Abstract
Barbara Bergmann’s exploration of gender issues, especially the intra-house division of labor and marriage theory, was a central focus in early feminist economics (1970–1980s). Trained in mathematics and economics, she initially examined race and gender-based occupational segregation. Her scrutiny of gender inequality in the labor market led her to investigate resource distribution within families and spousal labor division, rejecting Becker’s New Home Economics. This paper has a twofold aim: First, showcasing Bergmann’s impact on intra-house power dynamics, primarily critiquing Becker's neoclassical approach; second, revealing her feminist agenda through lesser-known materials, whether unpublished or in the popular press.
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Notes
Their empirical work in labor economics involved analyzing women’s participation in the labor market and the gender wage gap.
Becker never acknowledged home economics, he only referred to Reid, his colleague in Chicago, after some pressure had been applied to him to do so. The term ‘new home economics’ was introduced by Chicago economist Marc Nerlove in 1974, to distinguish old home economists from Becker and his followers, including himself (Becchio 2020; 2024).
After marriage, household production begins: Becker described the economics of the household by assuming that all the commodities produced within the household could be combined into a single aggregate utility function. He further explained mating by defining marriage as a two-person firm with an entrepreneur member (the husband) who hires (i.e., marries) the other adult member (the wife). The optimal sorting maximizes the entrepreneur’s profit, especially by considering the increasing return in mating with someone with similar preferences (Becker 1973). However, Becker later discarded the analogy between marriage and firms.
In Becker et al.’s paper (1977), consensual divorce occurs when the combined utility of partners, once dissolved, exceeds their combined utility while married. Possible causes of divorce include a larger than expected deviation between actual and expected earnings in marriage; discrepancies between partners regarding intelligence, social background, religion, or race (which were underestimated initially), and marriage at a young age.
Classical liberal feminist economists advocate for the equality of men and women, emphasizing the urgent need to remove educational and legal barriers preventing women from thriving in the labor market on par with men. Conservative feminist economists, as elucidated by Posner (1989), reject affirmative action to improve women’s conditions and are more inclined to rely on the market, embedded within the Rule of Law framework, to address gender inequality. On the other hand, radical feminist economists perceive patriarchy as transcending and predating different forms of economic organization. Socialist feminist economists view class and gender oppression as intertwined, suggesting that emancipation from one is not achievable without addressing the other (McAfee and Howard 2018; Becchio 2024).
According to authors such as Becchio (2020; 2024) and Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Forget, and Singleton (2022), feminist economists were aimed to establish a ‘separate identity’ for the field of feminist economics. This endeavor prompted feminist economists to advocate for a specific JEL code within heterodox research fields, denoted as B (any JEL code other than B signifies research fields within mainstream/neoclassical economics). The AEA created the B code “to accommodate the recent substantial developments in non-mainstream (non-neoclassical) economic approaches to contemporary economic problems” (Kosnik 2018). In 2006, the AEA assigned the B54 code for feminist economics, while Becker’s new home economics is categorized under ‘Household Production and Intra-Household Allocation’ (D13), encompassing “empirical or theoretical Beckerian studies”. Additional information on JEL codes are available at https://www.aeaweb.org/jel/guide/jel.php. Notably, one of the two anonymous referee pointed out that there has not been a distinct effort to make feminist economics an ‘autonomous’ field, as feminist economists spread across all subfields in economics. For the history of feminist economics, refer to Becchio (2020) and Betancourt and Orozco Espinel (2022).
Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize “for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behavior [such as] behavior in households and families. As retrieved on July 24, 2021, at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1992/becker/facts/.
The founding mothers of IAFFE include Randy Albelda, Drucilla Barker, Barbara Bergmann, Susan Feiner, Marianne Ferber, Nancy Folbre, Ulla Grapard, Julie Nelson, Jean Shackelford, Diana Strassmann, and Myra Strober (Strassmann 1995). Previously, some of them engaged in a prolonged battle against the underrepresentation of women economists in academia. In 1971, during the Annual Meeting of the AEA, Bergmann chaired a session titled ‘What economic equality for women required’ and formed the Women’s Caucus. The Caucus formally invited the Executive Committee of the AEA to recognize that economics faculties should be more open to women (Becchio 2024; Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Cherrier, and Singleton 2022; Cohen 2019).
