3. Macroeconomics
Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that focuses on the overall performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of a national economy. It examines large-scale economic factors such as national income, unemployment rates, inflation, economic growth, government fiscal and monetary policies, and the overall health of a country's economy. Macroeconomists examine fiscal policy, or the use of government spending and taxation to influence and manage the overall health and performance of an economy. It is one of the key tools available to governments to achieve macroeconomic objectives such as economic growth, employment, and price stability. Fiscal policy is typically implemented by the government and is designed to stabilize the economy during different phases of the business cycle. There are two main components of fiscal policy: Government Spending and Taxation.
How to cite this source?
Remedial Herstory Project Editors. "3. Macroeconomics." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
Schools of Economic Thought
There are several are schools of economic thought: Classical, Neoclassical, Marxist, Keynesian, Monetarist, among others. Classical Economics was founded by Adam Smith (1723-1790) and believes that a competitive market has the ability to self-regulate. If one firm treats their employees badly, they will not be able to find workers and other firms can capitalize by offering better working conditions. A company with a bad product will go under and companies that meet the needs of their consumer will succeed. Competition, they argue, more than the government will regulate market behavior.
Neoclassical Economics builds on classical ideas but incorporates the concept of marginal utility—that people make decisions within a market economy based on the efficacy of the options in front of them. Given scarcity, individuals make rational choices to maximize their utility. Marginal utility influences supply and demand.
Marxist Economics, based on the work of Karl Marx (18-1885) a German philosopher who lived through the rise of the Industrial Revolution. This school most directly attacks Smith’s version of capitalism as inherently flawed. They argue that class differences lead to exploitation of working people. Marxists advocate for collective ownership of the means of production, like machines and factories.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1846) developed Keynesian Economics, which argues for active government intervention in the market through fiscal policy. Keynes argued that governments could stabilize the economy through the troughs and peaks of economic fluctuations. He lived through the laissez-faire, classical economic period of the Industrial Revolution and was alive during the Great Depression. His ideas heavily influenced Americans in the early to mid-20th century.
Milton Friedman (1912-2006) critiqued Keynesian ideas and fiscal policy arguing instead for government use of monetary policy to influence the money supply and stabilization of the economy through the central bank and inflation control. This school is aptly called Monetarism and dominated conservative policy through the 20th century.
All of these schools were started by men in a field of study that has long excluded women. As a result, Feminist Economics is a newer branch of economics that began to take shape in the early 1990s after enough women had entered the field at the graduate level. Before then, feminist ideas were discussed in other fields—like sociology and philosophy—but not much inside mainstream economics. When scholars from outside fields critique economic measures used by scholars within the field, it was reasonable that their ideas weren’t taken seriously within economics, but as women entered the profession and critiqued in from the inside, their perspectives gained traction. Economics was dominated by neoclassical theory, which claimed to be purely objective and scientific—of course that was far from true. As feminist scholarship expanded across universities, and economists began to rethink some of their basic assumptions. This created space for feminist economists to develop as an organized movement with its own association, journal, and research agenda. The field officially came together after a 1990 conference of the American Economic Association, which led to the creation of the International Association for Feminist Economics and the academic journal Feminist Economics.
Feminist economics studies the economy with attention to gender and challenges the idea that traditional economics is neutral or objective. Feminist economists argue that the field has long been shaped by values and assumptions linked to masculinity—such as independence, competition, and strict rationality. They try to broaden economic thinking so it better reflects real human lives, including cooperation, caregiving, and relationships.
Feminist economics questions several major features of mainstream (especially neoclassical) economics. Feminist economists point out that real people also care for others, depend on others at certain times in life, and act based on fairness or emotion. They argue that ignoring caregiving—like raising children, caring for the elderly, and household work—leaves out huge parts of economic reality. Mainstream economics often prefers complex math and models. Feminist economists say this can hide real-world experiences and make the field seem more “objective” than it truly is. They argue it’s more honest to clearly state one’s assumptions and use a mix of methods, including qualitative data and surveys. Traditional economics focuses heavily on markets and paid work. Feminist economics says this leaves out important unpaid activities—like cooking, cleaning, and caregiving—that make society function. Because this work is usually done by women, leaving it out makes the economy look more equal than it really is.
