Beyond markets: wage setting and the methodology of feminist political economy MARI LY N P OW E R , ELLEN M U TA R I , AND DEBORAH M . FIGA RT

Understanding gender wage inequality is obviously of great importance to feminists. Feminist political economists can build on past economic theorizing, but need to break new ground to achieve sufficient complexity and depth of analysis. Much existing economic wage theory is overly simplistic, ahistorical, and deterministic. Wage setting, though, is a deeply political and cultural, as well as economic, process. As such, the process of wage setting is something that must be studied at the meso (organizational, institutional) and macro levels as well as the micro.