ABSTRACT
Four main theoretical frameworks in economics are used to understand women’s economic roles and gender discrimination in the labor market: neoclassical (mainstream), Marxist/radical political, institutional, and heterodox feminist. According to neoclassical economics, individual agents, acting alone, seek to allocate scarce resources by making decisions that maximize their utility. Marxist economics and radical political economics (RPE), its modern descendant, locate the dynamics of capitalism in the drive for profits based on the exploitation of workers, resulting in class struggle. Feminist economic theory clearly borrows from institutional economics, but also borrows from RPE, extending the importance of power dynamics to study conflict between women and men in both the home and the labor market. Many of the policy changes affecting women’s labor force participation and earnings took place in the 1960s and 1970s.
