I was delighted to read earlier this week that Marilyn Waring was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to women and economics. It may be a little surprising to some for her award to make reference to economics, as her original tertiary studies were in political science (although similarly, Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics, despite being considered by most to be a political scientist). Moreover, she may be best known to New Zealanders as a National Party MP from the 1980s.
However, internationally Dame Marilyn is known as one of the founders of feminist economics, which focuses on a number of topics, particularly around gender, which had been mostly neglected in the economics mainstream up to the 1980s (and many would argue, since then as well). Her first major contribution to economics was the book If Women Counted, which is a well-developed critique of GDP. In particular, the book focuses on how women's unpaid work is under-valued, because GDP only takes account of market production. The argument goes that if only market production is counted, then women don't count. Although gender equality has arguably improved since the 1980s, the broader point about the limitations of GDP remain (and were not new when Waring made them, although the gender dimension was new).
Randomly, I met Dame Marilyn in Vienna in 2010, at the International AIDS Conference, where she was giving a talk. I don't remember the details of her talk (and I'm away from the office, so unfortunately I can't even look it up). I do remember that many of the New Zealanders at the conference, including Dame Marilyn, had a lovely dinner together one evening during the conference (and a good thing to, because the other thing I remember about the conference was how expensive it was to eat in Vienna!).
This is a well-deserved and probably overdue honour. Congratulations Dame Marilyn Waring!
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