Feminist scholars propose to change economics from the homo economicus man to one that acknowledges the intersection of women in the economy when creating global or international plans.

Feminist methodology is defined as a feminist theory on the principles of conducting feminist research, indicating a course of application and thereby concentrating on the very process of doing feminist research (Harding, 1987; Jayaratne & Stewart, 1991). These principles are derived from the aforementioned approaches and viewpoints, such as the ethics of care and feminist epistemology. Feminist scholars propose to change economics as a discipline by accepting the vulnerability and interdependency of human beings as a core assumption, which contrasts with the existing figure of a rational economic man that underpins neoclassical economics (Blank, 1993). This figure of homo economicus is portrayed as a man that “springs up fully formed, with preferences fully developed, and is fully active and self-contained. He has no childhood or old age; no dependence on anyone; no responsibility for anyone but himself” (Nelson, 1996b, p. 31). To understand the economics of becoming, which constitutes the underpinnings of the feminist economics, as presented in the thesis of this chapter, is, however, to understand that “[h]umans are born of women, nurtured and cared for as dependent children, socialised into family and community groups, and are perpetually dependent on nourishment and shelter to sustain their lives” (ibid.). According to Kenneth Boulding (1986), the presiding orientation of economics toward “how society was organized by exchange” rather than how “society was ‘provisioned’” has contributed to the failure of modern economics. Feminist economists engage with caring and social provisioning as starting points in their methodologies and point out definitive goals such as: “satisfaction of basic physical needs, realization of one’s potential, fairness, freedom, participation, good social relations and ecological balance” (Goodwin et al., 2005, p. 9). These goals are very similar to the central human functional capabilities put forward by Martha C. Nussbaum (2000) in her book Women and Human Development. By naming ten particular capabilities, Nussbaum defends a set of universal values that could be read as “basic political principles” (p. 70) for the improvement of women’s well-being. These basi principles follow: “life of a normal length, bodily health, bodily integrity, being able to use the senses, to imagine, think and reason, emotions, practical reason, affiliation, other species, being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy, and control over one’s environment: political and material” (pp. 78-80). The capabilities approach, introduced by Amartya Kumar Sen (1985) and developed by Nussbaum, inspired many economists in their practical, comparative, and quantitative research on the quality of life. The work of the British economists, Paul Anand, Graham Hunter, and Ron Smith (2005), exemplify such applied research since they operationalize and test Nussbaum’s approach by using data from the British Household Panel Survey. They “find evidence that a wide range of capabilities exhibit statistically significant relations to well-being [and] that the relations are complex and slightly different for men and women” (Anand, Hunter & Smith, 2005, p. 9). The Basic Capabilities Index developed by the Social Watch (Social Watch, 2015a) constitutes another example of applied research. Although statistical measurement is often reductive (losing specific context and culture dimensions), which is also the case if big data is used (e.g. a prevalence of “WEIRD” in samples – “WEIRD” standing for “Western”, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic countries’ citizens (Kosinski et al., 2016)), this index was created to demonstrate the critical deficiencies experienced by a large part of the world’s population and to encourage countries in the Global North to keep their promises with respect to the Millennium Development Goals (reformulated as the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015). The indicator is based on three components: child mortality under 5, maternal reproductive health, and education measured in registrations for primary schooling, literacy, and the number of children finishing 5th grade (Social Watch, 2015a). A news release from 2007 states that “at the current rate of progress, universal access to a minimum set of social services will only be achieved in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2108” (Social Watch, 2015b). Undoubtedly, this message clearly expressed the gravity of the situation, and therefore meets the goals of the Social Watch. However, feminists often reject this kind of universalism. They view it as a reflection of the aims, values and experiences of dominant groups, in this case, as countries in the Global North imposing a certain vision of development on countries in the Global South. They also question the grounds on which its claims presumably meet a shared set of needs and interests between women or men or between any other homogenous groups, such as nations (Harding, 1999). Referring to Haraway’s concept of “situated knowledges,” Drucilla Barker (2003) posits that “collective subject positions are always socially constructed and partial” (p. 107). This brings us closer to the discussion on research methods used by feminist economists.