Apr 14, 4:30 PM: Panel on Feminist Economics

Panelists include: Julie Nelson (University of Boston) Eileen Boris (UC Santa Barbara) Diana Strassmann(Rice University) Moderator: Aidan Beatty (PhD Candidate in History) The central aim of this panel discussion is to address androcentric assumptions inherent in the models and methods of economics that have long predetermined the agents, actions, and economies that are eligible for analysis. Many of the central tenets of modern economic thought, (rationality, the absolute right to private property, the distinction between ‘valuable’ waged labour and unwaged housework) are regularly held to be immutable and natural ideas. The field of feminist economics challenge this epistemology, and highlights how male-centered conceptualizations about the market, workplace, and processes of production have excluded subjects that are viewed as culturally feminine (e.g. family economies, work involving care, occupational exclusion/inequality). This panel seeks to provide a forum for such a discussion, one that will focus on both the inorganic and constructed nature of many of the central concepts of modern economic thought, as well as providing a feminist critique of these concepts.

Date: April 14, 2014
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM