ABSTRACT

Feminist arguments by leading economists have been rare in the history of economics. The best-known exception is Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (Mill 1869) though Friedrich Engels’s Origin of the Family (1884) is also notable and there were assorted, lesser known arguments favoring advances for women among the writings of, especially, the English historical school and the so-called utopian socialists (Folbre 1993). Women’s own economic writings on the subject are generally even less visible, except for Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics (1898), but she lacked training or professional stature as an economist. It is therefore remarkable that relatively little attention has been paid to Thorstein Veblen’s feminism. He was probably the most famous American economist of his day and his analyses of the role of invidious social distinctions within economic relationships, rooted in critiques of conventional gender distinctions in society, were central to The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899b) and several of his essays.