Feminist economists also look at how economics is taught as a symptom of why women don’t enter the field and conclude that the field is cyclically biased toward men. They argue that the traditional approach to teaching economics discourages women because it centers ideas and examples based mostly on male experiences.
Even if women do study economics, the field of economics has long been dominated by men, and women economists continue to face discrimination, bias, and sexual harassment that make the profession less welcoming. Women economists often receive less credit for their work, are cited less often, feel their work is not taken seriously, and sometimes struggle to get promoted, even when their accomplishments match those of their male colleagues. Fewer women economists means that the quality of economic research suffers as important topics like unpaid caregiving, poverty, or climate change, may be overlooked, and economic measures such as GDP can miss huge parts of the economy, including work mostly done by women. Surveys show that many women leave the field entirely due to harassment or lack of support.
After decades of progress, the share of women earning economics PhDs has begun to fall again, showing that interest is declining. To fix these problems, leaders in universities and workplaces must make the field more inclusive by mentoring women, recognizing their contributions, supporting caregivers through policies like subsidized childcare or flexible work, and encouraging research that reflects the full range of human experiences. This is crucially important, as fiscal policy, government spending decisions are driven by economic models and schools of thought that impact women and their families. To ensure those models work for everyone, women must be contributors to the philosophy and calculations behind the decisions.
Classical Economics (n.) a school of thought holding that competitive markets naturally self-regulate and work best with limited government intervention.
Neoclassical Economics (n.) a theory that assumes individuals make rational choices to maximize their personal benefit based on marginal utility, shaping supply and demand.
Marxist Economics (n.) an approach arguing that capitalism is inherently exploitative due to class conflict and advocating collective ownership of the means of production.
Keynesian Economics (n.) a school that supports active government use of fiscal policy to stabilize the economy during booms and busts.
Monetarism (n.) a theory claiming that controlling the money supply through a central bank is the most effective way to manage inflation and stabilize the economy.
Feminist Economics (n.) an approach that studies the economy through a gender-aware lens and challenges the idea that traditional economics is objective by highlighting overlooked activities like caregiving and unpaid labor.
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History of Fiscal Policies
Prior to the 20th century, the US was heavily influenced by Classical and Neoclassical economics. This can be seen in the history of the Industrial Revolution, where workers, including women, were left to the mercy of their employers without much government intervention in the economy to create workplace protections, minimum wage, workers compensation, safe working environments, and so on. Women, as well as men, were on the forefront of changing working conditions to ensure that it was safer and more profitable for everyone.
Women labor leaders had worked for incremental changes and common-sense labor reform, and yet workers were still laboring under dangerous conditions—the market it seemed wouldn’t reform. Nothing exemplifies the danger of labor at the turn of the century more than the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911. At the turn of the twentieth century, garment workers—most of them young immigrant women—faced exhausting hours, low wages, and dangerous factory conditions. As manufacturers sped up production and relied on crowded subcontracting “sweatshops,” frustration in the industry grew. When male labor leaders insisted these unskilled and semiskilled women couldn’t be organized, the workers proved them wrong.
In 1909, that anger exploded into the “Uprising of the 20,000,” a massive strike led by garment workers in New York City demanding safer shops, fair wages, and the right to unionize. Leaders like Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, Pauline Newman, and others mobilized thousands, showing that women could be a driving force in labor militancy. Their strike inspired similar actions from New York to Illinois and helped strengthen new industrial unions such as the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).
The Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) supported the young strikers by offering legal aid, fundraising, and public advocacy. As WTUL leaders investigated factory conditions—including those at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company—they uncovered locked exits, blocked stairways, and fire hazards that workers had long complained about. The WTUL wanted to improve the situation of women workers through organizing them into trade unions, lobbying for legislation to control hours (like the law at issue in the 1909 Muller decision) and working conditions, and educating the workers of the special problems of women workers. Rose Schneiderman developed a close relationship with the wealthier women who led the WTUL.
When Philadelphia garment workers found out that New York manufacturers sent their work for the Philadelphia shirtwaist factories to complete, the young immigrant women walked off the job in their own strike against this action, and their own grievances against the garment factory owners. The radical labor agitator, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones also came to Philadelphia to boost morale among the strikers as well. She implored the young women to rely on themselves and not wealthy women, like Alva Belmont, widow of Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, or Anne Morgan, daughter of J.P. Morgan. Both women used their considerable fortunes to aid the working women through the WTUL, but both women thought that many of the strike actions were too radical and didn't like their connections to socialism.
The NYC shirtwaist strike lasted about eleven weeks, and most of the shirtwaist factories settled with the workers, particularly in the small shops. The women gained better pay, union recognition, a 52-hour work week, and provision of tools and materials without fees. The ILGWU ranks swelled as about 85% of the shirtwaist workers joined the union. The Philadelphia strikers made similar demands and the smaller shops settled with the garment workers sooner than the large manufacturers as well. The Philadelphia strike lasted about seven weeks.
Despite the momentum of the strike, many of the demands made by the Triangle workers in New York City were never enforced. Then, on March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and 146 workers lost their lives, most of whom were young Italian and Jewish immigrant women. Within a short span of time, the fire engulfed the entire eighth floor of the ten-story building, but the women were trapped because the doors to the stairs were locked by the bosses to prevent them from taking frequent bathroom breaks, and the elevator couldn't hold everyone so they had to wait while it went up and down. The bosses on the upper floors escaped to another building without alerting people on other floors. Women fled to the fire escape outside, but it collapsed under the weight of so many women trying to evacuate. Two dozen women died from the fall. Bystanders, attracted by the rising smoke and the commotion of fire trucks rushing to the scene, watched with helpless horror as numerous workers cried out for help from the windows on the ninth floor. Desperate firefighters operated a rescue ladder, which ascended slowly towards the sky, but it was too short! It only made it to the sixth floor. With the fire rapidly advancing, the workers, driven by fear, started jumping and falling to their deaths on the sidewalk below. Some workers perished in the inferno, while others tragically fell down the open elevator shaft.
Frances Perkins was present at the scene of the tragic fire and personally witnessed the horrific events and the devastating loss of life. This experience deeply affected her and played a pivotal role in shaping her future advocacy for workers' rights and safety. In the aftermath of the fire, Perkins became increasingly involved in labor and reform movements. She dedicated her career to advocating for workers' rights, improved workplace conditions, and labor legislation, eventually becoming the first female cabinet secretary: Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt.
Perhaps the most important economic legislation of the 20th century was the New Deal, passed to help pull the US out of the Great Depression under Roosevelt in the 1930s. Keynesian theorists argued that the solution to the Great Depression was to stimulate the economy by encouraging wealthy people to spend by reducing interest rates, monetary policy, and by the government investing in the economy by borrowing bonds and creating jobs for people, which would enable them to earn and spend.
It’s difficult to measure the New Deal’s impact on women, when--essentially--the New Deal wasn’t written for them or designed with them in mind. Between 1932 and 1937, there were laws against more than one person per married couple working for the federal civil service. Since the National Recovery Administration set lower minimum wages for women than men performing the same jobs it rarely made sense for women to keep their jobs over their husbands’ higher paying work.
How did the first female presidential cabinet member, Frances Perkins, feel about this? Surprisingly, Perkins shared some of the same anti-work for women views as many of her male colleagues--particularly for married women. Perkins believed if women were married, ideally, they wouldn’t need to work. Their husbands should provide for them. However, if women were alone, they needed the ability to earn a decent living to protect themselves.
