How (the Meaning of) Gender Matters in Political Economy

What is the state of debate regarding gendered political economy? Answering this question depends on the existence of a debate, who is presumed to be participating and, especially, how we understand ‘gender’. Among self-proclaimed feminist scholars we can readily identify a range of positions on ‘gender and political economy’. While disciplinary locations prompt some of the variation, the most telling differences – or points of debate – reflect varying theoretical (epistemological, methodological) orientations to the study of gender. The range of feminist research constitutes a continuum of overlapping positions that (as clarified below) reflects varying positivist and constructivist (also postmodernist/poststructuralist) orientations. The former mixes feminist and traditional political economy tools to study how men and women – gender understood empirically – are differently affected by, and differently affect, political economy; the latter foregrounds the feminist tool of ‘analytical gender’ to study how masculinity and femininity – gender understood as a meaning system – produce, and are produced by, political economy. Hence, there is a range of positions and, while feminists share a commitment to the centrality of gender, they do debate how to study it. It is more difficult to assess how and to what extent less visibly ‘feminist’ scholars participate in the debate. While we see little evidence that political economy scholars assume the centrality of gender, in the last 10 years we do observe more attention to the category of ‘women’ (for example, in labour markets and social movements) and more references to ‘gender’ in a variety of publications. We also observe the inclusion of ‘gender-thematic’ articles in journal special issues, as well as ‘gender’ chapters in edited volumes that are devoted to encompassing topics (e.g. globalisation). In this sense, even scholars who do not self-identify as feminist have increased their awareness of and references to women and/or gender in the context of political economy. This is obviously a welcome development, especially as it is neither an insignificant nor easily won gain. New Political Economy, Vol. 10, No. 4, December 2005