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Emeritus Professor Diane Elson

Development, Growth and Trade

I have always considered development to be an unequal and uneven process, both internationally and in terms of class and gender. My theoretical contributions criticise theories of development, including heterodox theories, for not taking gender into account and propose how development economics can be made gender-aware.

‘Imperialism’ in G. McLennan. D. Held and S. Hall (eds.) The Idea of the Modern State, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1984.

‘Dominance and Dependency in the World Economy’ in B. Crow, M. Thorpe and D. Wield (eds.) Change and Survival in the Third World, Polity Press, Cambridge, and Oxford University Press, USA

reprinted in abridged form in Stuart Corbridge (ed.) Readings in Development Studies, Edward Arnold, London, 1995.

‘Economic Paradigms Old and New: The Case of Human Development’ in A. Berry, R. Culpeper and F. Stewart (eds.) Global Development Fifty Years After Bretton Woods: Essays in Honour of Gerald K. Helleiner, Macmillan, London 1997.

'Male bias in the development process: an overview’ in (D. Elson ed.) Male Bias in the Development Process, Manchester University Press, Manchester, First Edition 1991. Second Edition 1995. (Out of Print)

reprinted in S. Chari and S. Corbridge (eds.) The Development Reader, Routledge, London, 2008.

‘Gender Analysis and Economics in the Context of Africa’ in A. Imam, A. Mama and F. Sow (eds.) Engendering African Social Sciences, CODESRIA, Senegal, 1997.

In French translation in Sexe, genre et societe: engendrer les sciences sociales africaines, Karthala, Paris, 2004.

‘Gender Economics - Just Another Dummy Variable?’ in Governance, Equity and Global Markets, Proceedings of 1999 Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics in Europe, La Documentation Francaise, Paris, 2000.

‘Theories of development’ in J. Peterson and M. Lewis (eds.) Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics, Edward Elgar, Aldershot, 2000.

‘Gender Issues in Development’ in A. K. Dutt and J. Ros (eds.) International Handbook of Development Economics, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2008.

‘Gender-Aware Analysis and Development Economics’, Journal of International Development 5 (2)1993.

Reprinted in K.P. Jameson and C.K. Wilber (eds.) The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1996; and in L. Beneria and S. Bisnath (eds.) Gender and Development: Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Approaches, Vol. 1, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2001. In Italian translation as ‘Approcci feministri all’economia dello sviluppo’, Sviluppo (Development), No. 1, 1993. In German translation as ‘Feministiche Ansatze in der Entwicklingsokonomie’, PROKLA (Zeitshscrift fur kritische Sozialwissenschaft), 23(4)1993.

My papers on economic growth include feminist conceptual critiques of models and paradigms and empirically based analysis of growth and distribution.

‘Talking to the big boys: gender and economic growth models’ in R. Pearson and C. Jackson (eds.) Feminist Visions of Development, Routledge, London, 1998.

‘Gender Equality and Economic Growth in the World Bank World Development Report 2006’, Feminist Economics 15(3) 2009.

Reprinted in G. Berik, Y. van der Meulen Rodgers and S. Seguino (eds.) Inequality, Growth and Development, Routledge, London, 2011.

(ed. with A. Seth) Gender Equality and Inclusive Growth, UN Women, New York, 2019.

‘Gender Equality and Inclusive Growth’ in M. Tribe and G. Kararach (eds.) The Political Economy of Global Manufacturing, Business and Finance, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

‘Push No One Behind’, Journal of Globalization and Development, 9(2)1-12, 2019.

‘Intersections of gender and class in the distribution of income’, The Japanese Political Economy, 2019,

My contribution to the feminist analysis of international trade contests the theory of comparative advantage and proposes that economies gain competitive advantage through processes based on gender inequality.

(ed. with I. van Staveren, C. Grown and N. Cagatay) Feminist Economics of Trade, Routledge, London, 2007. Introduction by Elson, Grown and Van Staveren ; chapter 3 ‘Mainstream, Heterodox and Feminist Trade Theory’ by Elson, Grown and Cagatay.

‘Commerce international, egalite des sexes et advantage competitif’ in J.Falquet et al (eds.) Le Sexe de la Mondialisation, Presses de la Fondation Nationales de Science Politique, Paris, 2010

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