Gendered Economics: Gender from an Economic Perspective

Starting with the “founding fathers” economics was a male dominated field and it still remains so today as the majority of academic staff and undergraduate students are male compared to other disciplines. This large gender gap and slow change rate, leads the economics field to be shaped by men for men. Hence, the issues that females face get ignored and are often treated as social problems. This course aims to focus the attention of the students back to these problems and re-introduce them as economic problems that should matter to all rather than just half the population. The course will introduce the basic economic concepts and theories with relation to gender (such as tax, poverty, GDP, income effect, labour force participation rate, unemployment etc) and utilise statistics from different countries to portray a realistic picture of the world. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of economic concepts and understand how to incorporate gender inequality data to support their arguments. Students are not expected to have any prior knowledge of economics or gender, but an interest in gender equality or a fairer world is a must. Importantly, this course will be approaching gender as binary with respect to the data used. However, discussions on how to achieve a more diverse and fair world for all remains the primary goal.