I view feminist economics as one of the more useful parts of the heterodoxy, perhaps because of its empirical component. I see a few contributions:
1. Repeated insistence that household production is important and that it is lacking in gdp figures. This isn’t new anymore but someone has to bang the drum.
2. Criticizing the "dominant patriarchal" assumptions behind standard models of the family, such as Gary Becker’s. The Rotten Kid Theorem is interesting as pure theory but it has received too much attention as an actual model of the family. The father is not always a benevolent manipulator, concerned most of all with collective welfare.
3. Insisting that economics is so often done "in a male way." Now I happen to like the "male way of doing economics" — abstract, analytically cutting, and debate-intense. But I’m happy to see someone linking the method to some general traits of men; put all the feminist excess aside, at some level the point is well-taken.
4. In the history of economic thought, Hazel Kyrk and Margaret Reid are worth reading, there are probably others as well. "Home Economics" should never have been so cut off from regular economics.
5. Gender differences in analyzing the effects of policy. Sweden, no matter what you think of it in absolute terms, is a better deal for women than for men. Overall women are more risk-averse and less interested in accumulating large sums of wealth. The Soviet Union was less bad for women than for men. Many governmental health care systems are better geared toward the needs of women (e.g., easy access to pre-natal care) than for men, who require massive medical innovation to fix their heart attacks. And so on. These points don’t receive enough attention.
Feminist economics even has its own journal.
The down side? I’ve never had much real world exposure to movement advocates (here is one interview). I fear I would be turned off by their posturing, their sympathy for comparable worth, and their lack of a hardheaded willingness to recognize politically incorrect truths about gender or for that matter capitalism. They are too skeptical about what is good in the Chicago-based economic way of thinking. No way is feminist economics a viable alternative to the mainstream, but again improvement is possible through critique at the margins.
Shouldn’t it be hard-headed willingness?
girl brains are too concerned with things like boyfriends, babies and looking pretty to understand and appreciate complex things like economics. Also girls cannot debate without taking things personally, and are terrible at forming effective teams due to their envious nature – ie most girls hate taking orders from other girls. They also talk about one another behind their backs, and cry a lot.
They also find it difficult to debate male economists because they might fall in love with them. This is a noted problem for female politicians as well.
Women also have http://www.rlynn.co.uk/>smaller brains than men, and are easy to manipulate and sell stuff too.
Next, can we have a post considering the merits of the feminist theory of gravity or the feminist theory of plate tectonics?
Do feminist economists study the economy on the Isle of Lesbos?
“Women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it. And when they take these polls, it’s always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care.” — Ann Coulter
I think this is true for a lot of women. The remainder largely consists of women who, like me, understand how money is earned but don’t want to be the ones earning it.
I’m from Sweden. The feminist economists I’ve encountered here would cut your throat for claiming that Sweden is a better deal for men then for women. The last time I read something by one of them, she was claiming that it’s just a myth that men have more and more severe heart problems than females. A medical doctor made a comment the next day but was shussed away as being a representative of the ‘male-domianted welfare state’.
Hm… the above comment obviously has an error. I meant ot say that they would cut your throat for claiming that the welfare state is better for women than for men.
Well actually evolutionary psychology is showing that races are very different beneath the surface, so that may not be a bad idea
I would be very curious to learn more about Swedish feminists, as so many of the issues feminists here have with the US have been largely addressed in Sweden.
I think to some extent that there will always be feminists willing to complain. Same thing for men. No matter how you structure society, some people will always be getting a bad deal (or worse than average) and some of those will always be complaining.
Kieran’s comment is good, not all of you are meeting that standard today…
Yes, it is real “hard headed” to think biological differences are socially constructed and that women are invisibly oppressed.
Here are a couple of hard headed facts for you:
†¢ Studies indicte most stereotypical gender differences are larger than people think (or at least admitt to),
†¢ Women constitute a far smaller share of the high IQ population than men,
†¢ Women are worse natural leaders,
†¢ Women are biologically inferior entrepreneurs, on average,
†¢ Women have their comparative advantage in family and reproduction, men in market production.
†¢ The probably best femalre economist in the world used to be a man.
it is real “hard headed” to think biological differences are socially constructed and that women are invisibly oppressed.
I’d say it’s reasonably thick-headed to drag the straw lady out. What exactly in my comment led you to the conclusion that I (or feminist economists) believe that biological differences are socially constructed in the sense that you appear to mean?
Studies indicte most stereotypical gender differences are larger than people think (or at least admitt to),
Women constitute a far smaller share of the high IQ population than men,
Women are worse natural leaders,
These three claims are at least reasonably empirically specific, though in descending order and I wouldn’t say that any of them are beyond dispute by any means.
Women have their comparative advantage in family and reproduction, men in market production.
The probably best femalre economist in the world used to be a man.
These two are supposed to be “hard headed facts” on the same plane as the first three? See above re: irregular verbs. Not, I hasten to add, that I’m denying that women have a comparative — indeed, absolute — advantage in the ability to bear children.
Tyler is right. This thread contains some of the most puerile comments I have seen on any
blog for some time. First it was Andreas, and now we have Tino, neither of them providing
any sources for their drivel.
So, Tino, Swedish women are behind US women at the top. Try Natasha Gunn at
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=8945. She reports figures
for percentages by country of membership of corporate boards, the top of the top.
Norway is tops at 22%, Sweden is second at 20%. The US is not too bad at 13.6%, which
beats the European average of 8%. Of these higher income countries, Italy is at the
bottom with only 2%, with presumably a few others besides Donattella Versaci. So, please
get your facts straight before you start bloviating out with the stereotypes.
From what I have read there clearly are differences on average. They cut various ways.
Thus, the big advantage of men is that they tend do better on spatial relations. However,
their lower risk-aversion is tied to some real nonsense, such as a greater willingness to
believe in nonexistent “hot hands.” Men tend to be centered in either the left or right
brain, whereas women tend to be more balanced between the two. It is not that they are
more emotional and less rational, they are less likely to be either extremely coldly rationalistic
or extremely emotional. They are both, and better at knowing which is more appropriate when.
Of course, Andreas’s remark about men being borderline autistic is in line with these last
remarks.
Dear Rosser:
Do not make claims when you are not well informed. You will just make a fool out of yourself.
Norway has a LAW that mandates firms to have 40% women on their boards. Sweden does not, but the government threatened firms to create such a law, if they didn’t take care of the “problem† themselves. This and intense political pressure is why the share of women in boards whet from 4,5% in 1998 to 20% in 2007. A huge share are the same women, since it was the only way to increase it so fast.
If you knew what you were talking about you would not have used this as some sort of signal of underlying position of women. It only proves what we already know, that feminism is politically strong in Scandinavia. The issue is life outcome for women. Do you have any evidence that more female board members improve the life of women?
The rest of what you write is reasonable. But risk-willingness and even over-confidence is a demanded commodity in the world, which is why it makes sense that men are rewarded for it. The same goes for the rest, men and women are different, men having advantages that tend to be more demanded in market production.
PS.
I did provide sources for everything that is not part of standard knowledge in labor economics. If you seriously dispute anything I wrote I will be happy to post sources to the rest (but don’t just waste my time, only ask if you will actually accept facts that you don’t like)
Tino, Paul Krugman has written some seriously good academic textbooks on economics. He’s become a political pimp recently, but he knows his stuff.
“the size of these differences does little to explain the observed outcomes.”
But if there are, say, 30 men for every 1 woman above a certain IQ point, then they do explain a lot. IQ might not explain much of the difference ‘in the range’, but if one group (men) is enormously overrepresented within that range, then it is no surprise they win everything. Economics is a very math intensive subject, and there are many more great male mathematicians than women.
Adrian:
Yes, he did, 10-20 years ago. Not much Clark level material lastly, including blaming E-coli on Milton Friedman. Let me be clear however that I mean contemporary writings.
1. “My my, frothing at the mouth are we? How masculine of you.†
Ignoring the facts and focusing on personal issues? How hard-headed of you.
2. “UN humandevelopment†
Used to give Sweden the best score for education, since over 100% got high school degrees (the idiots divided the number of people in high school, including adults getting GED:s, with the age 16-19 age group). This is how much I give arbitrary indices. When you know a little what you are talking about, instead of randomly tossing out whatever makes you feel good.
3. “Regarding Sweden and Scandinavia more generally†
Why more generally? You made a specific point, based on ignorance. Do you retract your incorrect claim? No? Just trying to use a compleatly unrelated measure of general wel-being to cover your nonsence about board rooms? Whats the word I am looking for… Hard-Headed?
4. “please do not start frothing so intensely that drool gums up the keys of your computer…†
I am starting to wonder why they didn’t give you a Nobel price? You knowledge about corporate boards in Scandinavia alone should guarantee you one.
