Ludwig von Mises as Feminist Economist.

• Author: Moreno-Casas, Vicente

Feminist economics is a research field that seeks to include and recognize women's productive and theoretical contributions within economic science. It is usually considered to have arisen in the 1990s with Marilyn Waring's (1988) work, in which she claimed that nonmarket work, accomplished mainly by women, should be included in economic indicators. Although Waring's work "revitalized feminist arguments for valuing non-market work" (Folbre 2009, 308), feminism and economics had converged several years earlier (see, for example, Boserup 1970; Bergmann 1974; Hartmann 1979). It was in the 1990s that feminist economics officially emerged (Becchio 2020), and, after that, many feminist scholars joined this study and found that women's roles as economic agents were generally absent in economic science, in both theory and empirical studies. This was so, they argued, because mainstream economic epistemology and theory had been built on male constructs and gender biases. Some feminist economists talked about malestream instead of mainstream economics in reference to neoclassical economics because of its androcentric character (Bergmann 1990; Nelson 1992, 1993; Pujol 1992; Seiz 1993). For instance, feminist economists used the idea of homo economicus as evidence that the subject of the study of neoclassical economics is a man and not a neutral subject. Some argued that only reputedly male characteristics such as rationality, individualism, and competition were being studied in economics, whereas putatively female characteristics, such as cooperation, altruism, and subjectivism, were treated as being beyond the scope of economics (Nelson 1996).

Since then, some feminist scholars have tried to improve neoclassical economics by including women's contributions and features, which has resulted in what is known as "gender economics." However, many other feminist economists have considered that the very foundations of neoclassical economics have limited the broadening of the scope of economics and the introduction of new, more humanistic concepts and methodologies. Hence, they prefer to find better explanatory capacity in other approaches and currents within economics. As a result, feminist economics has been connected with many approaches: various socialist branches, American institutionalism, post-Keynesianism, social ontology, the capability approach, behavioral economics, the economic comparative system, and Austrian economics (Becchio 2020). This paper aims to contribute to the existing relationship between the Austrian School of economics and feminist economics by studying the life and oeuvre of one of the most relevant Austrian economists in history, Ludwig von Mises.

Some economists who have worked on this Austrian feminist approach are Karen Vaughn (1994), Deborah Walker (1994; also Walker et al. 2004), Steven Horwitz (1995), William Waller (1999), and Giandomenica Becchio (2015, 2018, 2019, 2020). Others, such as Miguel-Angel Galindo and Domingo Ribeiro (2012), Robert Garnett (2015), and Michael Hammond (2016), have treated it superficially, using Austrian ideas in feminist arguments or vice versa. However, as Waller states, "it seems that an Austrian-feminist approach to economics is possible, but that potential is significantly underdeveloped at present" (1999, 25). Thus, in order to enhance the Austrian--feminist relation, I study the figure of Ludwig von Mises, whose life is a vivid demonstration of the classical liberal defense of women's freedom and whose writings serve as a consistent and sound foundation for the development of feminist economics theory. If we can conclude that Ludwig von Mises's writings are useful for feminist economists, it will be easier to develop a vigorous Austrian branch within feminist economics.

For this purpose, I first introduce Mises's life as an example of support for women's freedom and his writings on marriage and private property as a classical liberal position in defense of women's rights. Then, I discuss the epistemological similarities between feminist economics and praxeology and how the latter can enrich the former. Finally, I criticize some methodological ideas of feminist economics and enhance them from the praxeological viewpoint.

