Women of Value : Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics

Women economists rarely feature in most textbooks on the history of economic thought before 1960, despite the many articles and theses produced by them in the period. Why is their work so little studied? What did they write about? Who listened to them, supported them or hindered them?
Women of Value seeks to better understand the lives and work of the women who helped to build the economics profession. A number of these papers focus on the sociology of the economics discipline including the failure to cite the work of women economists, graduate work by women and the personal networks among women economists in the pre-war period. It also includes a personal memoir of the experience of one female graduate student studying in the 1930s. Later papers focus on specific women economists including Jane Marcet, Harriet Martineau, Harriet Taylor, Barbara Bodichon, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mary Paley Marshall. The final chapter in the book looks at two studies of the role of women in industry carried out in the early twentieth century.
Women of Value reassesses the role of women economists by using biographical research to augment the standard tools of historical and bibliographical work. Combining intellectual rigour with biographical insights into the lives and experience of many determined and courageous women economists, this volume will be welcomed by historians of economic thought, feminist economists and all those with an interest in women's history.