Nancy Folbre
| Nancy Folbre | |
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| Born | 19 July 1952 |
| Institution | University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA |
| Contributions | Feminist economics |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Nancy Folbre (19 July 1952) is an American feminist economist who focuses on economics and the family (or family economics), non-market work and the economics of care. She is Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
She served as president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) from 2002 to 2003, she has been an associate editor of the journal Feminist Economics since 1995, and she is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. She delivered the inaugural Ailsa McKay Lecture in 2016.
Folbre focuses on the economics of care, which she defines as, “work that involves connecting to other people, trying to help people meet their needs, things like the work of caring for children, caring for the elderly, caring for sick people or teaching is a form of caring labor,” and she adds that caring labor can be paid or unpaid. Folbre argues that mainstream economists do not pay enough attention to the economics of care. This is detrimental to women because the exclusion of non-market and care work from mainstream economic analysis can marginalize women and children and undervalue their contributions to the home and the community.
Care is a unique form of work because it is “intrinsically motivated,” in that not just money motivates people to care. Folbre argues that care work has been historically undervalued because it has been historically provided by women at low or no cost, and goes far to explain why women earn less than men. To this end, Folbre questions why women would even take care jobs and argues that the social construction of femininity links femininity and care. Folbre argues that only by working collectively to ensure a greater supply and quality of care, independent of the market, can we ensure that the responsibility of care is equitably distributed and not disproportionately placed upon women.
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