The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought Edited by Robert Dimand and Chris Nyland UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK Edward Elgar wi LIBRARIES Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA 2003 Contents List of Contributors vii Acknowledgements ix 1. Gender Relations and Classical Economics - The 1 Evolution of a Tradition Chris Nyland and Robert Dimand 2. Poulain de la Barre and the Rationalist Analysis of the 21 Status of Women Chris Nyland 3. John Locke, Equality of Rights and Diversity of 40 Attributes Chris Nyland 4. Biology and Environment: Montesquieu’s Relativist 63 Analysis of Gender Behaviour Chris Nyland 5. Adam Smith, Stage Theory and the Status of Women 86 Chris Nyland 6. Women’s Progress and ‘the End of History’ 108 Chris Nyland 7. Condorcet and Equality of the Sexes: One of Many 127 Fronts for a Great Fighter for Liberty of the Eighteenth Century Peter Groenewegen 8. Cultivating Sympathy: Sophie Condorcet’s Letters on 142 Sympathy Evelyn L. Forget vi The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought 9. ‘Let There be no Distinction Between the Sexes’: 165 Jeremy Bentham on the Status of Women Annie L. Cot 10. An Eighteenth-Century English Feminist Response to 194 Political Economy: Priscilla Wakefield’s Reflections (1798) Robert Dimand 11. The Market for Virtue: Jean-Baptiste Say on Women in 206 the Economy and Society Evelyn L. Forget 12. Women in Nassau Senior’s Economic Thought 224 Robert Dimand 13. William Thompson and Anna Doyle Wheeler: A 241 Marriage of Minds on Jeremy Bentham’s Doorstep Chris Nyland and Tom Heenan 14. Taking Harriet Martineau’s Economics Seriously 262 David M. Levy 15. John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor and French Social 285 Theory Evelyn L. Forget Index 311 Contributors Annie L. Cot, Professor, Groupe de Recherches en Epistemologie et Socio- Economie (GRESE), University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, France, has published extensively about Bentham and utilitarianism. She is a member of the executive committee of the History of Economics Society, and has served as President of the Association Charles Gide Pour l'Etude de la Pensee Economique. Robert Dimand, Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence, Department of Economics, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, is the author of The Origins of the Keynesian Revolution (Edward Elgar and Stanford University Press, 1988), co-author (with M. A. Dimand) of A History of Game Theory, Vol. 1 (Routledge, 1996), co-editor (with M. A. Dimand and E. L. Forget) of Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Economics (Edward Elgar, 1995) and A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists (Edward Elgar, 2000), and editor of The Origins of Macroeconomics (Routledge, 2002). Evelyn L. Forget, Professor of Economics in the Department of Community Health Services, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, is the author of The Social Economics of Jean-Baptiste Say (Routledge, 1999) and co-editor (with S. Peart) of Reflections on the Classical Canon in Economics: Essays in Honour of Samuel Hollander (Routledge, 2001), (with R. Lobdell) of The Peasant in Economic Thought (Edward Elgar, 1995) and (with R.W. Dimand and M.A. Dimand) of Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Economics (Edward Elgar, 1995) and A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists (Edward Elgar, 2000). Peter Groenewegen is Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Sydney, Australia. He has published extensively on Alfred Marshall and in many other areas of economic thought. Of his great number of publications, the more recent include Classics and Moderns in Economics, Vol. 1: Essays on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Economic Thought (Routledge 2003), A Concise History of Economic Thought: From Mercantilism to Monetarism (Palgrave Macmillan Eighteenth-century Economics 2003) (with G. Vaggi) and Becaria and Smith and their Contemporaries (Routledge 2002). Vll viii The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought Thomas Heenan, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Management Department, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He has published in the field of political biography and is currently researching a volume on progressive Taylorism and the Cold War together with Chris Nyland. David M. Levy, Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA, is the author of How the Dismal Science Got Its Name: Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2001), and of The Economic Ideas of Ordinary People: From Preferences to Trade (Routledge, 1992). Chris Nyland, Professor of Management, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, is the author of Reduced Worktime and the Management of Production (Cambridge University Press), The Webbs, Fabianism and Feminism (Avebury Series in Philosophy 1999), and co-editor of Malaysian Business in the New Era (Edward Elgar 2001) (with Russell Smyth, Wendy Smith and Marika Vicziany). Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank the publishers of the History of Political Economy, the Journal of the History of Economic Thought and Feminist Economics for permission to reproduce the articles listed below. Forget, Evelyn L. 1997. 'The Market For Virtue: Jean-Baptiste Say on Women and the Family', Feminist Economics, 3 (1). Forget, Evelyn L. 2001. ‘Cultivating Sympathy. Sophie Condorcet's Letters on Sympathy’, Journal of the History of Economic Thought. 23(3). Nyland, Chris 1993. ‘John Locke and the Social Position of Women’, History of Political Economy, 25 (1). Nyland, Chris 1993. ‘Adam Smith, Stage Theory, and the Status of Women’, History of Political Economy, Vol 25 (4). Nyland, Chris 1993. ‘Poulain de la Barre and the Rationalist Analysis of the Status of Women’ History of Economics Review, Issue 19. Nyland, Chris 1997. ‘Biology and Environment: Montesquieu's Relativist Analysis of Gender Behaviour’, History of Political Economy, 29 (3). The editors would also like to thank Miriam Lang and Lyn Vinton for their kind and extremely efficient assistance in the processing of this volume. Their efforts and commitment are deeply appreciated. Chris Nyland would like to dedicate his contribution to the production of this work to Morgan. tx - . 1. Gender Relations and Classical Economics - The Evolution of a Tradition Chris Nyland and Robert Dimand The classical political economists gave more attention to the economic and social status of women, and commonly did so with a great deal more insight, than is generally recognized. John Stuart Mill is remembered as an outstanding liberal feminist for On the Subjection of Women and for his Parliamentary support for the enfranchisement of women. Harriet Hardy Taylor Mill is recognized increasingly as his intellectual partner, while his father, James Mill, is remembered for his cursory dismissal of women’s suffrage in his Essay on Government, which provoked an eloquent response from William Thompson and Anna Doyle Wheeler. These exceptions aside, however, the classical economists are generally held to have focused on the activities of men in markets (to the neglect of women’s status), the sphere of household production and women’s employment outside the home. It is generally believed that even economists who discussed the principles of population accorded women little role as makers of choices. Leading feminist explorations of the history of political and social thought about women (Agonito 1977; Okin 1979; Clark and Lange 1979; Kandal 1988; Shanley and Pateman 1991) cover only one classical economist, John Stuart Mill, and he is considered as a liberal theorist of political liberty rather than being viewed in the context of classical economics (Kennedy and Mendus 1987, in which Jane Rendall writes about Adam Smith, is an exception). As the essays in this volume show, the focus of classical economics was not nearly as limited to the activities of one gender as conventional wisdom has supposed. The fact that those who have adhered to this convention have been in error is due in part to the classicals’ tendency to often publish their contributions in obscure outlets. Adam Smith, for example, in a lengthy and conjectural history, expounded on how and why the status of women had evolved across four historic stages of economic development. Had this conjectural history appeared in The Wealth of Nations, it would have attracted 1 2 The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought widespread notice. However, it appeared in Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence, which was not rediscovered until more than a century after his death. Similarly, Jeremy Bentham’s incisive thoughts on relations between the sexes, like his thoughts on so many other matters, were scattered across assorted publications and manuscripts, lessening their impact. This volume has twin goals. It challenges the conventional wisdom by showing that the classical economists did concern themselves with gender analysis. But in so doing, it also makes the point that the classical tradition developed, over time, a sophisticated response to the question, why is it that in all human societies women have suffered a lower status than that enjoyed by men? The classical’ answer to this question emerged as part of an evolutionary process, in which many writers made independent contributions that collectively amounted to an explanation comprising three key elements. First, it was held that human beings are bom with certain inalienable rights, the nature of which is common to both men and women. Secondly, the sexes differ biologically in a number of fundamental ways, but most importantly in their respective capacity to give birth and their relative muscular strength. Thirdly, while the biological differences between the sexes are a constant, the social significance of these forms of human diversity is a variable, dependent on the material and ideological character of the community in which men and women reside. The classical tradition came to hold that these factors went a long way towards explaining why it is that men have been the dominant sex in virtually all societies across both historical time and geographic space.