ABSTRACT
For an approach to economic behavior to be able to claim to be feminist, it must satisfy certain conditions. First, it must be able to explore differences between people’s behavior, including that of men and women, and make the existence of such differences in behavior fundamental to its approach. Second, feminism is based on the notion that gender difference is structural, not incidental, to society. So in order to be able to analyze the position of women and men in society a feminist economic approach must be able to see differences between individuals and their behavior as structural – that is, dependent on relationships and interactions between people in systematically different positions in society. Third, the approach must be able to explain change, for the feminist project assumes that society and people’s behavior within it can change: empirically, too, it is clear that we are living in an age of rapidly changing gender differences. Finally, it must be able to conceive the domain of economics and economic change sufficiently widely to be able to take account of all factors that have a significant impact on gendered behaviors within the economy.
