Editing Feminist economics (section)

===Economic history===
[[File:US womens earnings as a percentage of mens 1979-2005.svg|thumb|right|Women's weekly earnings as a percentage of men's in the U.S. by age, 1979-2005]]

Feminist economists say that [[mainstream economics]] has been disproportionately developed by European-descended, [[heterosexual]], middle and upper-middle-class men, and that this has led to suppression of the life experiences of the full diversity of the world's people, especially women, children and those in non-traditional families.<ref>{{cite book|last=Strassmann|first=Diana|title=Out of the Margin: Feminist Perspectives on Economics|year=1997|publisher=Routledge|location=London [u.a.]|isbn=978-0-415-12575-8|pages=94–104|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hF_Jm7bHOysC&q=The%20Economist%20as%20Storyteller%3A%20What%20the%20Texts%20Reveal&pg=PA94|author2=Polanyi, Livia|chapter=The Economist as Storyteller}}</ref>

Additionally, feminist economists claim that the historical bases of economics are inherently exclusionary to women. [[Michèle Pujol]] points to five specific historical assumptions about women that arose, became embedded in the formulation of economics, and continue to be used to maintain that women are different from the masculinized norms and exclude them.<ref>{{cite book|last=Pujol|first=Michele|author-link=Michèle Pujol|title=Out of the Margin: Feminist Perspectives on Economics| year=1995| publisher=Routledge| location=London |isbn=9780415125314 |pages=17–30 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nTtdGU3hfcEC&q=Into%20the%20Margin%20pujol&pg=PA17|chapter=Into the Margin!}}</ref> These include the ideas that:

*All women are married, or if not yet, they will be and all women will have children.
*All women are economically dependent on a male relative.
*All women are (and should be) housewives due to their reproductive capacities.
*Women are unproductive in the industrial workforce.
*Women are irrational, unfit economic agents, and cannot be trusted to make the right economic decisions.

Feminist economists also examine early economic thinkers' interaction or lack of interaction with gender and women's issues, showing examples of women's historical engagement with economic thought. For example, [[Edith Kuiper]] discusses [[Adam Smith|Adam Smith's]] engagement with feminist discourse on the role of women in the eighteenth century [[France]] and [[England]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Kuiper|first=Edith|author-link=Edith Kuiper|title=New Voices on Adam Smith|year=2006|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-0-415-35696-1|pages=40–57|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7JN532ipBVwC&q=Adam%20Smith%20and%20his%20Feminist%20Contemporaries&pg=PA40|chapter=Adam Smith and his feminist contemporaries}}</ref> She finds that through his writings, Smith typically supported the ''[[status quo]]'' on women's issues and "lost sight of the division of labor in the family and the contribution of women's economic work." In response, she points to [[Mary Collier|Mary Collier's]] works such as ''The Woman's Labour'' (1739) to help understand Smith's contemporaneous experiences of women and fill in such gaps.