Feminist Economics and Ethics

Abstract

Based on different normative foundations, a plurality of approaches to feminist economics has developed since the 1980s. The major tasks of an ethics of feminist economics, feminist economic ethics, are to make visible these normative foundations and to critically reflect them from a non-androcentric moral point of view that has first to be unfolded. Therefore, the first section on feminist ethics looks beyond androcentric ethics, reflects critically the existing gender norms and asks, “care justice for whom?” The second section degenders economic terms and makes explicit the normative foundations of feminist economics and economic ethics. The third section is dedicated to the method, subject matter, and agency model of a contemporary feminist economic ethics taking queer and postcolonial ethics into account. The conclusion summarizes the challenges a critical reflexive feminist economic ethics of paid and unpaid work as an ethics of caring provisioning is facing.