ABSTRACT: This paper reviews the recent literature on feminist ecological economics -- the economics of women and nature, which starts with the household and community. The paper discusses the importance of activist work in informing feminist ecological economics theory and analysis, and addresses local-global issues. Research needs and policy implications of feminist ecological economics are also outlined.

Feminist Ecological Economics and the Growth of Local Economies

I. Introduction: What is Feminist Ecological Economics?

We are lucky to live in an exciting time for economics. Feminist economists are modelling the world in new ways, focusing on many different aspects of economic life from the perspective of women's roles and women's involvement. Ecological economists address the relationship between the environment and the economy; new models are also arising to adequately encompass these interactions. And the parallels between "women" and "environment" -- both largely depicted as "external", despite being clearly fundamental, for economies -- are receiving attention in the emergent new field of feminist ecological economics.

In my view, the ideas and analytical insights of feminist ecological economists (by which I mean economists who explicitly address the connections between ecology and women in their work) are providing the seed of a new theoretical vision of an economy which is socially and ecologically sustainable. This is tremendously uplifting, and it also entails a phenomenal amount of new work -- in data collection and empirical testing, expansion of theoretical research, and policy applications.

In this paper, I aim to give an overview of feminist ecological economics, with special attention to three particular aspects: its implications for activism and public policy, its place-specificity and local-global interactions, and the sorts of research work which it indicates are needed.

This first section of the paper outlines the fabric of feminist ecological economics as it is now appearing, in the form of a review of the recent literature. Section two gives examples of feminist ecological economics in action and discusses its "policy relevance". Section three addresses the relations between global and local economic change. Research needs implied by feminist ecological economics are surveyed in section four, and the final section of the paper sums up and concludes.

Feminist ecological economic models view the economy as a complex of individual, family, community, and other interrelationships which each have economic and ecological significance. Absolutely central to feminist ecological economics -- like most feminist economics in general -- is the primacy of the work which takes place in the household. Different terms have arisen: Julie Nelson calls this work "provisioning",[1] Diana Lee-Smith, "subsistence",[2] Vandana Shiva, "sustenance",[3] Maren Jochimsen and Ulrike Knobloch, "caring activities".[4]

Jochimsen and Knobloch, for example, develop a three-part model of economic activity which relates the "maintenance economy," of ecological processes, as well as the social and physical relations which are indispensable for human existence (and which are carried out without payment of money), to the industrial economy. Women, mainly responsible for the caring activities on which industrial production depends, both depend on and care for the ecological processes which are also basic to industrial production.

But the industrial economy has negative impacts on caring activities and on ecological processes, which can reinforce each other: "Within the model we can argue that any violation of ecological processes by industrial economic thought and action will not only affect those processes, but also caring activities and those who are held responsible for them, i.e. such a violation will fundamentally affect women's lives."[5] Jochimsen and Knobloch thus question and expand the widely-discussed duality between public and private by including nature, and they assert the primacy of (socially and ecologically) sustainable provision of basic needs over production of new material goods.[6]

For Hilkka Pietila, taking care of basic human needs -- food, clothing, shelter, caring, entertainment -- is clearly vital for the functioning of any economy. While the industrialized, commercialized economy shows little interest in these basic functions, Pietila places them at the centre of her economic model, terming them the "free economy": "the work and production that people do 'freely' without pay for the well-being of their families and for pleasure."[7]

Surrounding the "free economy" is what Pietila calls the "protected sector", which consists of "production and work for the [domestic] market as well as public services (such as agriculture and food production, construction of houses and infrastructure, administration, schools, health, transport and communication etc.). This sector has in many countries been protected and guided by legislation and official means, and thus the prices and other terms have been determined relatively independently, without too much pressure from the world economy."[8]

Production for export is termed the "fettered economy" in Pietila's model, "since it is fettered to the world market. The terms of this sector, the prices, competitiveness, demand etc. are determined by the international market, therefore the broader the fettered economy, the more dependent the national economy on outside factors. This limits the scope of national self-determination."[9]

Pietila's model consists of three concentric circles with the "free", household economy at the center. She cites figures for Finland for 1980, when the overall size of the household sector was measured, as follows:

Time Money

Free economy 54% 35%

Protected sector 36% 46%

Fettered economy 10% 19%

Pietila discusses the implications of this model in terms of the need to preserve skills and know-how for household production, allow time for household activities and reduce time spent in outside work, organize communities spatially to reflect the centrality of home life, and adopt the new perspective on economic growth which flows from the model: "A revival of the free, non-monetary economy would make economic growth unnecessary. If we can produce more goods and services at home and collectively in small communities -- taking care of children, the sick and each other, producing enjoyment and working together -- then the community does not need to increase expensive public services for these purposes. This means that we need not constantly enlarge the protected sector."[10]

