Preface and Acknowledgments

      Being part of the history I have been writing about has been a mixed pleasure, I can tell you that. As a philosopher and historian of economic thought, my research on the invisible women economic writers and economists in the history of economic thought quite literally cost me my job, as this topic was considered “not core to the field.” This book tells the larger history, or perhaps better, the herstory of economic thought. It tells the story of women, a long line of women who wrote about economic topics, theories, insights, and their experiences – the story of women economic writers and women economists and their work. Because they were women and because they wrote about women, their work was ignored and left to gather dust.

      This book will put a spotlight on these women, most of them still unknown even to scholars of the history of economic thought. Many of them were impressive and insightful people, who stepped forward and wrote about what they considered to be highly relevant and important, what they thought needed to be said. Occasionally their writing made them rich and famous, but, in other cases, these women faced dire consequences for publishing their thoughts. This book aims to show that their work is worth reading and that they can teach us about crucial aspects of an economy.

Losing my job worked out well for me in the end. I found a position that provided me with the support and opportunity to gather together the essays, letters, pamphlets, and books of eighteenth-century women economic writers (see Barker and Kuiper, 2010; Kuiper, 2014) and to teach on the topic. It also enabled me, subsequently, to write this book about these women. This book presents a selection of voices that tell us about how women lived in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England and France, and in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century US; about the economic problems they encountered, the solutions they proposed and fought for, and the way they viewed the economy. This book will provide you with a new perspective on the history of economic thought. Be warned, though: once read, there is no going back …

      I would like to thank the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research (NWO) for supporting my initial research on women’s writing in the history of economic thought with their VENI grant, which enabled me to do four years of research, to change my mind, and to receive the institutional support that I needed. I would also like to thank the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) and all the friends and colleagues I had the chance to work with over the years and who provided me with an inspiring and supportive professional environment. I warmly thank my colleagues of the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz’s Economics Department – Mona Ali, Hamid Azari-Rad, Laura Ebert, and Simin Mozayeni – who so wholeheartedly supported me in writing this book, and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department – Karl Bryant, Meg Devlin, Heather Hewitt, Kathleen Dowley, and Jess Pabon – who taught me so much, and also the students in my History of Economic Thought courses, who pushed me to be more articulate and to sharpen my thoughts and narratives. I would also like to thank my friends and dear colleagues for their time, comments, discussions, and inspiration, especially Drucilla Barker, Ann Davis, Koen Bron, Hettie Pott-Buter, and Jolande Sap for their support in this lengthy endeavor. I would particularly like to thank my students Adrienne Springer, Claudia Garcia-Robles, and Yili Hasandjekaj for their research, respectively, on Émilie du Châtelet, Elizabeth Montagu, and Sadie Alexander.

      Finally, in the words of Mary Lee Chudleigh (1701), I do “beg your pardon for the length of this Address, and for the liberty I have taken to speak my Thoughts so freely, which I do not doubt but you will readily grant to one, who has no other Design but that of doing you Justice.”

      Enjoy the read!