5. Joan Robinson was an extreme left Keynesian economist that did not make any lasting contribution to the science. She believed in roughly the same stuff as another leftist icon, John Kenneth Galbraith. Needless to say the work has not aged well.
Now here is a little exercise in logic for Rosser (waste of time of course).
If Lindbeck did not give her or Galbraith the price, but gave it to Buchanan, what are the most logical explanations:
†¢ Scientific value of her non-existent lasting contribution to establishment economics, compared to (that together with neglected Turlock) revolutionizing political economics,
†¢ Lindbeck did not respect extreme left Keynesians, and never gave them the price,
†¢ Swedish liberal Assar Lindbeck hates and discriminates women
Hard-Headed feminist economics know which is the more likely explanation. Prima facie, which is all we need.
5. “As a matter of fact I do think trends like this are good prima facie evidence of discrimination of one sort or another.”
Than it should really not be hard for you to find actuall evidence. Or if you can’t and don’t care to at least not claim that I am using a “strawman” when I point out you people belive in invisible oppression, than two post later refer to invisible discrimination.
6. “Becoming a world-class economist is not a simple matter of having a high IQ.†
It is however a sufficient requirement, with clear statistical implications. Google it.
7. “It also depends on the social organization of career opportunities†
Your burden of evidence to actually FIND and DEMONSTRATE discrimination. If you can’t it and don’t care should not surprise you that people you sympathize with ideologically are not being recognized as scientists.
Another funny burder:
If “gatekeppers” are keeping women out, despite equal talent, prefrence and performance, we should as Pinker pointe out expect fewest women in subjective fields where it is easy to define good and bad work (sociology, literature), rather than the most objective measurable fields (physics). Economics somewhere in between. Yet the exact opposite is observed! The most soft a field, and the easier to discriminate without challenge, the more women.
A model that predicts the opposite of reality, that is what I call heard-headed positivist economics. Thanks for enriching our world with your heterodoxy!
8. “Further, even if we make the false assumption that native brilliance (as measured by IQ or what have you) is all you need to succeed,†
Further, who ever claimed that? Can’t you even distinguish necessary and sufficient conditions?
9. “the size of these differences does little to explain the observed outcomes.†
First lack of logic, now empirics. Actually the size of the differences is enough to explain all of it (that does not prove it is the cause of course), depending a little about the IQ requirements you put on economics.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm.
10. “Ex ante identification of scholarly brilliance is a highly uncertain process, with empirically indistinguishable candidates showing substantial divergence later on (e.g., dropping out, burning out, being a late developer, etc). It is in making such assessments that stereotyping about gender can have significant effects on people’s careers.†
Ex ante identification is quite successful, as science demonstrates.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0485(197123)3%3A1%3C49%3APOGPIE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O
More importantly there are not that many insurmountable “gate keepers† in the real world with infinite power to keep others out. If there were you would not have seem Jews dominate science the last century. You might also have expected the share of female noble prize winners to rise, rather than slightly fall(!) after compared to before 1950.
11. “I have little doubt, for instance, that a gatekeeper with your views on gender would tend to have a hard time finding any really talented women.†
You have little reason, is what you are demonstrating. Nevertheless here is a simple test of reality for you, please answer honestly: Which group does empirically dominate academia, liberals that believe in social construction and diversity, or conservatives that believe in hard-facts, biology, accomplishment and IQ?
12. “ how assessments of her work changed in some quarters once it began to appear under her present rather than her former name.†
Yes, the logical explanation can hardly be the unusual circumstance of how her name came to change†¦.
Thanks for the anecdotal evidence though, I was waiting for it from you hard-headed types.
“Your ignorance of the literature on career paths is not my problem.†
Your problem is that you don’t know the difference between an empty claims and hardheaded science. Your problem is exacerbated by the fact that you want people to think you are “heard-headed†, even though you can’t seem to argue based on fact and logic.
“I seem to recall it was you who brought up McCloskey, Tino.†
Yes, as the exception that proves the rule. When you can count the number of top female economists with the fingers of one hand it hardly constitutes an anecdote. Someone subjective feelings about discrimination does.
Simple isn’t it?
Tino,
Ah, you have quite outdone yourself.
