(published in The Chronicle of Higher Education 42(42), June 28, 1996, p. B3)

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To many people outside the profession, and certainly to many economists, the discipline of economics would seem to be above the political and social battles associated with the feminist movement. Economics, after all, seeks to be an objective science, and its models and methods are designed to insure that economic analysis is truly rigorous. Some economists may admit that the profession might have harbored some sexist biases in the past in hiring or curriculum, but may argue that these have been largely overcome. The prominence of such economists as Alice Rivlin (director of the Office of Management and Budget and nominee to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System) and June O'Neill (director of the Congressional Budget Office) roles in the recent debates about the federal budget indicates the advances that women have made in the profession. New courses such as "Women in the Economy," and an increasingly widespread use of gender-neutral language in textbooks signal the openness of many departments to some modifications of the curriculum.

While progress on these fronts should not be belittled, a growing number of feminist economists argue that their insights extend beyond the issues of hiring and curriculum, to the core assumptions, models, and methods that define the discipline. We argue that, far from guaranteeing objectivity, the current definition of economics reflects deep-seated, gender-related biases. The definition of economics as the study--using techniques based in mathematics--of rational choices made by autonomous individuals assumes views of human identity and of the nature of knowledge that are closely linked to our culture's notions of masculinity.

How much this definition shapes what economists do may not be apparent to someone unfamiliar with the nature of current academic economic research. An outsider, for example, would probably expect economic research on "Worker Behavior in the Transition from Socialism to Capitalism" to include some data on the actual behavior of workers during the recent changes in Eastern Europe. An insider, however, would not be surprised to find an absence of data and a reliance instead on models using mathematical game theory. An outsider might expect economists to spend much of their time gathering and studying data, as physical scientists and other social scientists do. Insiders know that economists tend to use and re-use the same secondary sources--when we examine data at all. In short, although outsiders may assume that economists study how people produce, distribute, and consume goods, insiders understand that the name of the game is to explain everything in terms of rational choice theory.

Many economists, of course, do succeed in doing useful empirical and policy-oriented work, but these results are achieved in spite of, rather than because of, the graduate education they received, and the values commonly held within professional economics.
One might defend this emphasis on abstract theorizing and disembodied statistical technique on the ground that such work constitutes "basic science." We don't expect theoretical physicists studying electricity to repair toasters, so why should we expect academic economists to repair policies? The problem with this analogy is that models of electricity tend to be grounded in empirical observations (which underlie even the workings of toasters), whereas contemporar y economic theorizing is based on a set of a priori postulates that focus on only selected aspects of human behavior.

The central model of economics views people as individuals, and each individual as self-interested, autonomous, rational, and free to choose among different actions. Logically, the converse of this would be a view of people as linked to others and concerned about their welfare--people who are dependent, emotional, and subject to decisions made by others or influences from the social or natural environment. Not just coincidentally, all the characteristics in the first list have been, in modern Western and English-speaking cultures, associated with stereotypical masculinity, while all those in the latter list are associated with stereotypical femininity. Similarly, analytical methods associated with detachment, mathematical reasoning, formality, and abstraction have cultural associations that are positive and masculine, in contrast with methods
ssociated with connectedness, verbal reasoning, informality, and concrete detail, which are culturally considered feminine--and inferior.

Feminist economists argue that the process of making certain models, topics, and methods central to the discipline did not grow out of a rational weighing of the relative importance of various topics or the relative effectiveness of different assumptions, but rather resulted from a process strongly influenced by economists' perceptions of the relative value of traits and activities that are seen as masculine or feminine. Thus traditional economists like to focus on the "tough" areas of public life (by which they mean markets and government) and on the efficient use of economic resources, pushing aside the "soft" areas of family finances and economic and social equity. The current restricted range of economic topics, models and methods is seen by feminist economists not as a sign of rigor, but rather as a sign of narrow, biased thinking.

For the most part, feminist challenges within economics do not suggest that all previous work be thrown out, perhaps to be replaced by a stereotypically "feminine" economics--for example, one that emphasizes verbal analysis over mathematics. Nor do most feminists advocate the creation of a distinct "female" economics that would be practiced by women only. What we do urge is that economists recognize how masculine biases have shaped the notion of what counts as valuable economic knowledge. We want to investigate how a less biased discipline, that uses a broader picture of human behavior and a larger methodological toolbox, could yield a more reliable understanding of economic phenomena.

Unfortunately, feminist revelations of the distortions implicit in current economic practice have not yet had much impact on the discipline. Perhaps more than other academic fields, economics is protected by its core paradigm from any critique of how it operates. The very idea that economics as a discipline even has a particular sociology or philosophy, much less a sexist one, seems a peculiar argument to the many economists who treat the central paradigm as revealed truth. In spite of the fact that the International Association for Feminist Economics, formed in 1991, has a substantial membership of women and men who hold Ph.D.'s from mainstream, often major, universities, our critique is often perceived as coming from the "outside."

This feminist critique is needed, however, to help save economics from implosion upon its current narrow assumptions, about what is interesting about human behavior and how it might be studied. Schools and departments of public policy, industrial relations, business, and the like are now more apt to produce students capable of analyzing economic realities than are economics departments, many of whose students are capable only of manipulating a limited set of mathematical models. Many people outside the economics profession, in academe as among the general public, already suspect that the only people who think the results of economic studies are useful are economists themselves.

One of the key tenets of contemporary economic theory, however, is that people respond to incentives. Therefore we believe that important "outsiders" can play a part in helping feminist economists to transform the discipline. Deans, administrators, and officials of government agencies and foundations can influence the profession by supporting a broader range of research and urging the hiring of economists more oriented to empirical analysis of people+s actual economic behavior and the workings of real-world economies.
One change that feminists would like to see, of course, is more research and courses that examine the role of gender in, for example, labor markets, families, and government policies. But if we are to improve economic scholarship, then deans and other administrators also need to pay attention to the nature of the assumptions, models, and methods being used by economists in all areas of study. The trend within many economics departments is towards more research and courses in high-tech but narrow fields, and ever "tougher" and more esoteric work in all areas. Current trends towards more courses and more hiring of faculty members specializing in advanced game theory, "New Classical" macroeconomics, and advanced econometrics, for example, should be greeted with some suspicion by the larger college or university, because of the emphasis on a priori theorizing and disembodied technique in these areas. But even particular research projects or courses whose titles suggest applied topics, such as labor market discrimination or economic development in the third world, may, on examination, consist largely of a priori rational choice theorizing as well. Thus we need to encourage courses and research projects that emphasize the analysis of real economic problems using empirical data and a broader range of (perhaps interdisciplinary) models and techniques.

Feminist analysis suggests that the increasing detachment of economics from the pressing concerns of the real world, and the narrow range of models used by economists, stem at least partly from the discipline+s overreliance on theories, approaches, and topics that emphasize such "masculine" values as abstraction and detached self- interest. If economics is to become a useful and rigorous discipline, it should heed the feminist critique.

Julie A. Nelson is associate professor of economics at Brandeis
University and the author of Feminism, Objectivity and Economics
(Routledge, 1996).