Honors Colloquium

Photo by Anna Meassick | Nancy Folbre opens the night saying she knows she is in the right place due to our “think big” attitude.

On Oct. 23, Nancy Folbre spoke at the annual Honors Colloquium in Edwards Hall with a presentation entitled, “The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems.”

Folbre is a retired professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and senior fellow of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. Folbre also considers herself a “feminist economist,” who explores the interface between economics and feminist theory.

The presentation began with three questions: Why do women experience economic disadvantages? Why do patriarchal structures emerge? What does intersectionality mean?

When Folbre began to answer the question of why women have economic disadvantages she said, “the conventional story of supply and demand is incomplete.”

She said that both factors do come into play. One example she gave is maternity leave, where a woman may not be able to work as much. This, Folbre said, would be an instance of a woman not supplying enough work to be paid equally. She noted that this could be an instance of there not being enough demand for women in the workforce.

“While both these factors do come into play, they do not tell the whole story,” Folbre said.

In fact, she focused much of her lecture on social institutions that promote a workforce with male dominance. These are what she referenced as “patriarchal institutions.” These encompass many aspects of life, from laws and policies to social norms, such as the norm that the woman in the family should be the homemaker.

Folbre cited the 2016 General Social Survey, where 27 percent of people either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family,” Folbre said. As a result, women are led to believe that they need to follow societal gender norms. “Women in communities with more focus on traditional gender norms tend to earn less than women in other communities,” Folbre said.

The pressure on women to conform to their social norms leads to the increase of “investments in others [that often] come at the expense of investments in themselves.” This, creates “prisoners of love [whose] care for other people involves attachments that diminish personal bargaining power.” Folbre continued this idea on by discussing that the primary caregiver, often the mother, find it difficult to ask for acknowledgement for their hard work because they do it out of love of their family and not for the possibility of praise. This, Folbre said, leads to a “high incidence of non-reciprocity.”

This led into Folbre’s feminist hypothesis, which is, “Women have a collective interest in dismantling institutional structures and distributing the costs of caring for others in more equitable ways.”

There is hope that her hypothesis can be realized, and have an effect on societal norms. Folbre noted that patriarchal structures used to encourage population growth. This population growth has always been the key to success. “More growth meant more soldiers, which meant more military success which meant more workers which meant more output,” Folbre said.

As a result, however, women were pushed to the sidelines, only there to give birth to new workers, which put them in a position with what Folbre calls, “a small slice of the pie.” Yet, the system worked in such a way that “The pie grew,” leading Folbre to prompt the question: “wouldn’t you rather have a small piece of a big pie than a big piece of a small pie?”

But now, she said, patriarchal institutions discourage fertility and population growth and there are more and more developed nations that are facing birth rates lower than the necessary rates of replacement. That, Folbre said, is where feminism comes in. “Feminism is trying to increase the size of the piece of the pie women have, while also increasing the size of the pie itself.”

Folbre concluded with a discussion about intersectionality. According to the International Women’s Development Agency, intersectional feminism is, “the complex, cumulative manner in which the effects of different forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect.”

She said that in recent years conservatives have been realigning to double down on traditional gender roles. “Some forms of feminism that ignore intersectionality are to blame for the conservative realignment,” Folbre said.

Folbre ended her speech by saying, “a big part of closing the divide between women of color and white women, as well as between men of color and white men, is tuition free higher education and the forgiveness of student loans.”