Feminist economics deserves recognition as a distinct branch of the discipline

From the London Economist

http://www.economist.com/node/21694529?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/20160310n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/NA/n

Defining it as a look at the economy from a female perspective provides one straightforward answer. Feminist analyses of public policy note, for example, that men gain most from income-tax cuts, whereas women are most likely to plug the gap left by the state as care for the elderly is cut. Even if such a combination spurs economic growth, if it worsens inequality between sexes, then perhaps policymakers should think twice.

Some feminists argue, moreover, that the very framework of economics is imbued with subtler forms of sexism. They point, for instance, to many economists’ blindness towards social norms that are unfair to women. Textbook models of the labour market, for example, assume that people choose between work and leisure based on how much spare time they have, how much they might earn and fixed personal preferences. By that logic, a woman’s decision about whether or not to take a break from work to have children is a function of how much she earns and how highly she values mothering.

But as Sheryl Sandberg, a senior executive at Facebook, notes in a recent book, when men announce they are about to have a child, they are simply congratulated; when women do, they are congratulated and then asked what they plan to do about work. Given the strength and persistence of societal expectations about women’s role in parenting, presenting their choices in that regard as purely personal preferences is misleading at best, and a sop to sexism at worst.

Economics as commonly practised often misses out another important element of inequality between the sexes: unpaid work. The main measure of economic activity, GDP, counts housework when it is paid, but excludes it when it is done free of charge. This is an arbitrary distinction, and leads to perverse outcomes. As Paul Samuelson, an economist, pointed out, a country’s GDP falls when a man marries his maid.

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The impact of measuring things differently can be very significant. A recent paper from the Bureau of Economic Analysis attempted to calculate an augmented version of GDP that included unpaid work. Doing so boosted GDP overall, but lowered the growth rate: as women have moved into paid work, they have been doing less unpaid work at home, so total production has not been rising quite as quickly as official figures suggest. By their estimates, including unpaid work boosted GDP in 1965 by 39%, but by only 26% in 2010. Over the 45 years between those two dates, they put the average annual nominal growth rate at 6.7% if unpaid work is included, lower than the official 6.9%.

Ignoring the feminist perspective is bad economics. The discipline aims to explain the allocation of scarce resources; it is bound to go wrong if it ignores the role that deep imbalances between men and women play in this allocation. As long as this inequality exists, there is space for feminist economics.