ABSTRACT
What do we value, and how do ‘gendered values’ shape global politics? The power relations of international/global political economy affect all of our lives, specifically the extent and distribution of well-being throughout the world. This chapter considers how over-valorising qualities associated with ‘masculinity’ and devalorising those associated with ‘femininity’ shape the myriad inequalities in which we live. Drawing on a feminist framework of co-constituting productive, reproductive and virtual economies, the chapter describes major trends within and the gendering of each, and how the dynamic interaction among these economies produces the political economy of neoliberal globalisation. This critical, intersectional framing reveals how the structural logics of neoliberalism foster a polarisation of resources and status between masculinised elites and feminised ‘others’ and does so both within and between nations. In effect, the cultural code of gender hierarchy naturalises the symbolic and material (economic) devaluation of feminised work, whether that work is done by females or ‘others’ who are culturally, racially, economically and/or nationally marginalised. These are crucial points for understanding the political work that ‘gender’ does, how feminisation links and ‘naturalises’ multiple hierarchies and how gender matters for sustaining and obscuring global inequalities.
