The Double X Economy
Linda Scott is adamant that the only effective way to make fundamental and lasting improvements for women is through economic empowerment — an idea that she argues has been neglected by many feminists, and largely ignored or dismissed by the men who dominate economic policy and practice at every level of the global economy, from company directors in G7 countries to farmers in Africa and Asia. — Read the complete FT review
Synopsis
For the past fifteen years, scholar and activist Linda Scott has played a central role in the rise of the women’s economic empowerment movement. A coalition made up of activists, multinational corporations, global NGOs, and governments, it arose in the mid-2000s in response to new global data sets that revealed sobering conclusions about women in the economy, namely that gender inequality is a global problem, and that women’s economic subordination drags down national economies and fosters global crises, from severe poverty to human trafficking.
?In The Double X Economy: The Epic Potential of Women’s Empowerment, Scott argues that women’s systematic exclusion from economic participation has created an alternate system that she calls “the Double X Economy”: having suffered from a consistent list of severe and worldwide economic exclusions applied throughout history, women have been shaped into an entirely different economic practice. Yet while the women’s economy, taken as a whole, is restricted and constantly under threat, when empowered it is more careful, cooperative, and focused on long-term outcomes than the economic order under which the world lives now.
Building on the momentum of the female empowerment movements currently mobilizing worldwide, The Double X Economy presents an entirely new conceptual schema for women’s rights based on economic liberty. Accessible and convincing, Scott’s groundbreaking study is an assessment of women’s historic subjugation, a demonstration of how that subjugation has resulted in myriad intractable problems, and a call to action to once and for all place women on an equal footing with men in order to create a better world.
