ABSTRACT
The neoclassical economic paradigm is now over 100 years old. Since its inception in the 1890s, it has grown to be the dominant paradigm in economic theory, building its hegemonic power to the exclusion of alternative approaches. I have studied and then taught economics for nearly 25 years now. I had come to economics, as an undergraduate student in Paris, with a lot of excitement and trepidation: that discipline was going to help me understand what was going on in the world. I soon found out that the neoclassical paradigm, while providing some seductive modeling, did not come close to answering the questions I had. But it was only much later, in graduate school, that other questions started coming up. As a woman in the field, I started realizing that my own realities were missing, that they were dismissed or trivialized when issues of women’s places in the economy were brought up.
