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  • Published: 6 March 2025
  • ISBN: 9780753561713
  • Imprint: Virgin Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Deficit

How Feminist Economics Can Change Our World





Invisible Women meets Doughnut Economics: An international bestseller from an exciting new voice in the feminist space

'One of the most important feminist voices of the 21st century . . . The book about capitalism we didn't know we needed' - Sofie Hagen

In 2020, Emma Holten read an article stating that women were a net ‘deficit’ to society. Women apparently took more than they gave: they took more parental leave, frequently worked part-time, and typically worked lower paying jobs in the public sector. They also ‘drained’ the public purse by doing expensive things like give birth. Denmark would be richer if women’s lives looked more men’s, the experts concluded. It’s a similar story across the globe.

How did we get here? How are the contributions of half the population seen as a loss? In Deficit, Emma Holten traces how economic thinkers – from the Enlightenment onwards – created a value framework that left out ‘women’s work’ and acts of care. She reveals how the economic models that drive political decisions today are just as flawed. They shape our world with rhetoric that sounds objective but is really based on centuries of oversight and omission, with terrible consequences for us all.

If we cannot properly value the things that matter, how can we build a better future?

  • Published: 6 March 2025
  • ISBN: 9780753561713
  • Imprint: Virgin Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Praise for Deficit

At once poignant and accessible, Deficit deftly exposes how our existing economic institutions fail to value care in our societies and are incapable of understanding why relationships between people matter. A truly impressive book

Rosie Collington, author of THE BIG CON

Emma is one of the most important feminist voices of the 21st century. Emma Holten is going to change the world and you better get on board now, by reading this book. This book will make everything make sense. The book about capitalism we didn't know we needed

Sofie Hagen

A triumph . . . Like all the great classics of economics, Holten’s DEFICIT is at heart about how we care for ourselves and other people. DEFICIT punches a great hole through history and our thinking about the care crisis that defines all of our lives. Holten is immensely readable, crystal clear, informative and best of all laugh-out-loud funny. So entertained and engrossed was I by Holten’s distinctive voice, it was only after I put down the book that I realised the impact of this subtle, informative history lesson in four hundred years of western economics, and how feminist thinking has the capacity to change it

Rachel Holmes, author of ELEANOR MARX and SYLVIA PANKHURST

This book brilliantly rewrites the history of economic thought to place 'her story' at its heart - while combining sharp analysis with piercing wit and deep care. It's a must read

Kate Raworth, author of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS