Marilyn Waring: Spokesperson for Global Feminist Economics

Abstract

Marilyn Waring is a farmer, university lecturer, development consultant, and writer. She is an important voice challenging mainstream economic and political ideologies currently driving globalization. Her best-known work, If Women Counted, describes how economic orthodoxies exclude most of women's productive and reproductive work, rendering half of the world's population invisible. This book is now available from the University of Toronto Press under its original title, Counting for Nothing, and is the subject of a full-length documentary film, Who's Counting? produced by the National Film Board of Canada and released in 1995. Waring argues passionately, powerfully, and convincingly for the urgency of rethinking basic economic concepts such as gross domestic product in ways that take community well being into account. In her latest publication, Three Masquerades (Auckland University Press, 1996), Waring explores the interconnections between equality, work, and human rights. "Until the whole is exposed to question," Waring warns, "nothing alters in the power dynamics of who chooses, who judges, who defines, who rules, who imposes..." and lies masquerade as truths.