Doctrine of the Separate Spheres in Political Economy and Economics

Giandomenica Becchio is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Social Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics (ESOMAS), University of Torino, Italy. Her research encompasses the history of economic thought, with a specific emphasis on gender issues, as well as the methodology of economics and the classical liberal tradition within political economy.

• PART I: Escaping the doctrine of the separate spheres (1700s-early 1900s). The economists’ points of view.- Chapter 1: Educated women as an asset to society: the role of classical liberal tradition in modern Europe.- Chapter 2: Women and the job market in Victorian England and Progressive America.- Chapter 3: Women’s new path towards the public sphere.- Part II: The doctrine of the separate spheres between rebirth and rejection (1920s- early 2000s). Marriage theory in economics.- Chapter 4: Reviving the doctrine of separate spheres: the new home economics.- Chapter 5: Feminist economics and the doctrine of the separate spheres.