Challenging mainstream economics

An academic from India and writer from Denmark talk to Ella Al-Shamahi about how the way economies are measured influences policy and undervalues both unpaid and paid care work, and affects the lives of women on every level.

Emma Holten is a Danish feminist commentator whose book, Deficit: how feminist economics can change our world, became a best seller in her home country. It highlights how economics have shaped a world in which there is no value attached to care, happiness or quality of living. Emma says that by including only things that can be measured economics ignores many of the most important things in life.

Jayati Ghosh is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in the US. In 2021 the United Nations named her to be on the High-level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs. She presented a series of lectures on feminist economics for the International Association of Feminist Economics. She's written many books with a focus on informal workers in the Global South and has advised governments in India and other countries.

Produced by Jane Thurlow

(Image: (L) Emma Holten credit Claudia Vega. (R) Jayati Ghosh courtesy Jayati Ghosh/Aleph Book Company.)