Video Episodes  

Feminist Economics - Jayati Ghosh. 

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) Education Program has launched a new lecture series on "Feminist Economics" with Jayati Ghosh [see the original INET video site or YouTube playlist] 

Professor Jayati Ghosh taught economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for 35 years. In January 2021, she joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  She is the author of numerous books and articles on gender and development economics.  She has advised the government of India and several other countries, and served as a consultant for international organizations like the ILO, UNDP, UNCTAD, UN-Women. [for more information, see Jayati Ghosh's homepage at UMass Amherst].

In this five-part lecture series, this renowned scholar guides us through the field of feminist economics.  Feminist economics shows how our understanding of the economy, theory and policy changes with the adoption of a gender perspective in economic thinking.  Prof. Ghosh begins with the basic recognition of "care work", the unpaid labor time primarily undertaken by women all over the world for the care of the family.  This produces a gender division of labor and construction of society, that gives priority to men in the formal sector, relegating women to the peripheral edges of the labor market. As a result, economics has tended to underestimate, or overlook entirely, the importance of gender in the economy.  Prof. Ghosh shows how the economy is not gender neutral, but actually relies on gender imbalances to function and grow.  Whether in unpaid work, on the frontiers, or inside the formal sector, women play a critically important role in capital accumulation and economic development.  Moreover, they disproportionately shoulder the burdens of adjustment during periods of crisis. Capitalism relies on the availability and expendability of women workers, keeping them poor, vulnerable and overworked.  Economic policy often fails to address the challenges women face and sometimes even aggravates them.  Prof. Ghosh explains how economists and government policy-makers need to incorporate gender into their analysis in order to understand the economy properly and achieve their policy goals of economic stability and poverty-reduction. Gender equality is not only good in itself, but also essential for the long-term viability of societies and economies.

We have put together a set of online supplementary resources for those who wish to dig deeper into the references Dr. Ghosh makes in the lectures.  The links below, organized by video episode, go to resources currently available on the HET Website and elsewhere online.

These were collected with the assistance of Kurt Semm. 

 

  

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