Perkins certainly wasn’t the only one displeased with working women. The targeting of women workers was broad scapegoating. Traditionally “women’s jobs” were less connected to the stock market, and less affected by its crash, than, say: coal mining or manufacturing. So while many men were losing their jobs, women in some “women’s industries” simply weren’t! This point was lost on many, though. Journalist Norman Cousins once wrote, “Simply fire the women, who shouldn’t be working anyway, and hire the men. Presto! No unemployment. No relief rolls. No Depression.” Cousins’ short-sighted comment ignored that a coal miner or steel worker couldn’t (or wouldn’t) exactly fit the job requirements of a clerical worker or nurse.
The New Deal’s effect on women cannot just be determined by job quotas or gendered minimum wages. The Social Security Act--one of the landmark pieces of New Deal legislation--and the Fair Labor Standards Act did not initially even cover sectors of employment where women were disproportionately represented: agricultural work and domestic service. Furthermore, women who were not dependent on men got fewer Social Security benefits. This weird program structure seemed to suggest women deserved economic rights only in relation to men. They were often forced to take on more central roles within their homes and families--playing unrecognized roles in helping the country through the Great Depression. Or they were working for less money than male peers and possibly being despised just for having jobs at all. Although the Depression was a time for many strong women to step up to the plate in their homes and workplaces, ultimately, the Depression did not subvert traditional gender roles--it reinforced them.
Historians and economists have debated the efficacy of the New Deal policies overall. On the one hand, it helped people survive the depression by giving hot lunches to children, unemployment checks, it created jobs that served the common good, it stabilized banks, and regulated credit. On the other, it didn’t really stimulate the economy or eliminate unemployment until World War II broke out. Unemployment initially dropped, but then rose again, prompting a Second New Deal.
The next great effort toward a Keynesian approach to economics was the Great Society, a series of similar domestic programs under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1964 and 1968. He called the programs a “war on poverty,” and tried to dismantle systems that reinforced economic inequality. The Great Society included an handful of acts that interfered in the economy where the markets had traditionally failed to support people. The acts included the Food Stamp Act of 1964 provided low-income people assistance in purchasing food; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 authorized federal expenditure on schools with low-income students; and the Social Security Amendments of 1965 which created Medicaid and Medicare which supported medical costs for low income and elderly people. It also included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was later amended to include Title IX. The effects of Title IX on individual women was discussed in Chapter 1: Personal Finance.
Consumer spending (n.), money exchanged by a person for goods and services for personal or family use.
Consumer power (n.), the ability to influence business practices and behavior by choosing where to spend money.
Pink Tax (n.), the difference in price (usually more) for the same item marketed differently to men and women. For example, a razor that is marketed to women is often “pink” and costs a little bit more than a “blue” razor marketed to men.
Triangle Fire
Victims of the Triangle Fire
Frances Perkins at the White House
Problematic Measures of Macroeconomics
Economic measures for the success of fiscal policies like the New Deal or the Great Society include macroeconomic statistics like unemployment or national income, measured by GDP or Gross Domestic Product. GDP measures financial transactions for goods and services– not unpaid or volunteer labor. Unfortunately for women, unpaid and volunteer labor was the dominant way they contributed to the economy since the Industrial Revolution and through the New Deal and Great Society—so measuring the efficacy of fiscal programs meant to stimulate paid labor only marginally reveal the economic experiences of women. When women and men undertake caregiving responsibilities without financial compensation, GDP as a measure does not include them. While the paid labor of working in the childcare industry is measured, the unpaid labor involved in raising one's own children or grandchildren is not recognized as productive work because there isn’t a monetary transaction involved.
The exclusion of non-market activities like childcare, home maintenance, cleaning, laundry, and meal preparation within a household, is significant because policies and budgets are created based on things like GDP. Unpaid labor makes the paid labor of their partners possible, so not measuring it is folly and even dangerous for an economy. Not measuring it speaks volumes to the cultural devaluation of women and their work.
