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Article
Gender, Genes, and Choice: A Comparative Look at Feminism, Evolution, and Economics
North Carolina Law Review (2002)
  • Katharine K. Baker, Chicago-Kent College of Law
Abstract
This Article compares the methodological similarities between evolutionary biology and conventional law and economics. It shows how these methodologies diverge, in critical and parallel ways, from what has come to be known as feminist method. In doing so, the Article suggests that feminists in the legal academy should be suspicious of the parsimonious models upon which both conventional evolutionary biologists and conventional law and economics scholars rely. Biological and economic models employ analogous concepts of maximization (including theories of autonomy, choice, and measurement) and stable equilibria (usually produced by stable preferences) to make predictions and proscriptions for law. The simplicity of each discipline's assumptions about maximization and stability make these models particularly inapposite for feminism. The last section of the Article explores how the models have failed feminists in one area of particular import to women, the legal treatment of domestic labor.
Publication Date
February, 2002
Citation Information
Gender, Genes, and Choice: A Comparative Look at Feminism, Evolution, and Economics, 80 North Carolina Law Review 465 (2002).