Conference Agenda

WINNER - 2023 Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Agarwal Book Prize

This book examines the writings of seven English women economists from the period 1735–1811. It reveals that contrary to what standard accounts of the history of economic thought suggest, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women intellectuals were undertaking incisive and gender-sensitive analyses of the economy.

Women’s Economic Thought in the Romantic Age argues that established notions of what constitutes economic enquiry, topics, and genres of writing have for centuries marginalised the perspectives and experiences of women and obscured the knowledge they recorded in novels, memoirs, or pamphlets. This has led to an underrepresentation of women in the canon of economic theory. Using insights from literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and feminist economics, the book develops a transdisciplinary methodology that redresses this imbalance and problematises the distinction between literary and economic texts. In its in-depth readings of selected writings by Sarah Chapone, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Mary Robinson, Priscilla Wakefield, Mary Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen, this book uncovers the originality and topicality of their insights on the economics of marriage, women and paid work, and moral economics.

Combining historical analysis with conceptual revision, Women’s Economic Thought in the Romantic Age retrieves women’s overlooked intellectual contributions and radically breaks down the barriers between literature and economics. It will be of interest to researchers and students from across the humanities and social sciences, in particular the history of economic thought, English literary and cultural studies, gender studies, economics, eighteenth-century and Romantic studies, social history, and the history of ideas.

Whom should we consider to be as an economic historian? Only those who hold formal positions in economic history departments or anyone who looks at economic phenomena and processes from a historical perspective? Where does “history” end and the “contemporary” period begin? Equally, we may ask what are legitimate sources of historical evidence – only social science material or also literary and other material? This presentation seeks to begin a conversation rather than provide definitive answers.

The author will also draw on her own work on gender and property rights as well as gender and environmental governance to share the potential and richness of some typically overlooked sources of historical evidence.

Evidence exists that enhancing women’s empowerment can improve a wide array of areas in women’s lives including those related to their roles as primary care takers. However, there is limited evidence on the relationship between empowerment and maternal stress and depressive symptoms. The objective of this study is to elucidate this relationship. For a sample size of 2049 women that were pregnant or mothers of children under the age of two, we conduct a cross-sectional exploration between women’s empowerment, assessed using the project-level Women’s Empowerment and Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and women’s depressive symptoms, measured using the Self-Reported Questionnaire (SQR-20). We find associations between enhanced empowerment and lower levels of maternal depressive symptoms using the aggregate measures of empowerment and both binary and continuous indicators of the empowerment domains. For the empowerment score and the domain of self-efficacy, the association is robust and relatively large. We also found a relationship between greater levels in certain empowerment domains and heightened levels of depressive symptoms. Thus, improving certain dimensions of women’s empowerment may alleviate depressive symptoms but not others. However, more work is needed to disaggregate the pathways through which women’s empowerment influences mental health and examine potential negative effects.