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Mill, Political Economy, and Women's Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2008

NANCY J. HIRSCHMANN
NANCY J. HIRSCHMANN*
Affiliation:
The University of Pennsylvania
*
Nancy J. Hirschmann is R. Jean Brownlee Endowed Term Professor, Department of Political Science, The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, njh@sas.upenn.edu.
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Abstract

The sexual division of labor and the social and economic value of women's work in the home has been a problem that scholars have struggled with at least since the advent of the “second wave” women's movement, but it has never entered into the primary discourses of political science. This paper argues that John Stuart Mill's Political Economy provides innovative and useful arguments that address this thorny problem. Productive labor is essential to Mill's conception of property, and property was vital to women's independence in Mill's view. Yet since Mill thought most women would choose the “career” of wife and mother rather than working for wages, then granting that work productive status would provide a radical and inventive foundation for women's equality. Mill, however, is ambiguous about the productive status of domestic labor, and is thereby representative of a crucial failure in political economic thought, as well as in egalitarian liberal thought on gender. But because Mill at the same time develops a conception of production that goes well beyond the narrow limits offered by other prominent political economists, he offers contemporary political scientists and theorists a way to rethink the relationship of reproductive to productive labor, the requirements for gender equality, and the accepted categories of political economy.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 102 , Issue 2 , May 2008 , pp. 199 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2008

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