Female Economies
As in previous years, the conference will address women’s relationship to money and their participation in trade, banking, finance, forms of investment, speculation, gambling, consumerism, business and household management, wage labour, care work, charity and various other practices of exchange. The conference is interdisciplinary in nature, bridging literature, material culture, gender studies, economic history and feminist economics, and aims to relate the debates of past periods to modern-day issues concerning the presence and position of women in the economy and media.
While we welcome submissions on a wide range of topics connected to women’s involvement in the marketplace and finance, we particularly invite contributions – whether literary, historical or economic – to this year’s conference theme “Female Economies”. This can include the particular ways in which women participate in the traditional economy as well as economic domains in which women have been particularly active and influential. Yet we are also interested in feminine economic activities and areas which have long been overlooked and which have not been regarded as economically relevant in classic economics, including the marriage market, care work, household management, philanthropy or the exchange of gifts. At the same time, the theme can also be taken to refer to the textual economies developed by women authors addressing economic topics, including the textual genres (literary and non-literary) used by women writing about economic issues and concerns. Of equal interest is the role played by women in economic thought, the formation of economic theory and the historiography of capitalism.
More broadly, we welcome submissions in the form of individual papers, panels and roundtable discussions on the following themes:
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the varying practices of women associated with currency, global and/or domestic markets and marketability
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material practices associated with value, exchange and/or female creativity
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women as investors, risk-takers or gamblers
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women as producers and/or consumers in the literary or other marketplaces (including, but not limited to, food, clothing, agriculture and raw materials)
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representations of women at work
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women’s involvement in trade and industry; professional services (such as law, finance, hospitality and the media); domestic service; the rural economy
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the place of women in the literary marketplace (past and present)
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cross-cultural considerations of and global perspectives on the above issues