Veronica over at Viva La Feminista posted an excellent piece about her fear and loathing of economics classes. Like many of us who have tried to understand the "dismal science", she was repulsed by the one economics class she took. Imagine what it must feel like to be a feminist economics major and have to take dozens of the things?
It's not surprising that econ classes have such a bad name among people who have even a shred of human feeling. Academic economics is dominated by the infamous Chicago School popularized by Milton Friedman and by corporate shills bent on corporate world domination. I know the latter sounds like a joke, but the Third World isn't laughing. As for Milton Friedman, his brand of economics as practiced by such luminaries as Margaret Thatcher , Ronald Reagan and Augusto Pinochet has grown a helluva lot more poverty than wealth.
But before you give up in bitter feminist despair, take a look at the Economic Woman Blog. Described as the place where economics and feminism collide, it's a gold mine of progressive feminist economics. The blog is the result of a lot of hard work by a Canadian econ student named Allison. She also writes for the Canadian feminist magazine Shameless.
Here is what Allison has to say about her new venture into online econ journalism:
A couple months ago, I launched a blog about my first love, feminism, and my current intellectual passion, economics. I’m doing my best to make EconomicWoman.com accessible to economists who haven’t encountered much feminism and to feminists who haven’t encountered much economics, without boring those who are already interested in both.
My site now has a bit of an audience, so the comment threads are more lively every day. Despite the fact that two very different intellectual groups are meeting up, everyone has been quite civil. *crosses fingers* Still, I’d like to see a few more women commenting. So please, come over and join the discussion!
So check out this export of intellectual capital from our neighbor to the north.
Canada...doesn't it make you proud to be North American?