She also points out the detrimental effects of the "fettered economy" for nature, through both cultivation and extraction. "If and when cultivation and production become as ecologically sound as possible, surpluses will vanish -- and thus so will the need for industrialized countries to export agricultural products to the world market. World trade would then consist primarily of products of secondary importance, which would not make countries fatally dependent upon each other."[11]

Pietila's economics, centred around household or community provision of basic needs, would reflect the importance of women's work and reduce ecological destruction and material throughput without commodifying or monetizing these elements regarded as "externalities" in the current economic system.

A similar but more theoretically sophisticated analysis is Mary Mellor's. Like Pietila, she brings together the ecological and the feminist critiques of economics, arguing that "women and nature share a common position as externalities in terms of the way male-dominated economies are constructed .... while at the same time forming the essential material base that underpins them."[12] In the South, where women are primarily responsible for survival and subsistence needs, as Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva have pointed out, this situation is particularly critical; "the presumed existence of a subsistence economy exposes women to 'superexploitation' in that the wages paid to both male and female labourers are calculated on the assumption that their basic subsistence needs are being met."[13] Marilyn Waring has demonstrated that women's unpaid work is not calculated in a nation's wealth; women's needs are not prioritized in its expenditure; this is true in both North and South. Similarly, the natural world has been treated as 'invisible' in both capitalist and non-capitalist economic systems. Racism and poverty mean that the worst effects of environmental dereliction fall on the least powerful. Businesses externalize costs and have few incentives to stop degrading the environment.

Mellor argues that wages for housework and full-cost pricing for the environment would "legitimate the very structures that have already created the pattern of exclusion."[14] Moreover, she again brings the situation of women and nature into joint consideration by pointing out, "if women did receive equal pay for equal value with men for their paid and unpaid work without any other fundamental changes to the economic system, it would put a vast amount of purchasing power into the economy that would either push up prices or expand production and consumption dramatically which would in turn push up again the material limits of economic growth. Only if all additional expenditure were to be made in terms of services (teaching, nursing, counselling, personal care, entertainment) would there not be any adverse ecological reaction, and even then only if the services produced no additional consumption or pollution."

In other words, monetizing all of women's unpaid work would increase material throughput in the economy -- a "perverse result", to use neoclassical terminology. Likewise, green taxes designed to make the polluter pay "would have the effect of shooting prices sky-high with grave social effects.... The market solution would mean that the consumer (mainly women) and poor people (mainly women) will pay the price for decisions made by those (mainly men) who create polluting products and activities in companies, laboratories and governments."[15]

Mellor states: "Even with inducements, the capitalist market cannot resolve the problems of the environment."[16] She underscores women's role in making industrial economies possible: "the social construct 'economic man', a construct that has real material consequences, relies on the material basis of women's externalized existence."[17]

Another commonality between women and nature in the economic system, Mellor points out, is demonstrated by the question of time. "By separating home and work, industrial society set aside a clearly designated space and time for paid, time-limited labour... Paid work was time-oriented and not task-oriented. While women did work in the factories, their work in the home still remained within task-oriented, biological time. People needed to be cleaned when they were dirty, babies needed to be fed when they were hungry, nursed when they were tired... Their demands did not cease because it was 'outside working hours'".[18] Mellor quotes Barbara Adam with regard to this dualism and how to overcome it. "Insofar as her work is geared to biological time, time can never mean freedom for women. Ironically women may take paid work as a way of escaping for a short while from biological time."[19]

The link with nature is that "An economic system that has broken free of the physical reality of biological time must also have become distanced from ecological time and ecological reality. It has lost its awareness of the interrelatedness of human physicality with other sensate beings and the natural world".[20] This insight leads naturally, as it were, to the signpost out of the maze: "If we are to be in tune with ecological time, the socially created time of economic systems will have to be abandoned. We will all have to live in biological time where we share in the tasks of feeding, clothing and nurturing ourselves and others within the boundaries of ecological sustainability."[21]

All of the theorists I have mentioned draw extensively on the work of others -- Val Plumwood, Carolyn Merchant, Judith Plant, Maria Mies, Seyla Benhabib, Sandra Harding, Marilyn Waring, Hazel Henderson, Michele Pujol, Julie Nelson, Nancy Folbre, Diana Strassman, to name only a few.[22]

Much feminist theoretical work is also vitally important for understanding community-based approaches to economic issues. Marcia Nozick summarizes these contributions as "...a raising of consciousness to appreciate feminine, life-affirming values, long neglected by Western culture. They are values similar to those held by aboriginal cultures and the ecology movement. They include:

• Co-operation, empathy and nurture stemming from a relational, nonhierarchical view of the world;

• A focus on process rather than end results: ends and means are one;

• A belief that social change begins with personal transformation;

• The valuing of intuition, subjectivity, creativity and spontaneity.

