What is the role of women in the global economy?
We’ve come a long way in feminist analysis of economic issues. And there is a good theoretical understanding of the macroeconomic differences between men and women. We’ve documented women’s role in the care economy child rearing, elder care and have shown how this unpaid work is part of a larger economic process, so that it has to be addressed at the macro level, at policy level. When a government undertakes a structural readjustment, cuts health care or education, the assumption is not that they’re no longer necessary, but that free labor will soak up the need for care there’s an assumption about the elasticity of women’s labor. The truth is that there’s a limit to what women can absorb in work increases, especially when you factor in paid work. And who picks up the slack? The second level of gender difference in employment is that women in developing countries are often subcontracted workers, part of the hidden assembly line, small shop and home-based workers, the links between capit
