What is a Feminist Quantitative Method? Opportunities for Feminist Econometrics

Join us for our third session with Sarah Small, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, on Monday, March 4, from 5pm to 6pm in the Levy Conference Room, or on Zoom. Dr. Small’s presentation will be followed by an open Q&A session with audience members—both those in person and on Zoom are welcome to ask questions.

Light refreshments will be served.

REGISTER TO ATTEND THE EVENT VIA ZOOM HERE

This event is co-sponsored by the Levy Economics Institute, the Economic Development Initiative, and Bard’s Economics Program.

Though feminist economics encourages methodological plurality, quantitative methods and econometrics have overtaken the discipline in recent years. Many feminist economists have demonstrated reasons to be concerned about the increasing foothold of quantitative methods, and others have provided thoughtful criticisms of specific quantitative measurements. However, few have made distinctions between mainstream econometrics and feminist econometrics, and a succinct set of resources for those trying to do feminist quantitative research is difficult to find. Drawing upon insights from feminist economics, queer methods, and intersectional approaches, this paper sets forth practical guidelines for feminists using econometric methods. Namely, it considers issues of data cleaning, replicability, survey weighting, comparison groups, non-binary measures of gender, intersectionality, causality claims, identification problems, atheoretical index composition, and measuring “difference.” It raises questions for contemporary feminist economists to consider as we grapple with the methodological identity of our field.

Sarah F. Small, PhD is an assistant professor in the department of economics at the University of Utah and the book review editor for Feminist Economics. Her research focuses on intrahousehold bargaining, unpaid care work, history of feminist economic thought, and feminist research methodology. Sarah earned her PhD in economics from Colorado State University and formerly held research positions at Rutgers and Duke universities. 

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