Feminist economics can’t displace neoclassical hegemony-proponents agree

(Drucilla K., Signs , Vol. 30, No. 4, New Feminist Approaches to Social Science MethodologiesSpecial Issue EditorsSandra Harding and Kathryn Norberg (Summer 2005), pp. 2189-2209

Feminist economists are embedded in a network of power relations by virtue of their connection to economics (Barker, forthcoming). The discursive power of economics is not to be underestimated. Economics, particularly neoclassical economics (the type of analyses taught in most undergraduate economics courses, extolled in publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and lauded by national and inter national politicians and policy makers), is widely considered to be objective, gender neutral, and value free. Its pronouncements are couched in the same terms as natural laws, and the “laws of supply and demand” are accorded the same status as the law of gravity. The scientific status of economics depends crucially on its methods of inquiry: methodological individualism, rational choice theory, and mathematical modeling. Feminist economists have had only limited success in challenging the hegemony and prestige of neoclassical economics. We are not alone here. Marxists, institutionalists, post-Keynesians, and economists of other heterodox schools have likewise had little success in this endeavor. It could be the case that no amountof “better” science and analysis will ever replace the pseudoscientism that characterizes neoclassical economics—because neoclassical economics does one thing very, very well: it articulates the ideology of contemporary capitalism in a manner that makes it seem natural, inevitable, and beneficent. It does not “speak truth to power” but, on the contrary, accommodates and naturalizes power.5 Interpretive approaches help us remember that the elite status and hegemonic influence of economics stem not from its superior fidelity to the real but rather from its connection to power.