Abstract
Adam Smith, the 18th century doyen of economics, is perhaps the most renowned for his metaphor of the “invisible hand” as the foundational principle of free market capitalism. His famous quote from The Wealth of Nations, “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest,” is an unabashed ode to self-interest. Katrine Marçal, a Swedish journalist, in a delectable twist to this legendary narrative, asks the incisive question as to which unseen hand cooked the renowned economist’s own dinner every night?
As it turns out, Smith was a lifelong bachelor and as in most homes the kitchen stoves were managed by a woman – in this case his mother, Margaret Douglas – a young widow who inherited her husband’s Scottish estate but never remarried to take care of her son.
In this book, Marçal intelligently uses this ironically apt historical truth to pinpoint the inherent sexism and entrenched patriarchy in mainstream economics which in a classic case of missing the elephant in the room, routinely invisibilises and devalues the ubiquitous contributions of women’s unpaid labours.
World over in most homes domestic chores, caregiving for the elderly and child rearing are invariably relegated as women’s prerogatives. But as Marçal elaborates these time-consuming intensive chores are neither accounted for in national GDP calculations nor are women rewarded economically or socially for their labours. The discipline of economics in particular, does not accord sufficient prominence to the household as the primary unit of reproduction, nurturing and sustenance. As a result, the magnitude of inequality within homes in intra-household distribution of resources and labour also remain deeply undervalued and under-researched.
Oxfam, for example, estimates that unpaid work done by women translates into 10 trillion US dollars annually, 43 times the turnover of Apple, the world’s largest corporation. In India, this inequality is particularly acute, with the hours women spend on domestic chores ten times more than that of men.
Marçal attributes this glaring blind spot in the theoretical basis of mainstream economics to the overstated ideal of ‘Homo Economicus’ (the epitome of economic man) which it espouses, as a modified version of Robinson Crusoe on an imaginary self-obsessed island. She launches a powerful feminist polemic against this rationale of economics which unabashedly valorizes selfishness, profit-seeking, rationality and other so-called “masculine” traits which implicitly underlie most theoretical economic models. In a slightly crude but convincing binary juxtaposition Marçal criticizes cold economic calculus for also devaluing attributes such as solidarity, selflessness, love, altruism and compassion as apparently “feminine” traits. Her critique of the low wages in feminized professions such as nursing, child care and housekeeping over and above the “shadow economy of altruistic domestic labour and unpaid work” is particularly incisive. The author also comprehensively analyses in great depth the challenges women face in participating in the discriminatory labour market in terms of the gender pay gap, the double burden of work, the maternal penalty, feminization of low-paid professions and the glass ceiling.
However, Marçal doesn’t confine herself to only a feminist critique of economics. She challenges the very edifice of the construction of the capitalist economy which propels periodic spurts of financial crises. Her rebuke of the Chicago School of Economics’ Nobel Laureate Gary Baker’s controversial human development propositions and Lawrence Summers’ internal memo on environmental pollution written as Chief Economist of the World Bank with their inherently racist, sexist and immoral undertones is particularly sharp to expose the moral bankruptcy of the key tenets of neoliberal economics. Further, her sardonic counterfactual thought-experiment of how Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street giant which collapsed in the 2008 global financial crisis, would have performed in terms of risk-taking had it been named Lehman Sisters is particularly hilarious.
However, despite the classification of the textual material in 16 distinct chapters, the contents of the book largely lacks structure and a systematic narrative evolution. Nevertheless, the insights are brilliant in patches such as the history of money and monetary policy and the critique of excessive risk-taking by investment bankers akin to Las Vegas gambling casinos.
Gratifyingly, the book has been written by a journalist with literary flair in a page-turning format and an eye for quirky details. It certainly fulfills its aims to be both eye-catching and eye-opening without the baggage of theoretical paradigms. However, this also proves to be its weakness as while issues have been presented largely in anecdotal style, there is a dearth of feminist theorization. Even a glimpse of feminist perspectives from the wisdom of intersectionality to the insight of the feminist standpoint would have enriched the depth of the book’s core arguments.
However, from the perspective of a non-European reader, perhaps the main lacunae of the book is its preponderant euro-centrism. This could however be explained by the fact that the author had written the original in Swedish, with perhaps a limited audience in mind. But in a tome which aims to provide a sweeping global account of women and economics, there is little mention of evidence from developing countries which could have further enriched the book, apart from the customary nodding reference to Amartya Sen’s astute statistical detection of 100 million “missing” women.
Further, while the book is a pungent critique of economics, it offers minimal acknowledgment of the strides accomplished by the women’s movement in different corners of the globe and the evolution of different branches of heterodox economics over centuries. Nevertheless, in the thick of the current #MeToo era with sexual harassment in the workplace and the gender wage gap finally rising to the centerstage of the public discourse across borders, this engaging book which questions the fundamental premise of neoliberal economics from a feminist perspective could not be more timely.