Présentation

• Rebeca Gomez Betancourt, professeure de sciences économiques à l’Université Lumière Lyon 2, interviendra sur :
  • « The role of three women economists in the social reconstruction of Europe after IIWW : interacting with the Organisation for European Economic Co- operation (OEEC) », en collaboration avec Giulia Zacchia (Minerva Lab, Sapienza University of Rome)

    The role of women economists during the post-World War II reconstruction of Western Europe is still unknown. A small but substantial collection of studies discusses the role of male economists within the European institutions created after World War II, however no study analyses the role of women economists. The paper aims to shed some light on the contribution of the women economists who participated in the social reproduction and reconstruction of Europe through their work in The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), created by the Marshall Plan after the Conference of Sixteen (Conference for European Economic Co-operation). Firstly, based on archival research, interviews, and personal documents, we let re-emerge the hidden figures in the OEEC to know the names of some women economists who actively contributed to the European recovery program. Secondly, we focus on the work done by three women economists in order to rectify their neglected contributions. Through the reconstruction of the figures of Miriam Camp, Florence Kirlin, and Vera Cao Pinna, we will answer the following questions : Were the women economists more engaged in technical support or in diplomacy ? Were they been involved with associations for women’s rights ? Were they part of the same networks ? We studied their educational background, intime and family stories, as well as the role played by international networks and the travels they did. The analysis, with gender lenses, of the post-World War II reconstruction will also be scrutinized, aiming to find relevant implications and connections with the current situation of the European recovery and resilience plan for the post-Covid-19 pandemic, and the contribution of women economists.

  • « Do Feminists economists form a community of scholars ? An account of IAFFE presidents’ cognitive interactions and trajectories »,
    communication coécrite avec Camila Orozco Espinel (Regards, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne) et Anthony Rebours (LED/EA, Université Paris 8)

    This article analyzes the intellectual and professional trajectories of 28 women who structured the field of feminist economics through their academic contributions and administrative responsibilities in IAFFE. Our actors are the twenty-four presidents of the IAFFE between 1992 and 2019, the founding editor of the Journal of Feminist Economics, and three feminist economists who helped develop IAFFE . Our corpus of analysis comprises different types of materials. First, their academic CVs (gathering and systematizing information relative to the university where they received their Ph.D., their dissertation topic, their advisers’ name, specialty, and the list of their academic and non-academic affiliations). Second, using Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science we identify a list of 871 papers produced over the period 1966-2015 by these authors. The thousands of references these publications contain allow us to measure the intellectual proximity of our key authors quantitatively as expressed through their publication behavior. We pay particular attention to the way these authors cite each other and the scholars they mention most often over the different periods we explore.
    We started describing their professional trajectory, subjects of their research, focus areas, and methods. We follow studying their academic contributions and measure the impact of feminist economics outside their field by identifying the type and discipline of journals where the group studied publish their work. This article will answer questions about how they form a community ? How did they interact ? How were their trajectories ? The idea is to go beyond the presentation of their individual trajectories and look for the trends that connect these women as a group.

• Juliette Blayac, doctorante en sciences économiques à l’Université Lumière Lyon-2, présentera une communication intitulée « Jessica Peixotto criticism of the U.S. Thrift culture during the Progressive Era »

  According to Calder (2009 : 50), “Thrift had long been deemed a core value of American citizenship, as well as a mainspring for national prosperity.” Going back to Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard Almanac published in the 18th century, thrift is a moral art of living that frugality, wise spending, and saving. It knows its heyday during 1910-1930, instrumentalized by the government’s need to channel household savings into war bonds (Tucker, 1991). This culture is notably supported by the Home Economics movement founded by Ellen Swallow Richards in 1899. Its goal was to improve the living conditions of American households through the education of women on various questions such as hygiene and nutrition. As women became the main household consumers, this notion gradually became increasingly important in their training. In particular, through the distribution of budget books, Home Economics courses wanted to transform American women into good consumers with thrifty behavior (Yarrow, 2014). This article aims to present the criticism of the thrift culture at the beginning of the consumerist society by the economist Jessica Peixotto. Professor at Berkeley, she helped to found the Department of Home Economics in 1916. Through her innovative cost of living studies (Peixotto 1923 and 1927), she also showed that the lack of thrift in poor households was not due to families’ supposed mismanagement of their budget but instead to the deficient level of their wages. Indeed, in this period characterized by price inflation, unprecedented consumption possibilities, and the general increase of living standards, thrift was an unattainable ideal that needs to be demystified.

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