ABSTRACT
The social provisioning approach (SPA) invites a historically specific analysis that is attentive to social structures and agency of individuals, differentiated by gender, class, caste, race, and other socially assigned identities, who shape economic outcomes through social relations of conflict and cooperation. The broad scope of the SPA in feminist economics underscores the interdisciplinary nature of the scholarship and the desire to not cut off analysis arbitrarily at the perceived disciplinary boundary. Feminist economists have to be aware of different philosophical underpinnings of research methods. Feminist critique of mainstream economics draws on Marxist political economy and institutional economics, while simultaneously bringing a feminist lens to these traditions. The economic system is the central focus of feminist ecological economics that critiques the unstable and unsustainable workings of the capitalist economy. Since the 1990s heterodox feminist economists have increasingly embraced the capability approach, developed by Sen and Nussbaum, and the human rights approach.
