News

Alum's Economics Text Named Outstanding Academic Title

The book Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization (University of Michigan Press, 2004) by Drucilla K. Barker and Susan F. Feiner PhD '81 (economics) was selected as the Choice "Outstanding Academic Title" for 2005 in economics. Liberating Economics draws on central concepts from women’s studies scholarship to construct a feminist understanding of the economic roles of families, caring labor, motherhood, paid and unpaid labor, poverty, the feminization of labor, and the consequences of globalization. Barker and Feiner consistently recognize the importance of social location—gender, race, class, sexual identity, and nationality—in economic processes shaping the home, paid employment, market relations, and the global economy. Throughout they connect women's economic status in the industrialized nations to the economic circumstances surrounding women in the global South. “This book is a must-read for every future economist, undergraduate and graduate, and for every women’s studies student," says Sandra Harding, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies UCLA. "It is a great read for the rest of us [and] should be required reading for every policymaker at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.” Feiner is professor of economics at the University of Southern Maine and director of Women's Studies there.

August 10, 2006