To Measure and to Narrate: Paths Toward a Sustainable Future

Citation:

Berik, Günseli. 2018. “To Measure and to Narrate: Paths Toward a Sustainable Future.” Feminist Economics 24 (3): 136–59.

Author: Günseli Berik

Abstract:

This contribution engages with the question of measurement of economic well-being from a feminist ecological perspective. It starts from the dual premises that it is necessary to recognize and value as important the economic, social, and environmental contributors to economic welfare and desirable for ecological and feminist economists to collaborate in moving toward a sustainable future. The study examines the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), formulated and developed by environmental-ecological economists, as a potentially useful measure that responds to both feminist and ecological economic concerns by making visible unpaid care labor and the environment. As an accounting framework that applies the monetary imputation approach, the GPI is objectionable to some ecological and feminist economists. Reviewing debates among feminist and ecological economists, this study argues that the goals and potential objections of both groups may be addressed by complementing GPI with a narrative approach in a plural and conditional policy-input process.

Keywords: Genuine Progress Indicator, unpaid care work, sustainability, ecology

Topics: Economies, Care Economies, Ecological Economics, Feminist Economics, Environment, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Livelihoods

Year: 2018