Barker pointed out that neoclassical models rooted in the notion of efficiency serve as “a rationalization for the existing distributions of power and wealth, distributions that are often tied to race, class, and gender” (Barker 1995, pp. 35-36). Phipps and Burton (1995) compared Becker’s model of household behavior to the Victorian ideal of the family, wherein women were constrained in their role as mothers/wives. According to Duggan (1995), in Becker’s model households respond to signals given in the market, without considering the different effects on family members. Grapard (1995) criticized the androcentric nature of Robinson Crusoe, a representation of the neoclassical economic agent who optimizes in a framework of free choice without paying any attention to any form of inequality, including gender inequality. Strober (1995) criticized the thesis that considered marriage and employment as substitutes for women (Becchio 2020; 2024). For Bergmann’s critique, refer to paragraph 4.
Bergmann’s archive is housed at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Duke University).
For more information on this specific aspect of Bergmann’s feminist agenda, refer to Folbre (1998b).
This critique foreshadowed Posner's concept of conservative feminism (1989), which posits that no specific political or legal action is needed to improve women's conditions in the labor market and households in countries where ‘freedom of contract’/’rule of law’ existed. As Posner wrote, “people should be able to cut their own deals, in matters of sex and the family as well as in more conventionally economic arenas, subject to a duty not to impose uncompensated costs on third parties” (Posner 1989, p. 204).
On this point, McCloskey commented in an article on Bergmann’s position, stating that the key to making affirmative action work is not merely the ability to combine economic arguments and affirmative action but, more importantly, the government’s ability to efficiently allocate resources. She wrote: “If you want to help people of X description, you better just give the money to X. This is Barbara’s scientific conclusion, too. (…) If Milton Friedman and I thought American governments would not grossly misallocate most of such money, we would sign on” (McCloskey 1998, p. 184). McCloskey’s argument did not acknowledge that Bergmann's policy suggestion was not solely about providing money to women but also encompassed the implementation of improved incentive structures.
Her work inspired authors who contributed to the Symposium on Agent-based Computational Economics, published in 2011 in the Eastern Economic Journal.
As an example of the idiosyncrasy between economic modelling and real life, Bergmann illustrates Lucas and Rapping’s paper (1969) on real wages, employment, and inflation. The authors, through regression analyses, contend that unemployed workers opt for leisure over work.
Bergmann did not cite specific authors, her ideas inspired Riach and Rich (1995) in developing an experiment to investigate whether firms discriminate in granting interviews to men and women for various job types. Their experiment effectively demonstrated that women face discrimination in male-dominated jobs. Bergmann’s suggestion to adopt experimental economics also implicitly inspired Bewley (1999) who, through interviews with over 300 businesspeople, concluded that wage rigidity arises from a desire to foster loyalty, which is incompatible with layoffs. This finding contrasts with the unrealistic psychological assumptions of the existing economic theories of wage rigidity. Keynesians attribute unemployment to “a grave misfortune forced on people, most of whom want to work, even at wages lower than those earned previously”, while neoclassicals consider wage rigidity an illusion, asserting that wages and salaries are flexible and labor markets can always clear (Bewley 1999, p. 2).
Applying surveys to the economics of the family, particularly regarding matters such as division of labor, family resource pooling, and divorce, can contribute to a more realistic understanding of intra-house decisions. For instance, a significant portion of this literature indicates that children tend to fare better when mothers have control over the household income (Woolley 2004).
Bergmann’s article was part of a broader debate that unfolded during the period after President Reagan called for a constitutional ban on abortion.
Bergmann asked Cheryl Fish, an associate professor of Women’s Studies at CUNY and a prominent member of the association ‘Single Mother by Choice’, for help in finding a publisher for her book (email dated May 14, 2003). However, Fish declined her support, stating that the proposal “seems to reinforce a number of the negative stereotypes – disadvantaged children, pathological mothers, abject poverty -about single motherhood” (Barbara Bergmann's archive).
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I would like to express my gratitude to two anonymous referees and Steve Pressman for their help, suggestions, and time. Any error remains mine.
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Becchio, G. Pioneering Feminist Economics: Barbara Bergmann’s Contributions to Gender Issues. Eastern Econ J (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41302-024-00267-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41302-024-00267-4