Preface

Summary

This book represents the encounter of three feminist scholars committed to a powercentred understanding of the economy. We are from different generations and countries but we all work in the fields of political economy and economics in critical and interdisciplinary ways. Our own journeys, intellectual interests and differences, as well as dilemmas, are reflected in this book, which has a primary aim to systematize the rich, complex and variegated knowledge in feminist political economy around a selection of key topics so as to provide an overview of the foundational insights and debates in this area of enquiry.

The book has been a long time in the making. Although this was partly a result of other work and life commitments, it was also because the book itself, which had appeared a quite straightforward proposition, turned out to be a more complex endeavour, marked by several periods of reflection and introspection on our own understanding of feminist political economy.

Our initial idea was to draw on our teaching practice and write up some of the classes we have taught working from our slides, resources and relevant literature in courses such as the “Feminist Political Economy & Development” summer school at SOAS University of London, the “Feminist Political Economy: Concepts and Tools to Analyse Intersecting Inequalities” at the Central European University, the “Feminist Economics” summer school organized by the Institute for Economic Justice in Johannesburg, the “Social Thought and Political Economy Program” at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst or the “Political Economy of Inequality” module on the Equality Studies MSc at University College Dublin. Yet, in the process of writing, new questions emerged that caused a revision of the structure of the book as well as the topics to select, the most relevant starting point and how best to link the various areas, let alone the bigger issue of defining the burgeoning field of feminist political economy and identifying its boundaries. It is, therefore, the result of our extended process of writing and evolving interpretations and engagements with feminist political economy. So, for example, the chapter on the global division of labour, which was meant to frame the following one on labour market inequalities, turned out to be the chapter we felt was best suited to frame the whole book.