Women, Work And Public Policy :: essays research papers

Gender and the market are both concepts that carry tremendous power to shape society. Indeed, these institutions are so powerful within society that they can seem invisible and immutable. Each of these influential constructs has become the lens through which a theoretical approach defines and analyzes the world: feminist theory centering on gender, and economic theory centering on the market. Such a primary focus enables each theory to function as an invaluable tool in clarifying complex interactions. On the flip side, however, such a lens can also obscure the ability to enlarge understanding beyond that initial analysis. In this way, the strength of focus can become a weakness, setting one analytical approach as exclusively paramount, and inherently discrediting other approaches. This has often been the case with the disparate economic and feminist approaches to analyzing work and gender. A synthesis of the economic and feminist approaches, however, would provide a more complex, applicable, and efficient tool than the confrontational stance that often pervades discussion. The synthesis process would begin with realizing that, although both theories are extremely valuable methods of achieving an understanding of work, gender and society, neither theory provides a complete picture. Indeed, the very fact that they are such powerful tools, with defined focuses, makes it very difficult for each paradigm to comprehend and incorporate insights foreign to its bias. Such an effective synthesis would emphasize how the focus and methodology of these two stances can be complimentary, and result in the development of a more comprehensive, flexible analytical approach. The economic approach to society, including gender and work, focuses on the workings of an â€Å"invisible hand† which guides forces of supply and demand within a market constructed of aggregates. In this approach, human beings operate by a set of rational rules that are predictable, graphable, and individual. Using these behaviors, economic man weighs the opportunity costs involved in economic choices and makes decisions at the margin to maximize benefits. Deductive reasoning and empirical knowledge comprises the methodology used to explain the interactions of these market forces. Within this purely theoretical world, economics appears to hold no biases that would influence its approach to labor or gender, because it impersonally uses formal models to simply emphasize how wages influence the forces of supply and demand. Economics, however, was not designed to exist as a theoretical construct. Instead, this approach applies the lens of the market to view the intricacies of everyday life as a never-ending cycle of supply and demand interactions.