For Barbara Brandt, stronger community-based economies not only help people to survive the vicissitudes of world market fluctuations, they hold the seed of more fundamental economic transformation. "As individuals and households become more self-reliant and empowered, they lay the groundwork for new community responses to larger social and economic problems. When plant closings, layoffs, loss of local stores, or other large-scale economic hardships afflict their communities, such empowered, creative individuals may be more able to develop new solutions to these problems. And the new community ties they have been forming through their shared activities serve as a base for building new economic structures and enterprises that more fully meet their community's needs."[24]

Communities which can meet their own needs, need the global economy less. In self-sufficient communities, it is possible to live a healthy, fulfilling, productive life without consuming goods and services which come from far away. But this requires knowing one's neighbours: their skills, needs, abilities, and trustworthiness. This makes possible the sorts of exchanges which are efficient and beneficial for everyone concerned -- be they skills exchanges, community-supported agriculture, Local Enterprise Trading Systems, credit unions or informal credit groups, urban gardens, child-care and other cooperatives, environmental housing improvement programs or any other enterprises where local resources are transformed into goods and services which local people need.[25] In many communities in both North and South, it is women who do the bulk of the networking, the conflict mediation, the organizing, and the fund-raising for such community endeavours.

Working toward self-sufficiency involves fostering the development, preservation, and appreciation of the skills needed to live our lives with more quality and less material consumption. To the extent that women are the guardians of these skills, and the teachers of young people, their role in skills transmission is central for the community's future self-sufficiency.

As Adair and Howell state: "If we are to secure the future, we must reconstruct our communities. To do so, women's ways of talking, listening, and being together must come to define all public and political life. The qualities embodied in our relationships over the kitchen table are the very qualities needed for our talk of strategies and actions... For the world to survive, everyone must act like a woman. Let us reweave our communities, reclaim the wholeness of life, and empower ourselves to heal the future."[26]

Feminist ecological economics, thus, provides both a theoretical grounding and a wealth of practical experience in how social change and community building takes place, and why it is necessary for women's well-being and for ecological/economic sustainability.

II. Feminist Ecological Economics, Activism and Policy

Many of the things women all over the world are already thinking, writing, and doing in the face of globalization reflect the essence of Janine Brodie's statement that a feminist analysis "must begin with the premise that (global) restructuring represents a struggle over the appropriate boundaries of the public and the private, the constitution of gendered subjects within these spheres and ultimately, the objects of feminist political struggle."[27] Since communities are, in a sense, intermediate between the "public" and the "private", they represent a terrain in which many women are comfortable acting politically. At the same time, it is exactly the fact that communities are somewhat removed from national or international "public" life that can make them strong (and potentially subversive) bulwarks against centralized control, refuges of diversity, and incubators for creative human interaction.

As noted above, the development of analytical foundations for a community-centred approach to economics requires theoretical tools which are far more adept than those of traditional economics. Neoclassical economics, based on analysis of self-interested individuals' behaviour, ignores other entire realms of human action and motivations.[28] However, traditional economic analysis is still used at all levels of policy decision-making to justify government action (and inaction), from international trade agreements to child care programs.[29] Its failure to measure many economic contributions made by women, its emphasis on individual over collective wants/needs, and the translation of this emphasis into policy, harm communities -- and women -- in both the South and the North.[30]

The question of the possible "policy relevance" of feminist ecological economics, however, masks a host of other questions. If women continue to be excluded from property ownership, from the top echelons of economic society, from literacy and even from voting in many places, is "policy" a top priority?

As Mary Mellor notes, "For the majority of the world's peoples, particularly women, land rights are vital to environmental justice. The enormity of this struggle cannot be overestimated, and the choice between individual and collective principles of ownership is crucial. Women's access to land is generally based on their common rights as members of the community. If individual ownership is established, this usually rests with the male head of the household, and women's independent right to land is lost. Individual ownership also carries the risk of indebtedness and land grabbing by wealthier landowners. Collective models of land ownership are essential if women's rights are to be retained and expropriation by indigenous or external landlords prevented."[31]

The transition to a more sustainable future involving much less trade than at present, between much stronger and more self-sufficient local communities, offers many challenges. Women all over the world are already working to address these challenges, by building and strengthening local, community-based economies.[32] While this work does not usually take place within recognized policy channels, it nonetheless has political importance, and in the end it can strongly influence government policy![33] Here are a few stories of women's economic and ecological activism from all over the world.

