ABSTRACT
Wonder Woman is known for many things. She is probably the most familiar female hero in comics. Her magic lasso compels those wrapped in its coils to tell the truth. She is a princess from the mythical Paradise Island, and, in some versions, is a daughter of Zeus. Wonder Woman graced the first issue of Ms. magazine, which would have made the creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston, very happy. What is not so well known is that the original Wonder Woman stories predate formal feminist economic thought by 40 years, and, as such, this chapter focuses on Wonder Woman’s fight for women’s economic equality. While she was fighting Nazis, mad scientists, and angry gods, Wonder Woman was also promoting equal pay for women, adherence to minimum wage laws, and lower prices for milk. In supporting these causes, Wonder Woman was advocating for women to gain their independence from men by, first and foremost, getting a job. Wonder Woman’s experience on Paradise Island was that women, when free from devoting resources to war, could develop technology and medicines that far surpassed those created by men leaving no doubt in her mind that women should be free to pursue their financial liberation for the good of all.
