The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems

Nancy Folbre

Nancy Folbre is Professor Emerita of Economics and Director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Senior Fellow of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. Her research explores the interface between political economy and feminist theory, with a particular emphasis on the value of unpaid care work. In addition to numerous articles published in academic journals, she is the editor of For Love and Money: Care Work in the U.S. (Russell Sage, 2012), and the author of Greed, Lust, and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas (Oxford, 2009), Valuing Children: Rethinking the Economics of the Family (Harvard, 2008), and The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values (New Press, 2001). She has also written widely for a popular audience, including contributions to The New York Times Economix blog, The Nation, and The American Prospect. She has received a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, a five-year fellowship with the MacArthur Foundation in 1998, and the Leontief Prize of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University in 2004.

Watch the video

She was elected president of the International Association for Feminist Economics in 2002, and has been an associate editor of the journal Feminist Economics since 1995. As of 2004 she was a member of the National Academy of Science Panel, which studied the design of non-market accounts. She has been a board member of the Foundation for Child Development since 2000, a member of the National Advisory Commission of Child Care and Early Education as well as the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund since 2004.