This volume is about the scandalous uses and abuses of gender in the aftermath of the global financial crisis (GFC). It argues that an explicitly feminist approach to the GFC and its ongoing effects can help one to understand both the root causes of the crisis and the failure to significantly reform financial institutions and macro-economic models. The GFC has affected men and women differently. More importantly, it has represented the valuation of risk-taking economic behavior over sustainable household economies that care and, therefore, demands gender analysis. By focusing on the activities ... More

This volume is about the scandalous uses and abuses of gender in the aftermath of the global financial crisis (GFC). It argues that an explicitly feminist approach to the GFC and its ongoing effects can help one to understand both the root causes of the crisis and the failure to significantly reform financial institutions and macro-economic models. The GFC has affected men and women differently. More importantly, it has represented the valuation of risk-taking economic behavior over sustainable household economies that care and, therefore, demands gender analysis. By focusing on the activities and the privileges of the advantaged as much as on the victimization of the disadvantaged, Scandalous Economics explores the way in which gender and stories about gender have helped relegate public debate about the GFC into political oblivion. The volume breaks new ground by arguing that normalization of the post-GFC economic order in the face of its obvious breakdown(s) has been facilitated precisely by co-optation of feminist and queer perspectives into national and international responses to the crisis. These strategies of co-optation are most visible through the lens of the numerous scandals, as well as media and popular culture narratives that have become the gendered language of the crisis. Scandolous Economics does not trump the Occupy movement and other critical analysis of the GFC; rather, it more comprehensively examines gendered material, ideational, and representational dimensions that have served to make the crisis and its macro and micro economic effects “the new normal” across the world.