Feminist economics is the critical study of economics and economies, with a focus on gender-aware and inclusive economic inquiry and policy analysis. Feminist economic researchers include academics, activists, policy theorists, and practitioners. Much feminist economic research focuses on topics that have been neglected in the field, such as care work, intimate partner violence, or on economic theories which could be improved through better incorporation of gendered effects and interactions, such as between paid and unpaid sectors of economies. Other feminist scholars have engaged in new forms of data collection and measurement such as the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), and more gender-aware theories such as the capabilities approach. Feminist economics is oriented towards the goal of "enhancing the well-being of children, women, and men in local, national, and transnational communities."
The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the president of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical research for the White House and prepares the publicly-available annual Economic Report of the President. The council is made up of its chairperson and generally two to three additional member economists. Its chairperson requires appointment and Senate confirmation, and its other members are appointed by the President.
In economics, a discouraged worker is a person of legal employment age who is not actively seeking employment or who has not found employment after long-term unemployment, but who would prefer to be working. This is usually because an individual has given up looking, hence the term "discouraged".
The gender pay gap in the United States is a measure comparing the earnings of men and women in the workforce. The average female annual earnings is around 80% of the average male's. When variables such as hours worked, occupations chosen, and education and job experience are controlled for, the gap diminishes with females earning 95% as much as males. The exact figure varies because different organizations use different methodologies to calculate the gap. The gap varies depending on industry and is influenced by factors such as race and age. The causes of the gender pay gap are debated, but popular explanations include the "motherhood penalty," hours worked, occupation chosen, willingness to negotiate salary, and gender bias.
Heather Marie Boushey is an American economist who currently serves as a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers and the Chief Economist for the Invest in America Cabinet at the White House. Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, she was the president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which she co-founded with John Podesta. She has also worked as an economist at the Center for American Progress, the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee, the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Economic Policy Institute. She has written for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Democracy Journal, and the American Prospect. She regularly appears in the media to discuss economic issues.
Bina Agarwal is an Indian development economist and Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute at The University of Manchester. She has written extensively on land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; legal change; and agriculture and technological transformation.
Barbara Rose Bergmann was a feminist economist. Her work covers many topics from childcare and gender issues to poverty and Social Security. Bergmann was a co-founder and president of the International Association for Feminist Economics, a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security, and Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Maryland and American University.
Unemployment in the United States discusses the causes and measures of U.S. unemployment and strategies for reducing it. Job creation and unemployment are affected by factors such as economic conditions, global competition, education, automation, and demographics. These factors can affect the number of workers, the duration of unemployment, and wage levels.
Care work includes all tasks directly involving the care of others. The majority of care work is provided without any expectation of immediate pecuniary reward. Instead, it is undertaken out of affection, social norms or a sense of responsibility for others. It can also be a form of paid employment.
Ailsa McKay was a Scottish economist, government policy adviser, a leading feminist economist and Professor of Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University.
The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference between the remuneration for men and women who are employed. Women are generally found to be paid less than men. There are two distinct measurements of the pay gap: non-adjusted versus adjusted pay gap. The latter typically takes into account differences in hours worked, occupations chosen, education and job experience. In other words, the adjusted values represent how much women and men make for the same work, while the non-adjusted values represent how much the average man and woman make in total. In the United States, for example, the non-adjusted average woman's annual salary is 79–83% of the average man's salary, compared to 95–99% for the adjusted average salary. The reasons for the gap link to legal, social and economic factors. These include having children, parental leave, gender discrimination and gender norms. Additionally, the consequences of the gender pay gap surpass individual grievances, leading to reduced economic output, lower pensions for women, and fewer learning opportunities.
The International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) is a non-profit international association dedicated to raising awareness and inquiry of feminist economics. It has some eight hundred members in over 90 countries. The association publishes a quarterly journal entitled Feminist Economics.
Yana van der Meulen Rodgers is a professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University,. She also works regularly as a consultant for the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and the United Nations. She has authored numerous journal articles in economics and has written two books. From 2018 to 2024 she served as Faculty Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers, and she was the president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) from 2013 to 2014.
Michael R. Strain is an American economist. He is currently the Director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also Professor of Practice in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, and a columnist for Project Syndicate. Strain's research focuses on labor economics, macroeconomics, public finance, and social policy.
Armine Yalnizyan is a Canadian economist and columnist. In 2012, the CBC described her as one of Canada's "leading progressive economists". She was a senior economist with the progressive Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives from 2008 to 2017. She appeared regularly on CBC TV's Lang and O'Leary Exchange, CBC Radio's Metro Morning, and contributed regularly to the "Economy Lab" at the Globe and Mail. She is currently a fellow with the Atkinson Foundation focused on the future of workers in a period of technological and demographic change. Her work focuses on "social and economic factors that determine our health and well being", and the care economy. She contributes bi-weekly business columns to the Toronto Star.
Mariacristina De Nardi is an economist who was born in Treviso, Italy. She is the Thomas Sargent Professor at the University of Minnesota since 2019. In 2013, De Nardi was appointed professor of economics at University College London; since September 2018, she has been a senior scholar at the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Her research interests include macroeconomics, public economics, wealth distribution, savings, social-insurance reform, social security, household economics, health shocks, medical expenses, fertility and human capital.
Rhonda Michèle Williams was an American professor, activist and political economist whose work combined economics with multiple other social fields including race and gender analysis, law, politics, public policy and cultural studies. She aimed to show how the examination of the roles of race and gender in economics benefitted from an inclusive approach rather than a separate and fragmented analysis in order to ensure that issues of economic inequality and discrimination were aptly addressed. Williams was also noted as being consistent in aligning her own ethics with economic analysis resulting in a legacy in the political economy of race and gender.
Abena Frempongmaa Daagye Oduro is the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Ghana where she also holds the position of Associate Professor of the Department of Economics. Having had 30 years of experience teaching, her areas of specialization are centred around gender and asset management, international economics, poverty analysis, macroeconomic theory and trade policy. Abena Oduro is the first Vice President of the Association for the Advancement of African Women Economists (AAAWE) where Professor of Economics in University of Kansas, Elizabeth Asiedu, is the founder and president. She is also the president elect of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), her tenure will be 2021 to 2022.
Nina Banks is an American economist who is an associate professor of economics at Bucknell University and former president of the National Economic Association. She is known for her research on the contributions of early women economists, particularly Sadie Alexander. She has also published work explaining the economic value of Black women's community activism.
Claudia Olivetti is an Italian economist specializing in the fields of labor economics and the economics of gender and family. She is the George J. Records 1956 Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. and a Research Associate and Co-Director of the "Gender in the Economy" study group at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She was previously a professor of economics at Boston College and a Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow.
