1st Edition
Woman's Worth Sexual Economics and the World of Women
Originally published in 1981, Woman’s Worth takes up the challenge to the male preserve of economics – which was raised nearly a century ago by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her classic work Women and Economics.
Patriarchal economic systems – socialist as well as capitalist – are founded upon women’s unpaid labour. On this premise, Lisa Leghorn and Katherine Parker base their exploration of the economic basis of women’s culture across cultures: from the USA to South America, the Middle East, socialist countries, Africa and Europe.
Women’s Worth is accessible and informative to those who have been intimidated by the term ‘international economics’. Its sources are women’s perspective and experience in many countries, in their words and in their writings, published and unpublished. Thus the authors are able to reveal the economic nature of facets of women’s lives which have hitherto been dismissed by traditional economics as features of family or personal life, and to build a new vision of an economics based in female values.
Preface and Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Sexual Economics Explored 2. Shouldering the High Cost of Development 3. As a Woman, I Have No Country: The Diversity of Male Power 4. The Personal is Economic 5. She Who Sows Does Not Reap 6. The Winds of Change 7. The Economy of the World of Women. Notes. Index.
Biography
Lisa Leghorn and Katherine Parker
Reviews for original 1981 edition:
‘The term "economics" will never ring the same again after reading Leghorn and Parker’s book. The truths about women and labor have been buried at least as deep as the truths of our sexuality. The meaning of "women’s work" becomes beautifully and staggeringly concrete in this multi-racial, multi-ethnic view, which reveals uncompromisingly who are the true proletariat of the world.’ – Adrienne Rich
‘We have been getting used to the notion that women hold up half the sky. Apparently with half a hand. With the other hand and a half they hold up man and all his creations. This isn’t the Economics you were taught? Read this book and reteach yourself.’ – Alice Walker
