Women and Nature: the Invisible Hands

From Sunday through Wednesday this past week, I attended the meeting of the United States Society for Ecological Economics, for which I currently serve as a board member. I was thrilled and inspired by my first encounter at this meeting with feminist economists Nancy Folbre and Julie Nelson (more on them in a minute). First, let me explain the purpose of USSEE. Our tagline is, ‘Transforming the Economy for a Just and Sustainable World’. We are an interdisciplinary academic society comprised of economists, biologists, ecologists, geographers, engineers, sociologists, etc., and we are generally concerned with promoting human well-being without irreparably degrading the integrity of the environment. We believe that we need fundamentally new ways of thinking about, measuring, and designing societal progress in order to accomplish these dual goals (supporting human well-being and protecting the environment).  

There are some obvious parallels between ecological economics and feminist economics. Scientists have long pointed out that the ways in which we measure the strength of the economy—mainly, using gross domestic product (GDP) or stock market activity—ignore completely the contributions of the natural world, without which the economy would not be able to function. What we measure tends to be what we value, so leaving out nature in the accounting scheme can create perverse outcomes, as ecological systems are sacrificed for short-term economic profit. One example is the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. This event was devastating for the ecology and human well-being in the Gulf region. However, the oil spill actually slightly increased the GDP of the United States through clean-up costs, lawsuits, etc. In other words, GDP does not distinguish between economic activity that benefits people and the planet, and economic activity that results from people screwing up and needing to fix things.

In the same way, feminist economists point out that GDP and the stock market don’t measure the value of a lot of human activity that contributes greatly to human well-being and to economic productivity. Examples include caring for children, the sick, and the elderly; keeping a clean and healthy home; and volunteering. Do you notice a pattern here? All of these activities are traditionally associated with women (although men have been stepping up to do more of them in recent years). Women and nature are truly the ‘invisible hands’ that prop up the economy—unrecognized, unacknowledged, un-counted—but absolutely essential.

Just as a thought experiment to reinforce this point, imagine what would happen if women (and some men) collectively walked off the job—just quit doing all of the un-paid activities that support healthy homes and communities around the world. To put it bluntly, an entire generation would be wiped out. The workers of tomorrow, who would be producing the ideas and labor to fuel the future economy, would not exist. Human society as we know it would collapse.

Similarly, what would happen if nature ‘walked off the job’—stopped assimilating our wastes, stopped producing oxygen and clean water, stopped providing a relatively stable climate? It’s pretty clear human society wouldn’t last very long. 

In the spirit of, ‘we don’t value what we can’t measure’, some economists are addressing the fact that the economy takes women and nature for granted by advocating that we measure progress using the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), rather than using GDP. The GPI counts the value of non-paid work in the home and community, and subtracts the value of economic activity that damages the environment or is not correlated with human well-being. As it turns out, when you measure well-being using GPI, people in the United States have not been getting any better off since about 1975. Yet, we’ve been generating a lot more economic activity. It begs the question: what is all that economic activity for, if not to make us happier and healthier?

What solutions would you propose? How can we recognize and value the contributions of women and the environment to our economies and societies? By the way—if this topic sparks your interest, follow USSEE on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn!