[K] Gender Economics and Social Identity
Coordinators: Melissa Langworthy
Independent Researcher and Consultant
melissa.e.langworthy@gmail.comAlyssa Schneebaum
Vienna University of Economics and Business, AT
alyssa.schneebaum@wu.ac.at
Feminist political economy (FPE) is a dynamic and evolving field of intellectual inquiry that challenges traditional political economy. It draws on and builds connections between key ideas from feminist economics, institutional economics, and economic sociology to ask how political economies can provision human needs and well-being. As such, it demands the reconceptualization of the scope, methodologies, and identities that are integral to creating a more intersectional, inclusive, and nuanced study of political economy at all levels – state, formal institutions, households, and individuals. In calling for specific and rigorous analyses of gender and social identity in political economy -and one that utilizes an intersectional feminist lens - we hope to lay the groundwork for an evolutionary political economy that is equal to the task of contemporary challenges.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and recurring financial crises, contemporary political economy, including capitalist processes, has come face-to-face with issues of gender and social identity, including centering social reproduction, social protection, and inclusion within productive and reproductive labor, processes of commodification, and shrinking state supports. The Gender and Social Identity research area supports work that will debunk and challenge the homogenizing and dominant accounts of political economy through the use of methodologies that go beyond the traditional quantitative/ qualitative binary to work that is multidisciplinary, embedded in the lives and everyday practices of people, and captures key interrelations between the economic, the social, and the political.
Past sessions at the annual EAEPE conference have been organized on feminist methodologies, gender and evolutionary economics, gender in development economics, and gendered institutions in labour markets. However, we see an opportunity in the post-COVID era to revise and reorganize our understanding of the individuals, institutions, and interrelations that define political economy in ways that can inform a new generation of analysis, particularly along the lines of gender and social identity. We are open to other themes that would contribute to building a strong discourse for gender and social identity within political economy, economics, and related fields.