In the 20th century, women began earning PhDs in economics in greater numbers, and those pioneering women began challenging these male-biases in macroeconomics. In 1988, economist Marilyn Waring from New Zealand published If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics in 1988, a critical examination of the United Nations System of National Accounts, which pointed out the harsh ways economic measurements failed to even count “women’s work.” Their work was categorized with terms such as “nonproductive” and their employment status as “unoccupied” simply because no money was exchanged, and yet the productivity of a household would have ground to a halt without that work. Waring’s critique claimed that women’s exclusion is harmful to economic progress because they directly impact policy and exclude the labor of over half the population. Waring was not alone. Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, and Margaret Reid were all pioneers in feminist economics who challenged sexist economic measures.
Feminist economists raise awareness of the invisibility to women’s work and their importance in history are now being recognized. In 2023, Claudia Goldin, another pioneer, won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Her research explored the structural barriers to women’s full participation in economies and the types of industries and policies that widen the pay gap. Goldin’s book looked at five generations of women across the twentieth century who were college educated. The First Cohort (1890s–1910s) were the first generation of women to go to college. Unfortunately for these women, the scientific, economic, and family structures were not nuanced enough for them to enjoy both career and family, these women faced a choice between family or career. Most women of this generation, like Frances Perkins, who had exemplary careers were single.
Her Second Cohort (1920s-1930s) pursued a job before marriage and family, having short careers before settling into married life. Biology caught up to these women and the option to have a family got smaller the later their career went. The Third Cohort (1940s-1950s) went to college in greater numbers than the generations before, but prioritized family first and then entered the workforce once their children were of school age. This finding contradicted the unscientific narrative popularized by Betty Friedan in her 1959 book The Feminine Mystique. Friedan studied her classmates at Smith College, an all-women’s school, and claimed women’s progress was backsliding, women were depressed and isolated in their homes, and that they weren’t using their college degrees. The book’s publication is considered the start of the feminist movement, but Goldin found that her findings were not quite the full picture. Studying data from women at Radcliffe, the sister college to Harvard, she found that women were choosing family before career, not wasting their college educations.
In her Fourth Cohort (1960s-1970s) women pursued a career and then started a family, this was made possible by scientific breakthroughs in birth control and the legalization of these medications for both married and unmarried women. By the 1980s, breakthroughs in the science around In Vitro Fertilization, a medical procedure whereby an egg is fertilized by sperm in a test tube or elsewhere outside the body, made it possible for women to delay childrearing longer in order to have both career and family. The final cohort Goldin studied became the first group of women where it became a realistic goal to have both a career and family. The Fifth Cohort (1980s-1990s) of women benefited from better workplace policies, maternity leave, shifting cultural views about women with careers, and the science to plan family around career goals.
Goldin's body of research showed that women's contribution to the paid economy was tied to scientific breakthroughs, company policies, laws, and shifting gender norms. Only in the last two decades has it been truly possible for women to have career and family. Where policy and science allowed, women chose to work.
Frances Perkins with Franklin Roosevelt
Claudia Goldin Becomes First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize in Economics, US Embassy in Sweeden
Fiscal Policies & Unpaid Care Work
One of the most dominated sectors of work done by women is unpaid care work. In fact, women historically have and continue to make up the majority of the population that provides unpaid care work, including, but not limited to, child care, elder care, cooking, and cleaning. In reality, women take on 75% of the total world’s unpaid care work.[1] Usually, this work is said to exist only within the private and familial realm, yet it actually has overwhelming effects within the public sphere.
If this type of work was given a minimum wage value and included in the calculations of GDP, an extra $1.5 trillion would have been added to the US economy in 2019. This number jumps to $10.9 trillion when considering the entire globe. To put this into greater perspective, $10.9 trillion is more money than the world’s 50 largest companies made in 2018 combined.[2] Additionally, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, unpaid care work contributes to 20% of Columbia’s GDP, 22.8% of Mexico's, and 25.3% in Costa Rica.[3]
Moreover, estimates have found that, across the globe, unpaid care work, if given economic value in the same way as other sectors, could add more to the economy than transportation, manufacturing, or commerce.[4] Yet, unpaid care work is notoriously difficult to quantify, since it does not necessarily adhere to standard economic principles. However, this type of work is absolutely essential to the wellbeing and maintenance of the labor force. The care of children allows them to prosper in school and beyond; familial care in general often takes the place of inadequate or nonexistent social services/programs.
