A Nobel Prize Machirula | Criticism of perspectives …

"They awarded the Nobel Prize for the economy to Banerjee's wife." For example, in India, they announced the announcement of the joint prize awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their studies on experimental approaches to reducing poverty in the world. Duflo, however, has her own merits: she is a French economist, holds a doctorate from MIT and is director of the Center for Economic and Political Research. The fact that Duflo is a woman and the youngest person in history to win a Nobel Prize in economics is a reason for celebration. Even more so if the subject for which he is rewarded is his research on poverty while it is customary to award these winners to subjects far removed from reality. However, his theoretical methods and his foundations are not without questions.

Duflo's conception of poverty is highly individualistic. This means that this assumes that each individual is responsible for their situation and that, therefore, the policies must aim to change the decisions of each. In addition, their studies use experimental methods that reproduce in the social field the typical methods of the natural sciences: one group is "applied" to one program and another group (a control group) does not. The difference in results is the impact of the program. These methods are highly questionable: from the ethical questioning of experimentation on human beings to the non-application of a policy likely to improve their situation to a group, to the impossibility of reproducing the same "experience" in different contexts. In natural sciences, the conditions of application of the experiment are isolated in the laboratory, but in social sciences, how to compare the results of a program in India and Argentina without taking into account the history, the trajectory and all other variables involved in each of these companies? The economist Naila Kabeer is one of the most discussed people with the methodological perspective of Duflo.

Duflo also has a series of publications on the relationship between women and economic development. In the feminist economy, their gender perspective is highly debatable. He considers that gender-sensitive development policies are not necessarily necessary to increase equity, because the mere fact that there is development (understood as GDP growth) will improve the situation of women (a bit like a spill theory for gender equality). This occurs in several ways:

1) Growth reduces poverty (causal link that the facts have largely refuted). Women being overrepresented in the poor population, they will benefit most.

2) Growth reduces the number of discrimination against children in families. Supposedly in countries like India or Bangladesh, extremely poor families are spending more on health and education for boys than girls, because it's "more profitable" . Duflo says that if these families are no longer poor, they will not have to "choose". That is, it indicates that it is no longer necessary for them to do it and not why they do it.

3) Finally, economic growth has a positive impact on women's empowerment through the opportunity to acquire devices. Indeed, Duflo believes that women can access technology that facilitates their workload, without questioning gender roles and the distribution of tasks.

In short, the study and teaching of the feminist economy is increasingly necessary to carry out this kind of "well-intentioned" research.

* IIESS's Conicet researcher and member of the SEC's Feminist Economics Space