Gender, economics and human rights: how monetary policy and financial crises create systemic discrimination

This chapter investigates why subjects of concern to both feminist and post-Keynesian economics have been shut out of central bank policymaking. Concern for human rights, well-being, equality, and keeping unemployment at bay all require fiscal policymaking that serves human rights. By the mid-1970s, the goals of feminist and post-Keynesian economists seemed to have an assured role in the work of government institutions such as central banks. However, both the feminists and post-Keynesians were ‘hushed up’ and given little influence in the turn to monetarism and neoliberalism. Historical factors are interwoven with discussion of the innovative work carried out by feminists and post-Keynesians in looking at ways to support human rights. Systemic discrimination stems from monetary policies that impose austerity. Historical evidence shows how well-funded efforts went towards boosting the ideological goals of particular big businesses that held disdain for the institutional successes of the Keynesian state in protecting rights to clean air, water and protection for nature. Historical evidence shows how ideologically driven goals of big business were partnered with public choice and social choice theories to roll back the progress made by the Keynesian state’s institutions and feminist economics. Historical evidence also shows how both anti-feminist and anti-Keynesian interest intertwined with public choice and social choice theories to allow supremacy of traditional property rights. This chapter discusses how these theoretical issues relate to monetary policies carried out by central bankers. The author argues that a Gewirthian approach to human rights subjects property rights to the morally stringent principle of generic consistency (PGC). Property rights take on a dynamic form that involves consideration of the nature of human relations in a claim-right and exchange. The author then sketches out a Gewirthian framework to suggest how this could alter the role of action-taking in qualitative economic analysis. The role of the caregiver meeting human needs is formally conceptualized. The model also suggests how property rights explained in terms of human action in a claim-right may also lead to further conceptualization of accumulations of wealth in a society.