Review

Reviewed Work(s): Feminism and Anti-Feminism in Early Economic Thought. by

Michèle A. Pujol
Review by: Marianne A. Ferber
Source: Journal of Economic Literature , Dec., 1993, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 1966-
1967
Published by: American Economic Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2728335

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 1966 Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXI (December 1993)
cal reason over such complex domains clearly
must take a more contingent form" (p. 16).
Whether one welcomes such complexities in
moral deliberation is in part a matter of tem-
perament. Those who elect to delve into the
complexities will find this volume of consider-
able use.
MICHAEL S. MCPHERSON
Williams College
REFERENCES
ELSTER, JON. The cement of society: A study of social
order. NY: Cambridge U. Press, 1989.
PARFIT, DEREK. Reasons and persons. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1984.
REGAN, DONALD. Utilitarianism and co-operation.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
SEN, AMARTYA K. "Rational Fools: A Critique of the
Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory," Phi-
losophy and Public Affairs, 1977, 6(4), pp. 317-
44.
B Methodology and History of Economic
Thought
Feminism and anti-feminism in early economic
thought. By MICHELE A. PUJOL. Aldershot,
U.K.: Elgar: distributed in the U.S. by
Ashgate, Brookfield, Vt., 1992. Pp. vii, 228.
$49.95. ISBN 1-85278-456-3.
This review of the writings of early econo-
mists on women s issues is a useful reminder
of how much we miss by not devoting more
attention to the history of thought. Specifically,
we learn to what extent widely acclaimed schol-
ars can go astray when they are unable to rid
themselves of the blinders of tradition. We also
learn that useful and potentially important in-
sights of authors who are not in the mainstream
may be virtually ignored.
As Pujol points out, women do not figure
prominently in the work of classical economists.
Adam Smith set the tone by largely ignoring
their contributions in the labor market, and not
recognizing their nonmarket work as pro-
ductive. Ironically, the father of the "invisible
hand" also set the precedent of accepting re-
strictions on women's entry into the labor force.
From then on, economists of this school tended
to subject women to not-so-benign neglect.
The one notable exception was John Stuart
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Mill, particularly after he came under the influ-
ence of Harriet Taylor and the early socialists.
Even Mill, however, considered employment
of women to be incompatible with marriage,
especially when it involved work away from
home, and failed to include women in his dis-
cussions of labor market issues, such as mini-
mum wages.
An extensive analysis of the publications of
the pioneers of neoclassical economics shows
that while they were somewhat more concerned
with women s issues, their perspective was not
significantly different from that of their prede-
cessors. Nor did they shrink from outrageous
inconsistencies when these views proved in-
compatible with their theories. A few examples
will suffice to make this point.
They tended to favor labor unions as neces-
sary in order to achieve "fair" wages for men,
but were opposed to organizing women, or to
ensuring equal pay for equal work, ostensibly
on the grounds that only men have to support
dependents (Francis Y. Edgeworth, "Women's
Wages in Relation to Economic Welfare,"
Econ. J., Dec. 1923, 33, pp. 487-95). Their
conviction that the "most precious part of the
capital invested in human beings is the result
of the care and influence of the mother" was
ignored when comparing the value of human
and physical capital (Alfred Marshall, Principles
of Economics, London: Macmillan, [1890]
1930). And, like the classical economists, they
advocated interference with women's choice
between employment and reproductive activi-
ties, while all other interventions in the econ-
omy were to be strictly confined to instances
where private and public costs and benefits of
individual decisions diverged (Arthur C. Pigou,
The Economics of Welfare, London: Macmillan;
2nd ed., 1924).
It was the early feminists, whose work was
most often disparaged when it was not entirely
ignored, who contributed many innovative
ideas that have finally gained currency today.
Such little known writers as Barbara L. S. Bodi-
chon (Women and Work, London: Bosworth
& Harrison, 1857), Millicent G. Fawcett
("Equal Pay for Equal Work," Econ. J., Mar.
1918, 28, pp. 1-6), Ada Heather-Bigg ("The
