inscribed in them a series of biases that have gender (as well as class and race-based) outcomes. The biases identified by the authors in the various chapters are the deflationary bias, male breadwinner bias, and commodification bias, adding two new biases: risk bias and creditor bias. The originality of the book is that its primary focus is on macroeconomic policies (fiscal and monetary) and financial governance from a feminist perspective with a focus on the gross domestic product and its fluctuations and growth, paid employment and inflation, the budget surplus/deficit, levels of government expenditure and tax revenue, and supply of money. The central findings are that the key instruments of financial governance are not gender neutral. Each chapter considers examples of financial governance, and how it relates to the gender order, including divisions of labour, and relations of power and privilege. This book is key reading for anyone studying feminist economics, and should also be of interest to those researching macroeconomics, political economics and women’s studies.

Gender, Development, and Globalization is the leading primer on global feminist economics and development. Lourdes Benería, a pioneer in the field of feminist economics, is joined in this second edition by Gunseli Berik and Maria Floro to update the text to reflect the major theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions and global developments in the last decade. Its interdisciplinary investigation remains accessible to a broad audience interested in an analytical treatment of the impact of globalization processes on development and wellbeing in general and on social and gender equality in particular. The revision will continue to provide a wide-ranging discussion of the strategies and policies that hold the most promise in promoting equitable and sustainable development. The authors make the case for feminist economics as a useful framework to address major contemporary global challenges, such as inequalities between the global South and North as well as within single countries; persistent poverty; and increasing vulnerability to financial crises, food crises, and climate change. The authors’ approach is grounded in the intellectual current of feminism and human development, drawing on Amartya Sen’s capability approach and focused on the importance of the care economy, increasing pressures faced by women, and the failures of neoliberal reforms to bring about sustainable development, reduction in poverty, inequality, and vulnerability to economic crisis.

Of all of the lies, fragile alliances, and predatory financial dealings that have been revealed in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, we have yet to come to terms with the ways in which structural inequalities around gender and race factor into (and indeed make possible) the current economic order. Scandalous Economics is about "silences" - the astonishing neglect of gender and race in explanations of the Global Financial Crisis. But, it is also about "noises" - the sexual scandals and gendered austerity policies that have relegated public debate, and the crisis itself, into political oblivion. While feminist economists and movements such as Occupy Wall Street have pointed to the distributional inequalities that are an effect of financial deregulation, scholars haven't really grappled with the representational inequalities inherent in the way we view the politics of the market. For example, capitalism won't be made more equitable simply by appointing women to leadership positions within financial firms or corporations. And the next crisis will not be averted if our understandings of gendered inequalities are framed by sexual scandals in media and popular culture. We need to look at the activities and the privileges of the advantaged - the "TED women" of the crisis -- as much as the victimization of the disadvantaged - to fully grasp the interplay between gender and economy in this fragile age of restoration. Scandalous Economics breaks new ground by doing precisely this. It argues that normalization of the post-GFC economic order in the face of its obvious breakdown(s) has been facilitated by co-optation of feminist and queer perspectives into national and international responses to the crisis. Scandalous Economics builds upon the Occupy movement and other critical analysis of the GFC to comprehensively examine gendered material, ideational and representational dimensions that have served to make the crisis and its effects, 'the new normal' in Europe and America as well as Latin America and Asia.

The full impact of austerity policies across Europe is still being assessed, but it is clear that their gendered impacts have been consistently severe, structural and manifold. They have also been, until now, under-researched and under-estimated. This book brings together the research of leading feminist economists in the area of gender and austerity economics to perform a rigorous gender-impact analysis both at national and pan-European levels. The chapters not only offer thorough evidence for the detrimental gender-impact of austerity policies across Europe, but they also provide readers with concrete suggestions of alternative policies that national governments and the European Union should adopt. With a combination of country case studies and cross-country empirical analysis, this book reveals the scope and channels through which women and men have been impacted by austerity policies in Europe, and goes on to offer readers the opportunity to assess the feasibility and implications of a feminist alternative to continued austerity. This book will be invaluable to social science students and researchers, as well to as policy-makers searching not just for a Plan B to continued austerity policies but for a Plan F – a feminist economic strategy to stimulate sustainable economic recovery.

From the Great Depression in the twentieth century to the Great Recession in the twenty-first, systemic banking crises have been a recurring problem for both developing and developed countries. This book offers a human rights perspective on financial crises vis-à-vis low-income and least developed countries. It systematically analyzes government’s commitment to women’s economic rights and basic human rights during systemic banking crises. The book combines a wealth of data with rich theoretical arguments that weave together distinct but related bodies of literature from international development, human rights, and political economy.

We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations – a focus on ‘austerity’ and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on ‘financial crisis’ and democratic regulation of finance – are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.

Addresses the internal relations of global capitalism, global war, global crisis, connecting uneven and combined development, social reproduction, and world-ecology to appeal to scholars and students alike.