Gender, development, and globalization: Economics as if all people mattered. Second edition. By Lourdes BENERÍA, Günseli BERIK and Maria S. FLORO

AuthorNaoko OTOBE
Published date01 September 2016
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12044
Date01 September 2016
BOOK REVIEWS
Copyright © International Labour Organization 2016
Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2016
International Labour Review, Vol. 155 (2016), No. 3
Gender, development, and globalization: Economics as if all people mattered.
Second edition. By Lourdes BENERÍA, Günseli BERIK and Maria S. FLORO.
New York, NY, Routledge. xxvii + 319 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-53749-0.
This second, revised and updated edition of Gender, development, and globaliza-
tion provides a comprehensive historical overview of the evolution of the discipline of
feminist economics, which aspires to shape a socially just and sustainable society and
economy with “human wellbeing” at their core, especially for women and other social
groups that face marginalization and discrimination. It offers fresh thinking about how
to address inequality by focusing on the “gender” dimensions of human well-being,
society, communities and the economy.
Chapter 1 reviews the contributions of feminist economics to international pol-
icy orientations, from “women in development” (WID) to “women and development”
(WAD) and “gender and development” (GAD). Here, the authors are particularly con-
cerned about the “instrumentalization” of women in policy design (i.e. policies which
treat women as part of the “engine of economic growth”) and the mechanistic approach
to gender mainstreaming policy and the promotion of gender equality. However, they
believe that in spite of the strong neoliberal inuence on the eld, a critical GAD per-
spective, incorporating the capabilities and human rights approaches and the social pro-
visioning approach of feminist economics, can provide an alternative discourse both in
socio-economic research and in policy-making.
Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of the origin, core principles, key contri-
butions and emerging research agendas of feminist economics as a school of thought,
also examining how it has interacted with other social sciences. The discipline of fem-
inist economics, as heterodox economics, has indeed developed by engaging with and
critiquing various other schools of economic thought, including orthodox economics,
Marxian theory and institutional economics. A central tenet of feminist economics is its
critique of mainstream neoliberal economics, which it analyses from the perspective of
social provisioning, taking into account the value and contribution of unpaid care work,
as a tool for informing progressive policies and social change.
Chapters 3 and 4 examine the overarching theme of the book – gender, globaliza-
tion and development. Here, the authors explain the profound impacts globalization has
had on economic relations and on people’s lives, particularly women’s. Chapter 3 reviews
the history of neoliberal economic policies and their consolidation with the expansion
and deepening of markets. The authors examine the links between the global expan-
sion of markets and those policies’ conceptual roots in orthodox economics, such as the
assumptions involving concepts like “economic rationality” and “economic man”. The

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