Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective

Citation:

Young, Brigitte, Isabella Bakker, and Diane Elson, eds. 2011. Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Authors: Brigitte Young, Isabella Bakker, Diane Elson

Annotation:

Summary:

Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective brings together feminist economists and feminist political economists from different countries located in North America and Europe to analyze the 'strategic silence' about gender in fiscal and monetary policy, and financial regulation. This silence reflects a set of assumptions that the key instruments of financial governance are gender-neutral. This often masks the ways in which financial governance operates to the disadvantage of women and reinforces gender inequality. This book examines both the transformations in the governance of finance that predate the financial crisis, as well as some dimension of the crisis itself. The transformations increasingly involved private as well as public forms of power, along with institutions of state and civil society, operating at the local, national, regional and global levels. An important aspect of these transformations has been the creation of policy rules (often enacted in laws) that limit the discretion of national policy makers with respect to fiscal, monetary, and financial sector policies. These policy rules tend to have inscribed in them a series of biases that have gender (as well as class and race-based) outcomes. The biases identified by the authors in the various chapters are the deflationary bias, male breadwinner bias, and commodification bias, adding two new biases: risk bias and creditor bias. The originality of the book is that its primary focus is on macroeconomic policies (fiscal and monetary) and financial governance from a feminist perspective with a focus on the gross domestic product and its fluctuations and growth, paid employment and inflation, the budget surplus/deficit, levels of government expenditure and tax revenue, and supply of money. The central findings are that the key instruments of financial governance are not gender neutral. Each chapter considers examples of financial governance, and how it relates to the gender order, including divisions of labour, and relations of power and privilege. (Summary from WorldCat)

Table of Contents:

1. Macroeconomic regimes in OECD countries and the interrelation with gender orders

Friederike Maier

2. Changing macroeconomic governance and gender orders: the case of Canada

Isabella Bakker

3. EU macroeconomic governance and gender orders: the case of Austria

Christa Schlager

4. Taxation, employment, and gender: the case of state taxes in the USA

Caren Grown

5. Central banks, employment, and gender in developing countries

James Heintz

6. IMF policies and gender orders: the case of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility

Tonia Warnecke

7. The role of gender in governance of the financial sector

Brigitte Young

8. Macroeconomic governance, gendered inequality, and global crises

Adrienne Roberts.

Topics: Development, Economies, Governance, International Financial Institutions, Privatization Regions: Americas, North America, Europe, Western Europe Countries: Austria, Canada, United States of America

Year: 2011

© 2023 CONSORTIUM ON GENDER, SECURITY & HUMAN RIGHTSLEGAL STATEMENT All photographs used on this site, and any materials posted on it, are the property of their respective owners, and are used by permission. Photographs: The images used on the site may not be downloaded, used, or reproduced in any way without the permission of the owner of the image. Materials: Visitors to the site are welcome to peruse the materials posted for their own research or for educational purposes. These materials, whether the property of the Consortium or of another, may only be reproduced with the permission of the owner of the material. This website contains copyrighted materials. The Consortium believes that any use of copyrighted material on this site is both permissive and in accordance with the Fair Use doctrine of 17 U.S.C. § 107. If, however, you believe that your intellectual property rights have been violated, please contact the Consortium at info@genderandsecurity.org.