"The essays in this volume confront the inroads that economics has made into the legal academy.... Law and Economics uses principles of neoclassical economics to develop laws and social policies that maintain if not bolster current allocations of power."—from the Introduction The Law and Economics school has had a significant impact on the legal and governmental landscape in the United States. It posits a perfectly rational "economic man"—homo economicus—who is unconstrained by familial and communal ties and who can and should make decisions solely in light of considerations of economic value. Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus offers a major intervention in debates about how law has come under the influence of economic principles. Drawing on the latest thinking in the fields of feminist legal theory, critical legal studies, and feminist economics, the essays critique the notion that legal and policy decisions should be made solely through the lens of economics. While the contributors question the wholesale incorporation of the neoclassical economic model into legal analysis, they do not all discard economic analysis and theory. Situated at the intersection of feminism, law, and economics, Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus will appeal to scholars and students of these disciplines as well as policy analysts and social theorists interested in family, education, labor, and welfare.

The 1993 publication of Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson's Beyond Economic Man was a landmark in both feminist scholarship and the discipline of economics, and it quickly became a handbook for those seeking to explore the emerging connections between the two. A decade later, this book looks back at the progress of feminist economics and forward to its future, offering both a thorough overview of feminist economic thought and a collection of new, high-quality work from the field's leading scholars.

Hewitson (business, La Trobe U., Australia) uses a feminist poststructuralist approach to expose the masculinity of the allegedly unsexed figure of the neoclassical "rational economic man". Employing a wide range of poststructuralist writings, she argues that neoclassical economics does construct sexual differences and that the notion of the exchanging agent, commonly perceived as a universal and sexless individual, cannot accommodate sexual differences, thus concluding that neoclassical economics cannot accommodate women's differences.

This is the first book to examine the central tenets of economics from a feminist point of view. In these original essays, the authors suggest that the discipline of economics could be improved by freeing itself from masculine biases. Beyond Economic Man raises questions about the discipline not because economics is too objective but because it is not objective enough. The contributors—nine economists, a sociologist, and a philosopher—discuss the extent to which gender has influenced both the range of subjects economists have studied and the way in which scholars have conducted their studies. They investigate, for example, how masculine concerns underlie economists' concentration on market as opposed to household activities and their emphasis on individual choice to the exclusion of social constraints on choice. This focus on masculine interests, the contributors contend, has biased the definition and boundaries of the discipline, its central assumptions, and its preferred rhetoric and methods. However, the aim of this book is not to reject current economic practices, but to broaden them, permitting a fuller understanding of economic phenomena. These essays examine current economic practices in the light of a feminist understanding of gender differences as socially constructed rather than based on essential male and female characteristics. The authors use this concept of gender, along with feminist readings of rhetoric and the history of science, as well as postmodernist theory and personal experience as economists, to analyze the boundaries, assumptions, and methods of neoclassical, socialist, and institutionalist economics. The contributors are Rebecca M. Blank, Paula England, Marianne A. Ferber, Nancy Folbre, Ann L. Jennings, Helen E. Longino, Donald N. McCloskey, Julie A. Nelson, Robert M. Solow, Diana Strassmann, and Rhonda M. Williams.

This book edited by two of the most respected figures in feminist economics is a welcome collection that charts and critically analyses how other movements have influenced the development of feminist economics as a distinct discipline.

Provides an exploration of the impact of technology on women's lives. The technology considered includes word processors, food processors, genetic engineering and buildings. The book surveys sociological and feminist literature on technology and argues that technology has a male bias.