Lecture 14 - Gender in Global Political Economy Flashcards
(15 cards)
What is the difference between sex and gender in Feminist Political Economy (FPE)?
Sex is a biological distinction (male/female), while gender is a social construct referring to the roles, behaviors, and values society assigns to masculinities and femininities.
How does gender act as a “governing code” in economic systems?
Gender structures hierarchies of value, privileging masculine-coded traits (e.g., rationality, competitiveness) and marginalizing feminine-coded traits (e.g., care, emotion), influencing whose labor is valued.
What is the “Rational Economic Man” and how is it critiqued by FPE?
A self-interested, utility-maximizing agent in neoclassical economics; FPE critiques it for being disembodied, ignoring care, dependency, and social reproduction.
What are the two types of production identified by Engels?
(1) Production of goods and services; (2) Social reproduction—the production of human beings and care work.
How does Marx’s concept of “original accumulation” relate to gender and labor?
It refers to the historical dispossession of people from land and resources, forcing them into wage labor—obscuring gendered divisions of unpaid reproductive labor.
Define social reproduction in the context of feminist economics.
The daily and generational reproduction of human life (e.g., care, education, domestic labor), largely unpaid and done by women.
What is the core argument of Social Reproduction Feminism?
Gendered oppression and reproductive labor are foundational—not incidental—to capitalism.
What is Silvia Federici’s contribution to the understanding of capitalism and gender?
In Caliban and the Witch, she argues that capitalism separated production from reproduction, devaluing the latter and institutionalizing gendered labor divisions.
What does Maria Mies argue in Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale?
That capitalist accumulation relies on the hidden exploitation of women’s unpaid labor, colonial labor, and enslaved labor.
What are the three economies identified by Elson (2010) and others in FPE?
(1) Productive economy, (2) Reproductive economy, and (3) Virtual economy (symbolic representation of value).
How do economic crises reinforce gendered divisions of labor?
Crises lead to cuts in public services, pushing more unpaid labor onto households—especially women—who fill the gap through invisible labor.
What does the Greece crisis illustrate about gender and austerity?
Cuts to childcare and public sector jobs disproportionately affected women, increasing unpaid work and reinforcing traditional gender roles.
Why is gender considered central—not peripheral—to the global economy in FPE?
Because capitalism depends on a gendered system of social reproduction that sustains labor markets and economic growth.
How do FPE scholars challenge the binary divisions of capitalism (e.g., public/private, production/reproduction)?
By showing that these binaries are ideological tools that devalue feminine-coded labor and naturalize inequality.
