Feminist Economics

Feminist economists have produced a wide range of critical analyses of the various forms of masculinity within neoclassical economics. This book employs a feminist poststructuralist approach to reveal the masculinity of the allegedly unsexed figure, 'rational economic man'.Gillian Hewitson constructs an alternative approach to the question of masculinity in neoclassical economics, using a range of poststructuralist and feminist poststructuralist writing, the centrepiece of which may be seen as the notion of the body, rather than gender, as a cultural product. The author argues that neoclassical economics actively constructs sexual differences as meaningful by using case studies of the neoclassical teaching device, Robinson Crusoe, and the surrogate motherhood exchange. The book concludes that the notion of the exchanging agent, as a supposedly universal and hence disembodied individual, cannot accommodate sexual differences and thus the female body.

This ground-breaking new book will be essential reading for scholars of feminist economics and women's studies.