Gendering a post-Keynesian theory of financial crises

Abstract

This paper speculates about the meaningful integration of gender into a post-Keynesian macroeconomic theory of economic crises. It links main themes in feminist and other works with key elements of a post-Keynesian theory of crisis, and highlights an important methodological sticking point. It argues that if the post-Keynesian approach is understood to be consistent with a non-positivist philosophical approach to economics, gendering post-Keynesian macroeconomics will readily enrich this theory.

Keywords:

• Financial crises
• gender
• post-Keynesian economics

Notes

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge comments from Robert Blecker, Andrew Jackson, Marc Lavoie, Martha MacDonald, Angella MacEwan, Jim Stanford, and Kevin Young; remaining errors are mine.

Disclosure statement

The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes on contributor

Brenda Spotton Visano, teaches in the Department of Economics and School of Public Policy & Administration at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Notes

1 For description and analysis of the 2008 crisis, see the articles in Studies in Political Economy, 83 (2009) “Forum on the Financial Crisis.”

2 Lavoie, Post Keynesian Economics.

3 Yalnizyan, “The Problem of Poverty.”

4 Seguino, “The Global Economic Crisis,” 195.

5 Elson, “Gender and the Global,” 202.

6 Jennings, “Towards a Feminist Expansion,” 555 − 65.

7 Lavoie, “The Tight Links,” 189 − 92.

8 Through the International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics, and International Economics and other coordinated activities, feminist economists have made a concerted effort to gender macroeconomics and to work with international agencies to remedy the biases mentioned above. Thanks are due to Martha MacDonald for suggesting that I point out that this community of scholarly effort has grown and evolved importantly beyond just individual voices, as is otherwise suggested in the text.

9 See Lavoie, Post Keynesian Economics, 43.

10 Folbre, “Holding Hands,” 213 − 30.

11 Ferber, "Gender and the Study,” 147 − 55; see, as well, Figart, “Gender as More,” 1 − 32.

12 Thanks are due to Andrew Jackson for suggesting this example.

13 Waring, If Women Counted.

14 Spotton Visano, Financial Crises.

15 Nelson, “Confronting the Science/Value Split,” 56.

16 Townson and Hayes. Women and the Employment.

17 Kathleen Lahey in her Gender Analysis of Budget 2009. Accessed May 15, 2015. http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/01/31/gender-analysis-of-budget-2009/.

18 Strassmann, "Feminist Thought,” 155.

19 Code, What Can She Know?

20 Fukuda-Parr, et al., “Critical Perspectives,” 5.

21 Austen and Jefferson, “Feminist and Post-Keynesian,” 1111.

22 Jonung and Ståhlberg, “Does Economics,” 68.

23 Lavoie, Post Keynesian Economics, 43.

24 Code, What Can She Know? 25.

25 Dimand, et al., Biographical Dictionary.

26 Financial crises appear as the dramatic collapse in prices of marketable financial instruments, or the insolvency of lending establishments and suspension of their credit facilities. Crises typically occur in the wake of a period of extreme speculative optimism and trading, sometimes referred to as a “speculative bubble.” See Spotton Visano, Financial Crises.

27 Davidson, Post Keynesian Macroeconomic Theory.

28 van Staveren, “The Lehman Sisters Hypothesis,” 995 − 1014.

29 Todorova, Money and Households.

30 See Lawrence Boland’s 2012 blog for a discussion of economic positivism as it appears in the writings of some influential men in economics. “Positive economics is now so pervasive that virtually all competing methodological views…have been eclipsed.” http://positivists.org/blog/economic-positivism.

31 Space limitations prevent further nuancing. The above framing of feminism as nonpositivist is too blunt and it obscures debates within feminism about whether feminist theories are themselves positivistic. See, for example, the determinism in the writings of the Marxist-feminist Dorothy Smith, Feminism and Marxism.

32 Austen and Jefferson, “Feminist and Post-Keynesian Economics.”

33 Danby, “Toward a Gendered,” 55 − 75.

34 Simon, “Rationality as Process,” 1 − 16.

35 Hamouda and Rowley, Expectations, Equilibrium and Dynamics, 85.

36 Samuelson, “Modeling Knowledge,” 367 − 403.

37 Spotton Visano, Financial Crises.