Professor Diane Elson (Essex, UK)
Economic Inequality and Gender Inequality
Tuesday, 21 February, 5-7PM
Room: Alumni Lecture Theatre (ALT), Room 110, Senate House North Block
Economic inequality is now of major concern to both mainstream and heterodox economists. Gender inequality has always been of major concern to feminist economists, but is often ignored by both mainstream and heterodox economists. This talk will explore the intersections between these two aspects of inequality and discuss what difference it makes if gender is brought into analysis of economic inequality.
Professor Diane Elson is a groundbreaking feminist critic of development and a unique figure in the history of development theory and practice. She is known internationally for her research on gender inequality and economic policy, and a chapter on her work is included in Fifty Key Thinkers on Development (Routledge, 2006). She is currently Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology at Essex, a member of the UN Committee for Development Policy and adviser to UN Women. She has also served as adviser to ILO, IMF, Oxfam and ActionAid, and as vice-president of the International Association for Feminist Economics and Chair of the UK Women’s Budget Group. In 2016 she was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She has published widely, including articles in World Development, Journal of International Development, Feminist Economics, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, and International Review of Applied Economics. Her early books include Value: The Representation of Labour in Capitalism (CSE Books, 1979), which was reissued in 2015 by Verso, and Male Bias in the Development Process (Manchester University Press, 1991, 1995). More recently she has co-edited and contributed chapters to Feminist Economics of Trade (Routledge, 2007), Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective (Routledge, 2011), Economic Policy and Human Rights Obligations (Zed Books, 2011), Harvesting Feminist Knowledge for Public Policy (Sage, 2011), Human Rights and the Capabilities Approach (Routledge, 2012) and Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights (Routledge, 2016).
All welcome, no need to book but please do arrive early to be sure of a seat.