Many academics have begun to call this type of work the “Second Shift,” pointing to how women coming home from a day of traditional work will often have to participate in unpaid care work in a way that mirrors having a second shift of work.[5] However, statistics in the US show that these trends are changing slightly, especially with child care, as more dads throughout the country begin to take on larger amounts of care work than in previous decades. A study conducted by PEW Research shows that although the percentage of moms who are stay-at-home parents still greatly outnumbers fathers, a larger proportion of dads are stay-at-home parents compared to thirty years ago.[6]
The COVID-19 pandemic changed people’s realities throughout the world. However, pre-existing inequities that have existed in the care sector proved themselves even stronger as many parts of life moved to the familial world. This was most clear as schools and childcare centers across the globe began to close.
While only 22.4% of fathers reported taking on all or the majority of work connected to caring for children under twelve years-old, mothers reported the same at three times the rate (61.5%). Additionally, mothers of children younger than twelve transitioned from being formally employed to unemployed at a much more drastic rate: during 2020, women’s employment saw a 4.2% drop, in contrast to 3% for men.[7] Even though these patterns persist during normal times, social unrest or an emergency can only exacerbate the situation.
Sexist biases in fiscal policy are everywhere but most desperately seen in the way poor moms are treated. Women make up most single parents trying to raise their kids on their own without a supporting financial partner. Parental support isn’t required until babies are born so single pregnant women must foot the bill for their hospital bills alone. Stereotypes like that of the “Welfare Mom” insult and degrade poor women living in impossible circumstances. The pay gap is narrowing among elite women and men, but class barriers and the types of jobs that poor women hold perpetuate the pay gap. Class, race, and gender together paint a much better picture of the problem. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan popularized this idea of a “Welfare Mom,” a single mom who mooches off government programs to care for her children. Instead of applauding these women who have taken responsibility for their children and chosen to be available to them like middle- and upper-class moms are able to, he instead stigmatized them. By mocking women most in need of support he perpetuated the false belief consistent throughout women’s economic history: women’s work is supposed to be free.
Reagan’s portrayal of a, usually Black, woman who exploited the welfare system by collecting checks to support numerous children without holding a job suggested that she strategically had multiple children to maximize benefits and manipulate the system for her advantage. This narrative, many argue, covertly played on racial biases, subtly perpetuating conscious or unconscious racism and re-enshrined the idea that homemaking is not work. Though Reagan never explicitly named a specific individual, he utilized this term to advocate for his economic policies, aiming to reduce government spending. The real-life inspiration for this characterization was Linda Taylor, a woman who defrauded the government of substantial sums and engaged in multiple simultaneous marriages. Despite Taylor being white, she became envisioned as a Black woman in the public's perception, adding to existing racial prejudices. She was an exception, not the norm, a falsehood said enough times that it became memorable.
The reality is that more women than men live in poverty. Globally, 70 percent of the poor are women.[8] If sexism didn’t thrive, poverty wouldn’t be so strongly tied to gender. The Center for American Progress found in 2020, that, “Women have higher rates of poverty than men across almost all races and ethnicities.”[9] Women of color are disproportionately represented in these data, showing that women’s issues are also issues of race. Poor mothers must choose between low wages, men, or the government for financial support.
Given that many of these women are in relationships with same class men who too have unreliable jobs and low wages, those men, when out of work, can be seen as yet another mouth to feed. Caring about family values requires also shifting cultural reliance on the default parent as mom and helping everyone see the vital role men play as caregivers will give those men purpose in families. More equitable family policies will not only keep qualified women in the workforce but help close the childcare gaps.
