A holistic vision for a new economic paradigm, founded in feminine and feminist principles. Transmuting the tensions between feminism and Capitalism, Proposals for the Feminine Economy gives us a roadmap forward by insisting that business can be a site of feminist practice if we embody our values, create new economies, and experiment with redistributions of power & resources. Practical, poetic prescriptions for feminism's fourth wave.
Since the early 1980s Ecuador has experienced a series of events unparalleled in its history. Its “free market” strategies exacerbated the debt crisis, and in response new forms of social movement organizing arose among the country’s poor, including women’s groups. Gendered Paradoxes focuses on women’s participation in the political and economic restructuring process of the past twenty-five years, showing how in their daily struggle for survival Ecuadorian women have both reinforced and embraced the neoliberal model yet also challenged its exclusionary nature. Drawing on her extensive ethnographic fieldwork and employing an approach combining political economy and cultural politics, Amy Lind charts the growth of several strands of women’s activism and identifies how they have helped redefine, often in contradictory ways, the real and imagined boundaries of neoliberal development discourse and practice. In her analysis of this ambivalent and “unfinished” cultural project of modernity in the Andes, she examines state policies and their effects on women of various social sectors; women’s community development initiatives and responses to the debt crisis; and the roles played by feminist “issue networks” in reshaping national and international policy agendas in Ecuador and in developing a transnationally influenced, locally based feminist movement.
Feminism in Practice uses feminism as a blueprint for exploring change strategies. It features twenty contemporary feminists from diverse arenas, including activists, comedians, musicians, politicians, poets, and showrunners. The women come to life through line drawings, brief biographies, extensive quotations, their definitions of feminism, and the change strategies they employ. Questions for reflection encourage readers to think through their own relationship to feminism and change. Chapter 1 defines feminism, raising issues with the typical definition of feminism as the effort to achieve equality between women and men. It concludes with a description of over twenty types of feminism. Chapter 2 describes the triggering events, happening places, and key ideas of the four waves of feminism. The opening chapters provide a comprehensive understanding of the diversity and complexity of feminist movement. The book is organized around five primary objectives that animate contemporary change efforts—proclaiming identity, naming a problem, enriching a system, changing a system, and creating an alternative system. Each objective is developed through theoretical assumptions and twelve change strategies that show it at work in feminist movement. Feminism in Practice also serves as a practical handbook that readers can use to experiment with the strategies and expand their toolkits for creating change in their lives and worlds. The authors are uniquely qualified to explore issues of feminism and change. Karen Foss and Sonja Foss are second wave feminists who have written extensively on alternative change strategies, feminist communication, and feminist theory. Alena Ruggerio brings to the project the standpoint of a third wave feminist at home in pop culture. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of rhetoric, feminism, and religious studies. To learn more about Feminism in Practice, listen to the authors’ October 2021 interview on The Jefferson Exchange.
A handbook for business beginners. Outlines the four sequential stages of business gestation, drawing parallels to the phases of fetal development and provides a feminine-ist framework for entrepreneurship.
The free market as we know it cannot produce gender equality. This is the bold but authoritative argument of Vicky Pryce, the government's former economics chief. Women vs Capitalism is a fresh and timely reminder that, although the #MeToo movement has been hugely important, empowerment of the mind will not achieve full power for women while there remains economic inequality. Pryce urgently calls for feminists to focus attention on this pressing issue: the pay gap, the glass ceiling, and the obstacles to women working at all. Only with government intervention in the labor market will these long-standing problems finally be conquered. From the gendered threat of robot labor to the lack of women in economics itself, this is a sharp look at an uncomfortable truth: we will not achieve equality for women in our society without radical changes to Western capitalism.
This edited volume maps new advances in theories and practices in feminist economics and the valuation of women, care and nature since Marilyn Waring’s groundbreaking critique of the system of national accounts, If Women Counted (1988). It features theoretical, practical and policy oriented contributions, empirical studies, and new conceptualizations, theorizations and problematizations of defining and accounting for the value of nature and unpaid household work, eco-feminism, national and international policy processes, gender budgeting, unpaid care and HIV/AIDS policy, activism and artwork, and mirrors the wide-ranging impact and resonance of Waring’s work as well as the current frontiers of feminist economics.
Today, there are over 200,000,000 women business owners around the world. Many of these entrepreneurs are not doing business as usual, nor are they simply leaning in. Rather, they are tapping into feminine capital—the unique skills and sensibilities that they have cultivated as women—to create enviable successes. Drawing on four decades of award-winning research, Feminine Capital reveals how women are harnessing different approaches to doing business. Barbara Orser and Catherine Elliott detail the pillars of feminine capital and offer new insight into the ways that gender can influence entrepreneurial decision-making. They find that leveraging feminine capital can help women to create distinctive brands, build new markets, and drive profits—all while leveling the playing field in business. In doing so, women are changing our social and economic landscape, one venture at a time. Dispelling myths and misperceptions that can undermine women-owned ventures, this book takes a fresh look at how female entrepreneurs can leverage their skills, knowledge, and values. Case studies of women entrepreneurs bring key concepts and lessons to life, while learning aids, diagnostic tools, and checklists help readers to construct innovative business models, refine start-up plans, and hone growth strategies.
This new edition of a classic feminist book explains how one of the great historical revolutions - the ongoing movement toward equality between the sexes - has come about. Its origins are to be found, not in changing ideas, but in the economic developments that have made women's labour too valuable to be spent exclusively in domestic pursuits. The revolution is unfinished; new arrangements are needed to fight still-prevalent discrimination in the workplace, to achieve a more just sharing of housework and childcare between women and men, and, with the weakening of the institution of marriage, to re-erect a firm economic basis for the raising of children.
This book investigates the barriers to women’s economic empowerment in the Global South. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of countries, the book outlines important lessons and practical solutions for promoting gender equality. Despite global progress in closing gender gaps in education and health, women’s economic empowerment has lagged behind, with little evidence that economic growth promotes gender equality. International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme was set up to provide policy lessons, insights, and concrete solutions that could lead to advances in gender equality, particularly on the role of institutions and macroeconomic growth, barriers to labour market access for women, and the impact of women’s care responsibilities. This book showcases rigorous and multi-disciplinary research emerging from this ground-breaking programme, covering topics such as the school-to-work transition, child marriage, unpaid domestic work and childcare, labour market segregation, and the power of social and cultural norms that prevent women from fully participating in better paid sectors of the economy. With a range of rich case studies from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book is perfect for students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working on women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in the Global South.
