2 - Gender in economics

Summary

Abstract

The severe consequences of the economic crisis of 2007/2008 – caused by the expansion of financial sector, high risk exposure and over-dimensioned speculation – call for a new economic design. The intense search for appropriate solutions opens space for innovative ideas for smart and fair socioeconomic progress. The increasing participation of women in the economy and society is real, revealing unexploited gains which sophisticated mathematical models cannot grasp. The aim of this paper is to show how a gender approach in economics reveals new reserves and incentives for development – at the local and global levels. The research question is how gender equality contributes to achieving these results. The Norwegian experience is used here as a case study. It shows the development of gender equality in Norway from a historical perspective, its challenges both before and now, and finally, the positive results it has produced, by comparison with selected European countries and the US. “Economic citizenship” – one's own income and access to paid work/self-employment and thus participation in decision making (in politics & business) are the main pillars of equality in Norway.

Key words: gender, economics, equality, Norway

Which problems in a global economy need serious response?

The increasing marketization of the economy and society: What is a good society?

Michael Sandel's book What Money Can't Buy. The Moral Limits of Markets (2013b) raises the problem of the monetization of our lives, where human values are converted into commodities and given a value in money (surrogate mothers, organs for transplantation, blood).

The classical economists, going back to Adam Smith, conceived of economics as a branch of moral and political philosophy. But the version of economics commonly taught today presents itself as an autonomous discipline, one that does not pass judgements on how income should be distributed or how this or that good should be valued. The notion that economics is a value-free science has always been questionable. But the more markets extend their reach into noneconomic aspects of life, the more entangled they become with moral questions (Sandel, 2013b, p. 122).

The modern capitalist economy is a market economy, with variation in the operation of the market mechanism; nevertheless, there are limits to markets’ expansion into other spheres of life and society, which should not be managed by markets.