Economic Woman

My last three posts  are up at Feministe: the first one is about female entrepreneurs, the next is an interview with Susan Feiner, and the third is a thank you post with some links. You can also click to the archive of all my Feministe posts.

In the last two weeks I’ve written a 20 page paper, two Varsity articles, and all those aforementioned blog posts. I am written out. I’m going to take a very brief hiatus and bury myself in statistics and GRE prep. Come back on Thursday and Friday for a newly inspired and enthusiastic Economic Woman. I have lots planned.

Turns out my calendar was incorrect, and my Feministe guest posts start  today. That means blogging over here will be light for the next two weeks, but I will throw up some teasers to lure you to Feministe. From the questions and suggestions that have been posted so far, I may be covering some familiar ground, but I’ll also dig up some more original material for you, loyal readers.

My next post will collect a few (hopefully witty) definitions of economics. If you leave a particularly clever one in comments, I’ll include it with attribution and secure your legacy in the feminist blogosphere.

Now, for something completely different: Instead of getting a head start on those posts, or any of the other half-dozen things I have due in the next two weeks, I spent the afternoon configuring an old laptop as a second monitor. Dual monitors are said to increase your productivity by 20 to 30 per cent, and while I’m sceptical about that precise number, it’s sure giving this laptop user more room to think. Perhaps now I’ll be able to post more frequently…

…expect more on-topic posts. For starters, I’m working my way through this Econ Journal Watch forum on women in economics, and I expect I’ll have a response.

I also think I may work on subverting the unwritten code that says bloggers may not discuss an article or issue more than week old. There are several links that I didn’t get around to posting over the last month, but some are still important, so I’m going to take a print magazine approach and forge ahead with my out-of-date opinions.

I’m an undergraduate in economics and international relations at the University of Toronto in Canada. This site is about what happens when my intellectual passion, economics, butts up against my political proclivities towards feminism, anti-oppression, and scepticism.

Over the past year, I’ve been thrilled to discover a vital community of blogging economists. Where my lectures are dry and out of date, the blogosphere is relevant, lively and teeming with questions and perspectives that I’ve never considered. In the wake of the death of the faculty lunch room, blogs have given the discipline space to throw around research as it happens, and given everyone a ring-side seat on the creation of modern economic theory.

Feminism’s third wave is also alive and kicking on the internet. As a blogger over at Shameless Magazine, I keep up with an international network of inspiring, ambitious women strategizing for change.

Sometimes the same topics pop up on both sides of my RSS reader. But as far as I can tell, there is nowhere on the internet that economic bloggers and feminist bloggers meet. I am trying to build a point of intersection because I think we have a few things to learn from each other.

I am writing for two (or three, or four) disparate audiences here, with different basic assumptions and different ways of judging an argument. If you’re confused by something, please leave a comment. If one post seems entirely outside your interests, try skipping to the next one. I am going to ask questions, propose out-of-left-field solutions, change my mind, contradict myself, and often get things entirely wrong. I hope you’ll join me.