Woman's Worth

Originally published in 1981, Womans Worth takes up the challenge to the male preserve of economics which was raised nearly a century ago by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her classic work Women and Economics. Patriarchal economic systems socialist as well as capitalist are founded upon womens unpaid labour. On this premise, Lisa Leghorn and Katherine Parker base their exploration of the economic basis of womens culture across cultures: from the USA to South America, the Middle East, socialist countries, Africa and Europe. Womens Worth is accessible and informative to those who have been intimidated by the term international economics. Its sources are womens perspective and experience in many countries, in their words and in their writings, published and unpublished. Thus the authors are able to reveal the economic nature of facets of womens lives which have hitherto been dismissed by traditional economics as features of family or personal life, and to build a new vision of an economics based in female values.