120004 VO Gender Studies (2023S)

The aim of this research-based lecture is, firstly, to acquaint you with the ways in which economic processes intersect with gender and, secondly, to introduce and discuss selected examples of women’s contributions to the development of economic thought. Did you know, for example, that already two hundred years ago, women were criticising what today we term the gender pay gap? Have you thought about how marriage for centuries has been a union based on economic considerations and what this meant for women? In this lecture course, we will delve into such and similar questions. The lecture course is transdisciplinary, involving approaches from literary studies, cultural studies, history, and feminist economics.

The first part of the lecture will explore and discuss the androcentric biases at the heart of economics: established notions of what constitutes economic enquiry, economic topics, and economic genres of writing have for centuries privileged a vantage point that excludes the perspectives and experiences of women and that marginalises the type of knowledge women have generated and recorded in, among others, literary texts. This has resulted in an underrepresentation of women in the canon of economic theory, with manifest consequences for economic practice up to this day. You will be introduced to methods with which this lacuna can be redressed and get an insight into the emergent theoretical field of economic criticism (www.economic-criticism.com). In the second part of the lecture will explore how women have contributed to the development of economic thought. We will discuss selected women writers’ analyses of the economics of marriage, of women and paid work, and of moral economics, with a focus on English writers from the late 18th and 19th centuries.

The lecture course will be taught weekly from 19 April to 28 June 2023 in a hybrid manner: on-campus meetings will alternate with online meetings (synchronous and/or asynchronous). One additional online guest lecture is scheduled for 11.05.2023, 16:15 - 17:45.