[1] Leah Rodriguez, "Unpaid Care Work: Everything You Need to Know," Global Citizen, last modified September 13, 2021, https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/womens-unpaid-care-work-everything-to-know/#:~:text=3%20Key%20Facts%20to%20Know,the%20majority%20of%20household%20chores.
[2] Gus Wezerek and Kristen R. Ghodsee, Women's Unpaid Labor is Worth $10,900,000,000,000, The New York Times, last modified March 5, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/04/opinion/women-unpaid-labor.html.
[3] "Economic justice remains a historical debt for women in Latin America and the Caribbean," CARE International, last modified October 3, 2023, https://www.care-international.org/news/economic-justice-remains-historical-debt-women-latin-america-and-caribbean#:~:text=An%20average%20of%2055%25%20of,social%20benefits%20of%20the%20law.
[4] "Redistribute unpaid work," UN Women, https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/csw61/redistribute-unpaid-work.
[5] Sarah Jane Glynn, "An Unequal Division of Labor," Center for American Progress, last modified May 18, 2018, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/unequal-division-labor/.
[6] Richard Fry, "Almost 1 in 5 stay-at-home parents in the US are dads," PEW Research Center, last modified August 3, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/03/almost-1-in-5-stay-at-home-parents-in-the-us-are-dads/.
[7]"Caregiving in Crisis: Gender inequality in paid and unpaid work during COVID-19," Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, last modified December 13, 2021, https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/caregiving-in-crisis-gender-inequality-in-paid-and-unpaid-work-during-covid-19-3555d164/.
[8] Nadia Rocha and Roberta Piermartini, "Trade drives gender equality and development," International Monetary Fund, last modified June 2023, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini.
[9] Robin Bleiweis, Diana Boesch, Alexandra Cawthorne Gaines, "The Basic Facts About Women in Poverty," Aug 3, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/basic-facts-women-poverty/.
Mother Raising Her Daughter
Nurses Working During the Pandemic
Women Caregiving
Conclusion
Macroeconomics, when examined through a women’s lens, reveals the deep and lasting biases that have shaped how work is defined, measured, and valued. Traditional indicators like GDP and unemployment rates ignore the essential unpaid labor—childcare, eldercare, domestic work—that sustains economies and societies. This exclusion reflects not just an economic oversight, but a cultural devaluation of women’s contributions that distorts policy decisions and perpetuates inequality. Feminist economists from Marilyn Waring to Claudia Goldin have challenged these blind spots, showing that economies cannot be truly efficient, equitable, or prosperous when they systematically undervalue half their contributors. The pandemic further illuminated how fragile the balance of paid and unpaid labor is, and how heavily it still rests on women. For economies to grow sustainably and justly, fiscal and social policies must evolve to recognize caregiving as economic labor, not charity. True macroeconomic progress will come only when women’s work, paid or unpaid, is counted, respected, and supported as foundational to the health of every national economy.
Checking for Understanding
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What is Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and why do economists argue that it fails to accurately represent women’s contributions to the economy?
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How does unpaid care work, such as childcare and housework, impact a country’s economy—even though it is not included in GDP calculations?
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In what ways do government fiscal policies reflect sexist biases, particularly toward poor or single mothers?
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How did economists like Marilyn Waring and Claudia Goldin challenge traditional economic thinking, and what were the main ideas of their critiques?
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What changes could governments make to better recognize and support the economic value of unpaid care work?
Extension Activities
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Calculate how much your parents would make if their unpaid care work was paid at market value for the work. Consider the cost of cooking, cleaning, childcare, home repairs and maintenance.
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Interview a family member about unpaid work in their household and reflect on how that labor supports the broader economy.
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Draft a short proposal for a government policy that better supports unpaid caregivers, then present it in a mock legislative hearing.
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Research how other nations factor in and support domestic labor.
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Research the current unemployment rate to examine gender differences and their causes.
Bibliography
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