Well, let me see. So, you agree that the percentage of corporate board members in Sweden who are women is substantially higher than in the US. Saying that this is due to the political power of women in Sweden relative to the US of course does not say that therefore life is worse for women in Sweden than in the US, and it certainly does not make me mistaken about the facts. Further checking shows that the percentage of top corporate CEOs who are women is also higher in Sweden than in the US, although it is very low in both countries. Also, it is well established (UN and World Economic Forum) that the pay gap between women and men in Sweden is the lowest in the world.
Oh, I did make a mistake. Those EUI and Human Development numbers referred specifically to women, not overall quality of life indexes. Yes education and life expectancy matter, and Sweden does better than the US on both of them for women. BTW, World Economic Forum rates Sweden as #1 for economic opportunity for women, the US is #17. Otherwise, I did not make any mistaken statements. I have nothing to retract, despite your frenzies.
Regarding Joan Robinson, one of your answers is correct. She was almost certainly kept from receiving it for political reasons. She had become quite the leftist in her old age, and one who did not pull any punches. The committee certainly was afraid of what she might say from the podium if they gave it to her. This was probably more significant than anti-female bias, although many believe that there was some of that also.
However, you are quite wet on her scientific achievements. That was exactly the point of the McKenzie remark. She had accomplished a large amount that had become part of the standard textbook economics, but by 1973 she was not very interested in that work. So, she independently from Edward Chamberlin (already dead by 1973) developed the theory of monopolistic competition. She also developed many important ideas widely used in industrial organization, such as market segmentation. She was also the first to identify the phenomenon of “beggar thy neighbor” devaluations, something many in the US now accuse China of doing (or in its case, “beggar thy neighbor” failure to let its currency appreciate). There was more, quite a bit more, and if you are unaware of it, you are simply ignorant. In any case, she deserved it, as pretty much anybody who actually knows much about this matter realizes. It was mostly because of politics that she did not receive it, and if you approve of that, then I suggest you should be a candidate for the Joseph McCarthy good citizen award.
1. “So, you agree that the percentage of corporate board members in Sweden who are women is substantially higher than in the US. Saying that this is due to the political power of women in Sweden relative to the US of course does not say that therefore life is worse for women in Sweden than in the US, and it certainly does not make me mistaken about the facts.†
Read and follow the logical steps. The answers are already there for you. I wrote:
“If you knew what you were talking about you would not have used this [jump in female board members] as some sort of signal of underlying position of women. It only proves what we already know, that feminism is politically strong in Scandinavia. The issue is life outcome for women. Do you have any evidence that more female board members improve the life of women?†
Oh well, let explain it step by step:
†¢ I already pointed out that the political position of feminist was not an appropriate measure of women’s well being, since feminists follow bad policy. Similar to “workers republics† not being necessarily better for workers. This was the very premise of the post I wrote again Cowen. It’s not me who is “outdoing† myself, it is you who is either being senile or not reading the thread.
†¢ Sweden only had 4,5% women board members 9 years ago. The figure only jumped when politicians (like Norway, which you now are ignoring†¦) threatened to pass quota laws. It is therefore absurd to view the share of female board members 2007 as some sort of underlying signal for well being.
†¢ I asked you specifically to provide evidence or even some sort of attempt of an argument that the average women is made better off because there are more females in corporate boards. Well?
2. “Further checking shows that the percentage of top corporate CEOs who are women is also higher in Sweden than in the US†
Wrong. 1,6% out the firms noted on Stockholm Stock Exchange have female CEO:s, compared to 2,4% of Fortune 500. And this despite the fact that the later are on average much bigger.
Does this mean anything for the general well being of my mom, or your wife? If so explain how.
By the way, Sweden has a lower share of female managers and professionals in general than the US, as Monica Renstig work shows. This is a somewhat unfair comparison, since Swedish women work more in the public sector, and since they work fulltime to a lesser degree than American women.
I don’t think any of this mean anything about welfare. But I do know it demonstrates your projection of leftism onto Sweden.
3. “the pay gap between women and men in Sweden is the lowest in the world.†
First of all in neither country is there a noticeable wage gap once you control for occupation classification. Secondly I pointed out that the level of CONSUMPTION is the same (almost exactly 50%) in both countries. The only question is what margin they make the money.
