ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the Marxist-feminist strand within feminist political economy (FPE). As the largest and most influential body of work within FPE, this literature has two core characteristics. First, it explores the mutually constitutive relationship between gender and class, where class is defined as the relationship of a person/group to the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus. Second, most contemporary feminist political economists view capitalism not just as an economic system but as an institutional order that shapes the culture, polity, as well as the economy, through its tendency to prioritize the accumulation of surplus, which is the “front story” of capitalism. With its skepticism about capitalism’s capacity to provide solutions to the problems of gender, economy, or nature, FPE has a renewed analytical and political relevance. The omission of women’s unpaid labor from Marxist analysis meant that Marxists had little analysis or critique of the gender division of labor.
