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Emeritus Professor Diane Elson

Finance and Financial Crisis

I have analysed the role of the IMF, of central banks and of private financial institutions, in the international monetary system, with a particular emphasis on gender inequality and the distribution of risks. Together with Brigitte Young and Isa Bakker, I identified 5 types of bias in the system: deflationary bias, male-breadwinner bias, commodification bias, risk bias and creditor bias.

‘People, Development and the International Financial Institutions: an Interpretation of the Bretton Woods System’, Review of African Political Economy, 21(62) 1994.

‘The International Financial Architecture -A View from the Kitchen’, Femina Politica-Zeitschrift fur feministische Politk-Wissenschaft, 11Jg, Heft 1, 2002.

Reprinted in N. Visanathan, L.Duggan, N. Wiegersma and L Nisonoff (eds.) The Women, Gender and Development Reader, Zed Books, London 2011.

(ed. with B. Young and I. Bakker) Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective, Routledge, London, 2011. Introduction by Young, Bakker and Elson.

(with Warneke, T.) ‘IMF policies and gender orders: the case of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility’ in (ed. with B. Young and I. Bakker) Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective, Routledge, London, 2011.

Since 2010 I have investigated the gender dimensions of the 2008 international financial crisis and policy responses, distinguishing between spheres of finance, production and reproduction.

‘Gender and the global economic crisis in developing countries: a framework for analysis’, Gender and Development,18(2) 2010.

‘Economics for a post-crisis world’ in D. Jain and D. Elson (eds.) Harvesting Feminist Knowledge for Public Policy, Sage, Delhi, 2011.

‘Finance, Production and Reproduction in the Context of Globalization and Economic Crisis’, Journal of Gender Studies (Ochanomizu University) No. 15, 2012.

‘Social Reproduction in the Global Crisis: Rapid Recovery or Long-Lasting Depletion?’ in P. Utting, S. Razavi and R. Buchholz (eds.) The Global Crisis and Transformative Social Change, Palgrave, London, 2012.

‘Economic Crises from the 1980s to the 2010s: A Gender Analysis’ in G. Waylen and S. Rai (eds.) New Frontiers in Feminist Political Economy, Routledge, London, 2013.

(with R. Pearson) ‘Transcending the impact of the financial crisis in the United Kingdom: towards plan F- a feminist economic strategy’, Feminist Review, 109, 2015.

More recently I have addressed the IMF approach to women’s rights, and the implications of the debt crisis in countries of the Global South.

(with C.Rodriguez Enriquez) ‘Del dicho al hecho: la narrative de genero del FMI y los derechos humanos de las mujeres’, Revista Derechos en Acción (Rights in Action Journal -ReDeA), 18(18) 2020.

‘How the IMF discovered gender equality but continued to undermine women’s rights’ in S. Damodaran, S. Gupta, S. Mitra and D. Sinha (eds.) Development, Transformations and the Human Condition – Essays in Honour of Jayati Ghosh, Routledge India, 2024.

‘40 years of debt distress: a feminist economics perspective’, forthcoming in Gendering Debt Special Issue of Feminist Economics.

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