4. “education and life expectancy matter, and Sweden does better than the US on both of them for women.†
Your trusted sources lead you wrong again. According to the OECD in 2004 29% of American women had college education or higher (Tertiary-type A or advanced degrees ) vs. 21% of Swedish women. Only among the 25-34 year old does Sweden reach the same level as the US (partially because of the demographic shift in America towards lower skill ethnic groups).
http://www.oecd.org/document/6/0,3343,en_2649_201185_37344774_1_1_1_1,00.html
Here is the only point I want you to take with you. The UN development index is junk. Don’t get fooled, and allow people like me to roll over you.
They are not just arbitrary, but often completely absurd (I think at some point they had 138% of Norwegians getting high school degrees, by including adult highs school students, thereby giving Norway more points than any other country!). I think they have capped it now at 100% (the true figure is around or below 90% in both Norway and Sweden. Native Swedish girls and white-non Hispanic American girls have roughly the same high school dropout rates, as should be expected).
I am not going to waste time on feel-good-junk indices designed mainly to allow liberals to escape the constraints of facts. Either use actual facts or give up.
5. “Otherwise, I did not make any mistaken statements. I have nothing to retract, despite your frenzies.†
Yeah sure buddy, whatever you say.
6. Regarding Robinson first of all of course I have heard this leftist complain a million times. And I am hardly convinced. She did not invent monopolistic competition models that we use. She wrote some stuff about imperfect competition, that has been tangical. It is not used. It did not constitute an important enough contribution to the field.
You got to be kidding about “beggar thy neighbor†. I didn’t know she devised it, but there are so many similar exceptions and price/technology effects in trade, are they going to give 20 nobles to trade?!? (albeit many of them are the same people, Baghawati).
What else do you want, the debunked Keynesianism or the Cambridge Capital theory that no one uses?
At any way this is NOT the point. Let’s say for the sake of the argument she deserved it more than anyone. The question is whether or not you can substantiate your claim that she didn’t get it because she was a women. Is that what ocums razor tells you, gender, or that it was due to scientific or political dispute?
By the way let me predict that any women that is remotely eligible will be given the prize as soon as they can, ideological reasons. The more people convince themselves women are discriminated the more rents do marginally talented women get.
I never forgave Tino for being so sure we were making progress in Iraq based on his reading of numbers from the Brookings Index. It makes me take his reading of the Swedish statistics with a grain of salt even though he sounds more persuasive than Barkley here and I’m not bothering to check for myself.
Joan Robinson’s contribution appears very well-regarded, as even Bob Lucas (in one of those books of interviews with Nobel laureates) considers her omission to be glaring.
Not much else to say other than it’s not a corner solution. The question is an empirical one but progress is slow.
“I’m not saying everything is great, but they are getting better.”
Sorry – this is OT, but I can’t let that slide.
Better than what? The genocide in Darfur? Some of you people are fucking insane. All the electricity in the world won’t help if you’re dead or if you’ve had to flee your homeland. Life in Iraq must be positively blissful and on the upswing with, what is it – a reported 365% gain in telephone line subscriptions? Wow, surely a sign of progress.
Face the reality: we turned a fairly stable, largely secular nation into a radicalized war zone in a matter of months and things are not getting better any time soon. Not with this bozo in the White House and not with this cadre of spineless Democrats and sheeplike Republicans on the hill.
I said “fairly stable.” Maybe “relatively stable” is more accurate. Put it this way: there wasn’t a mass exodus from Iraq until we arrived. And there certainly wasn’t a religious civil war.
While life wasn’t exactly idyllic under Saddam Hussein, this magnitude of violence didn’t exist.
It’s not whether Tino was right on about media bias, but whether the statistics he cited supported his argument as much as it sounded like they did. In fact, he picked endpoints that made increases look bigger, and presented the high points of cyclical numbers as evidence that the numbers were steadily getting higher. It sounded good until I actually looked at the source. That’s why I’m poisoning his well here.
Isn’t anyone here interested in outlier analysis? Tino’s June 6, 3:33:49 post shows Portugal with a whopping -10 on male vs. female satisfaction. Is it a paradise for women or purgatory for men?
Remember Pearl Harbor !
In Japan, a Fascist stood as a candidate for the last “Tokyo gubernatorial election”.
This is not a story happened in 70 years ago.
This is a Clear and Present Danger.
Such a thing never happens in present-day democratic countries.
Fascism is the enemy of human beings.
Imperialism is the enemy of human begings.
The world barely defeated them about 60 years ago.
Remember W.W.II.!!!
This kind of disaster mustn’t be allowed to happen again.
Japan is the racistic country !
Let’s Japan-bashing !
You dim-whitted men are unbelieveable.
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