Sex and Skill: Notes towards a Feminist Economics

This paper was originally written for presentation at the Nuffield Conference on De-skilling and the Labour Process, in November 1979, and later discussed by the Conference of Socialist Economists Sex and Class Group. We should like to thank Sue Himmelweit for her comments on the first drafts and for her encouragement to rewrite it for Feminist Review: In revising it we have gradually come to realize that it opens up many more questions than it resolves. We put it forward, therefore, not as a finished 'position' but as a way of sharing our questions with other feminists, in the hope that a wider dialogue may ensue.