Feminist Political Economy

Abstract

One of the core aims of economic geography is to explore people-place relationship. The geography of feminist economics, one of the sub-disciplines of economic geography, aims to study the gendered nature of economic processes, confined largely to the issues of work and labor. This article addresses the notion of work and labor that has been central to feminist political economy. These two notions have been contested extremely with different meanings, as documented by feminists, with many different claims to what, where and how these notions should actually be studied to signify the politics of gender. For this, the article first, examines the dualisms of public/private dichotomy and the notion of power, to challenge the notion of work as opposed to home. Secondly, it sheds light on the continuous increase in the number of women in employment, especially after the end of the Second World War, though spatially uneven across the globe, referred commonly as the feminization of the labor force. But at the same time, it also addresses the issues of gender segregation in employment, as documented by feminist geographers as occupational segregation by sex in the labor market.

Keywords: Feminist political economy, Notion of Work and labor, Feminization of labor force, Human Capital, Power, Economic Restructuring