Confronting Inequality: Three Eras of Gender and Tax Scholarship

Abstract

Tax law is not neutral—it encodes social values and reinforces certain longstanding hierarchies. For over fifty years, gender and tax scholarship has exposed how seemingly neutral tax laws perpetuate gender inequality in particular. This essay uses the metaphor of quilting to trace the evolution of this field across three distinct eras.

Part I name and defines the designing era (1971–1986 as beginning with the Grace Blumberg’s work on the gendered impact of tax laws on marriage, labor, and caregiving; she framed taxation as a tool of social control over women. Blumberg’s work laid the foundation for other scholars who took up the project of uncovering gender bias embedded in the tax law. Part II explores gender and tax scholarship’s assembling era (1987–2015), when the focus expanded beyond marriage and families to include the tax law’s intersections with race, immigration, sexuality, and the human body. Scholars analyzed tax expenditures, administration, and social policy, deepening their critiques of structural inequalities created and sustained by the tax law. Part III then turns to gender and tax scholarship’s binding era (2016–present), a period launched by a new federal definition of marriage but during which scholars continue to shore up and expand on past insights in the face of increasing resistance.

This Article also identifies eight recurring scholarly moves of gender and tax scholarship, including auditing tax laws for gender bias and demonstrating that taxation is a feminist issue. It predicts the growing difficulty of doing this work in a political climate that is hostile to critical inquiry. As the federal government attempts to suppress work that acknowledges differences on the basis of gender, race, and other identity axes, scholars face data suppression, funding constraints, and erasure from policy discourse.

Despite these challenges, tax law remains a powerful tool for advancing justice, operating outside direct political scrutiny. The binding era of gender and tax scholarship thus must be concerned not only with preserving past insights but also resisting forces that seek to unravel them. Just as a quilter adjusts fabric to keep a pattern intact, gender and tax scholars must continuously reposition their work to counter new pressures while advancing a fairer and more just tax system.