Shifting boundaries, dismantling brick walls: Feminist knowledge in the struggles to transform economic thinking and policy

Abstract

This article contributes to ongoing debates on the politics of feminist knowledge transfer by considering how feminist professionals advocate transformative economic thinking and policies. I draw on interviews with an under-researched group—feminist professionals with specialized knowledge about the economy—to argue that feminist economic experts' transformative politics is shaped by highly contextual efforts to lend credibility to feminist alternatives to conventional economic knowledge and policy. Combining feminist scholarship on scientific boundary-work with theorizing on resistance to feminist institutional transformation, the article analyzes the practices that feminist experts use to reframe their knowledge claims to get their messages through to decision-makers. I suggest that although feminist boundary-work is likely to come up against ‘brick walls’ of institutional resistance, it can dismantle such walls by gradually shifting the boundaries of legitimate economic knowledge and policies.