INTRODUCTION
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1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE ECONOMY THROUGH WOMEN’S EYES: A SHORT HISTORY In the 18th century, the ‘father of political economy’, Adam Smith, shaped our modern understanding of economics by stating that we expect our food on the dinner table not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer or baker, but due to their interest in making a profit. He claimed that the free market runs on this unlimited supply of self-interest, and its subject is the homo economicus, the ‘economic man’: a person who acts rationally on complete knowledge out of self-interest and the desire for wealth.
For Smith, the subject was the economic man, not woman. Women were assigned the task of caring for others, not maximising their own economic gain. If economics is the science of self-interest, as Smith claims, where do women fit in? Smith thought it was self-interest, served through trade, that put his dinner on the table. But, as Katrine Marçal asks: who actually cooked that meal?2 The work of the butcher, baker and brewer ― and even Smith himself ― depended on the toil of wives, mothers and sisters, who spent an incredible amount of time cleaning, cooking and caring. This invisible economy, made up of the unpaid care work of women and girls, continues today all over the world.
