The Lack of Recognition for Women’s Work: Smith Is Not Guilty

In this article, the author looks at criticisms that feminist economists have levelled, over the past twenty years, at Adam Smith’s analysis of women’s domestic and care labour and, more generally, at his view of their place in modern capitalist society. Her analysis suggests that not all of these criticisms are founded, and that Smith’s thinking is probably closer to feminism than to the antifeminism that characterized his era.