ABSTRACT
The first time I taught the course “Women in the Economy” in the early 1980s, I began by telling my students that it was not going to be a “women’s lib” course, that we were going to do “real economic analysis” of issues that were important to women. I cringe as I think back to that statement, but I also take great satisfaction from the evolution in my teaching of this course and from the changes that have recently occurred in the discipline of economics. Much of this change has occurred as a result of feminist theory and the development of women’s studies programs. In this essay, I will discuss why feminists believe it is important to challenge the traditional work of economists, and I will suggest ways in which feminism has changed the discipline.