Wife's Contribution to Family Income," Econ.
J., Mar. 1894, 4, pp. 51-58), Eleanor Rathbone
("The Remuneration of Women's Services,"
 Book
Econ. J., Mar. 1917, 27, pp. 55-68), and Wil-
liam Smart (Studies in Economics, London:
Macmillan, 1895) deviated from their more cel-
ebrated peers by emphasizing the importance
of dual labor markets in keeping women's wages
low. They advocated education and training to
increase women's productivity, opening up
nontraditional occupations to women in order
to avoid crowding in female fields, and provid-
ing family allowances for women, in recognition
of the value of their contributions in the house-
hold. But their views "failed to acquire even a
semblance of legitimacy within the orthodox
economics discourse" (p. 199).
Thus Pujol succeeds in providing strong sup-
port for her claim that the
neoclassical paradigm is based on a point of view
which excludes women from the sphere of eco-
nomic rationality: they are construed as not be-
longing in the market sphere and as unmotivated
by self-interest.
She also extensively documents that
their exclusion [of women] from the realm of
economic rationality yields contradictory situa-
tions. (p. 199)
Most shocking is not merely that thinkers
widely acclaimed for their objectivity indulged
in biased and normative judgments, but rather
that they appear to have been totally unaware
that they were guilty of such practices.
Along with its considerable virtues this book,
however, also has shortcomings. For one, the
author goes to extremes in explaining to her
readers what they will be told, then telling
them, and then explaining what they were told.
This results in a great deal of unnecessary repe-
tition, aggravated by the tendency to discuss
individual publications separately, rather than
simply presenting the gist of each scholar's
work, with perhaps some explanation how their
views may have changed over time. Pujol also
has the annoying (though regrettably not un-
common) habit of using words that can not be
found in the dictionary, such as "caricatural"
(p. 4) and "revolutioning" (p. 5), to mention
only two examples.
Last, but by no means least, we learn almost
as much about the procapitalist views of classi-
and neoclassical economists as about their
antifeminist convictions, although this is not
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Reviews 1967
what the book is supposed to be about. The
explanation, no doubt, is that Pujol unquestion-
ingly links patriarchy and capitalism, as though
neither could exist without the other. This is
by no means self-evident, and detracts from
the main focus of this otherwise thoughtful and
well-documented book.
MARIANNE A. FERBER
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Radical economics. Edited by BRUCE ROBERTS
AND SUSAN FEINER. Recent Economic
Thought Series. Norwell, Mass. and Dor-
drecht: Kluwer Academic, 1992. Pp. vi, 252.
$57.50. ISBN 0-7923-9178-0. JEL 93-0020
Radical economics in the United States
emerged in the late 1960s, not initially as a
theoretical movement, but as a form of disci-
plined outrage at racism, militarism, and the
vast disparities of wealth, power, and life oppor-
tunities in contemporary capitalist societies.
With the onset of stagflation in the 1970s, radi-
cal economists also began exploring the sources
of growth, stagnation, and instability under cap-
italism. Not surprisingly, given these initial
concerns, most radical economists in some form
embraced Marxism as an analytic framework
and socialism as a political agenda, even while
harboring few illusions about the Soviet Union
and other Communist states.
Over the past 20 years, a major feature of
the maturing of radical economics has been the
deepening of its theoretical foundations. This
volume is a survey of the work in various theo-
retical fields over the past 20 years. It includes
six essays in the areas of class analysis, the labor
theory of value, analytic Marxism, Marxist-fem-
inism, theories of accumulation and crisis, and
development economics. Each essay is followed
by a substantial comment by a recognized au-
thor in the various specialized fields. The edi-
tors are associated with the post-modern school
of radical economics around the journal Re-
thinking Marxism, and this approach is dispro-
portionately represented. But the volume still
includes a wide range of authors and spirited
debates.
Much of the book concentrates on various
aspects of the analytics of class exploitation.
Within traditional Marxian analysis, Makoto
Itoh examines the so-called "transformation
problem"-the technique through which the