8 - Putting into the system: gender, markets and tax policy

Summary

This penultimate chapter has three purposes. First, the project of this book will be reassessed, in light of the analyses in the preceding chapters. After this review, the chapter will reformulate the questions that should be asked, so as to be able articulate the place of gender in contextual analyses of tax policy and the law. The second aim of this chapter is to clarify (again in an informed way, based on the analyses which precede) why gender is a problem in tax policy; or, put differently, why tax policy has failed effectively to connect with the gendered economy. Finally, this chapter will re-engage with the literature. It will identify and summarise how it has theorised the failure of tax policy in this regard, and to suggest next steps.

This book asked, first: is gender ignored in the functioning of the market, as currently formed? Or, second, does the paid marketplace, and the tax system which both contributes to and draws from it, need to be restructured so as to incorporate the goal of gender equality? The overall aim of this chapter is, within this review of the literature, to identify common ground. The nature of the relationship between gender and markets, and by extension the tax system, is inherently contradictory.

This book has identified three, key problems. First, expectations are unclear when women are considered as market workers. Additionally, literature considering the core value of even identifying gender as a factor within the working of the marketplace is divided.