Women, Feminism, and Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises is considered one of the most prominent authors of the Austrian School. He wrote justly famous books such as The Theory of Money and Credit (2009, originally published in German in 1912), Socialism (1951, originally published in German in 1922), and, his major work, Human Action ([1949] 1998). However, his academic life was not as successful as his works. According to Jorg Guido Hiilsmann (2007), Mises's professional and academic beginning was very challenging; he did not gain an academic position easily. While he was working in a prestigious law firm and after that in the Vienna chamber of commerce, he began teaching economics in October 1907 to the senior class of the Trade Academy for Girls. (1) Mises's first students were girls, just a few years after women were admitted into the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1897 and some years before women entered the Department of Law in 1919. In 1919, Mises started his private seminar with a talk offered by a woman, Elisabeth Ephrussi. In fact, two generations of Austrian women economists were participants at Mises's seminars, both in Vienna and later at New York University. Helene Lieser, Marianne Herzfeld, Use Mintz, Gertrude Lovasy, Elly Spiro, and Martha Stephanie Braun were some of the female students in Mises's private seminar in Vienna, and all of them belong to the second generation of Austrian School female economists (Becchio 2019). In addition, Mary Sennholz and Bettina Bien Greaves, from the third generation of Austrian School women economists, were regulars at Mises's seminars at New York University. These facts support the idea that "Mises was one of the few men in a leadership position who actively promoted young female intellectuals" (Hulsmann 2007, 417), according to his classical liberal notion of women's freedom and rights, which I discuss at greater length later in this paper.

We could consider Mises as a man concerned with women's issues. Such is the case that his wife, Margit von Mises, asserted: "Lu was a great defender of women, and never doubted their mental capacities or potentials. His seminar in Vienna was well known for the many highly gifted women who attended and later became leading figures in economics and education" (M. Mises 1976, 141). He captured this concern in one of his most famous books, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, which I analyze later.

Mises's political philosophy is embedded in the classical liberal tradition (see Mises 1985). This being so, it should come as no surprise that Mises wrote on the issue of women and feminism, given that the woman question emerged in the nineteenth century as a consequence of the period's concern with liberal principles of equality before the law and individual freedom, exemplified in two of the first modern feminist publications: the pamphlet Declaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of the rights of woman and the female citizen, 1791) by Olympe de Gouges and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ([1792] 1994) by Mary Wollstonecraft. Another famous classical liberal author cited in reference to liberalism and feminism is John Stuart Mill, who published The Subjection of Women (1869). It is noteworthy that in Austria in the early twentieth century, the woman question was already being discussed in socialist circles, but mainly in liberal groups (Becchio 2020). In that sense, Mises continued a long tradition of liberal thinkers who had worried about women's freedom and civil rights. Concretely, the fourth chapter of Socialism is bound to defend the institution of marriage contracts against the socialist attack. It seems that he realized that feminism was being tempted by socialists, whose claims, he felt, were very harmful to freedom. Therefore, he wanted to make an essential distinction about feminism. He stated: "So far as Feminism seeks to adjust the legal position of woman to that of man, so far as it seeks to offer her legal and economic freedom to develop and act in accordance with her inclinations, desires, and economic circumstances--so far it is nothing more than a branch of the great liberal movement, which advocates peaceful and free evolution. When, going beyond this, it attacks the institutions of social life under the impression that it will thus be able to remove the natural barriers, it is a spiritual child of Socialism" (1951, 101).

In accord with his refutation of socialism, he warned about the risk that feminism could become a socialist or interventionist movement, pointing out that the majority' of the proposals to change relations between the sexes had been claimed hand in hand with the intention of socialization of the means of production--the ultimate goal of socialism--and doing so almost thirty' years before the second wave of feminism (known for being anticapitalist) was born (Beauvoir 1956; Friedan [1963] 1974).

From a classical liberal standpoint, he was concerned about the "legal and economic freedom" of women so that they could "develop and act in accordance with [their] inclinations, desires and economic circumstances." However, as a classical liberal Mises not only wrote in defense of women's equality before the law but also pronounced on more profound questions such as marriage, free love, prostitution, women's personality, and violence against women. He affirmed: "Woman's struggle to preserve her personality in marriage is part of that struggle for personal integrity which characterizes the rationalist society of the economic order based on private ownership of the means of production. It is not exclusively to the interest of woman that she should succeed...