Short answers, pulled from the story.
Feminist economics is the critical study of economics and economies, with a focus on gender-aware and inclusive economic inquiry and policy analysis. It examines topics neglected in mainstream economics, such as care work, intimate partner violence, unpaid household labor, and the gendered effects of international trade and macroeconomic policy.
Marilyn Waring's 1988 book If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics is widely regarded as the founding document of the discipline. Many scholars contributed to its development, including Ester Boserup, Nancy Folbre, Diane Elson, Barbara Bergmann, and Ailsa McKay.
The International Association for Feminist Economics was founded in 1992. Its peer-reviewed journal Feminist Economics launched in 1994, and in 1997 the association gained Non-Governmental Organization status in the United Nations.
In the United States, unpaid work has been estimated to represent between 20 and 50 percent of GDP, a value in the trillions of dollars annually. In the United Kingdom, estimates suggest the figure may be as high as 70 percent of GDP.
The human capabilities approach was developed by economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum as an alternative way to assess economic success. It focuses on what individuals are able to do and be rather than on GDP, income, or utility, and emphasizes processes as well as outcomes. It influenced the creation of the UN's Human Development Index.
Feminist economists argue that the System of National Accounts, which is the international standard for measuring economic output, explicitly excludes unpaid household services from its production boundary. This exclusion renders much of the work disproportionately performed by women economically invisible and results in a systematic undervaluation of their contributions.