In Vancouver, WomanFutures Community Economic Development Society has established a loan guarantee fund to give women-controlled community businesses access to financial resources. They also help groups of women set up lending circles, barter systems, savings groups, and other alternative financing mechanisms. The group's brochure states: "Women do two-thirds of the world's work. Shouldn't the economy work for us and our families? Women take care of everything that 'falls through the cracks.' Wouldn't our communities be different if women were involved as full participants in decision-making? Women's community economic development is about women working together to change the future."[34]

Working through a woman-run nonprofit organization called the Southern Mutual Help Association in the low-income community of Four Corners, Louisiana, women have renovated and built homes and community buildings, and then taught others the skills they learned.[35]

The Citizen's Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes in Washington, DC, led by Love Canal activist Lois Gibbs, provides resources for local groups who are working on toxic contamination issues, and creates networks among them.[36]

Women workers in Mexican maquiladoras have developed new forms of organization which allow them to meet periodically in regional conferences, creating a support network for different local maquiladora organizations. At these meetings, women discuss working and living conditions and the demands they face as mothers, wives and workers.[37] Latina women have shared information and organized across the border to stop a U.S. waste management company from constructing similar toxic waste incinerators in Tijuana, Mexico and Kettleman City, California.[38] In February 1992, 110 women from Mexico, Canada and the U.S. met for four days in Valle del Bravo, Mexico to discuss the implications of Free Trade and economic restructuring on women. Several exchanges, conferences and other linkage projects have resulted from the networks formed.[39]

In Cuba, trade boycotts and a shortage of petroleum fuels have led to skyrocketing bicycle use, especially in Havana. This is changing the feel and look of the city. "With 80 per cent of oil imports gone, traditional patterns of transportation, agricultural production, and industry have had to be drastically altered. There is a growing emphasis on organic agriculture and decentralized production, and the bicycle has replaced buses and cars as the main means of transportation... The most dramatic lesson is that the introduction of the bicycle in a major way can lead to great benefits in fitness, health, and improved social interaction, in addition to the direct environmental and economic benefits. We who are increasingly fearful of life on our streets, who are retreating into 'cocoons' of safety in our homes and vehicles, could instead develop a vibrant, healthy, and positive experience of street life."[40]

Women in Tanzania have formed rotating credit associations, individual business ventures, agricultural, production and child care cooperatives, and other community networks in response to changing economic pressures in the 1970s and 1980s.[41]

The importance of Goddess-centred cultural traditions which strengthen local communities in India is described by Frederique Apffel Marglin and Purna Chandra Mishra, who note the model these traditions may hold for the North.[42]

The Peasant Women's Federation of the Philippines (AMIHAN) has documented the implications of development projects for women, conducted pilot studies of organic farming methods and pest control, developed safer cook stoves, and coordinated women's protests and political participation with regard to the Philippines government's trade-oriented economic strategy.[43]

Japanese women concerned about food additives and environmental contamination formed a food cooperative, the Seikatsu Club, in the early 1970s. It now has about 200,000 members with considerable buying power, and members are involved in a wide range of political and environmental activities. One of its goals is to create locally-based economies. Such women's networks, "based not on capitalist principles but on principles of moral economy: mutual help, trust, care, community, respect of humans and of nature", are viable alternatives to other consumption-production-distribution systems.[44]

Hilkka Pietila relates the growth of the village action movement in Finland --community organization designed to stimulate population growth and quality-of-life improvements in rural villages. Local committees have focused their efforts on building activity centres for seniors, improving schools and day-care centres, preserving local culture and celebrating artistic heritage. Central to accomplishing the necessary construction and other work, with limited financial resources, is the Finnish tradition of "talkoot" -- voluntary teamwork. Pietila stresses the importance of the village action movement in countering trends of globalization, migration, and trade-induced breakdown of the "values of human dignity and reverence of life and nature."[45]

The work many women in the U.S. are doing to recreate community is outlined by Margo Adair and Sharon Howell: women who meet to make quilts, sending the proceeds to a sister organization in Central America; whose ingenuity helps to sustain strikes and whose courage gives impetus to civil rights struggles; who recognize the importance of spirituality in effective political work.

The focus of feminist ecological economics is on activist work, not policy relevance per se. The crux of building better economies lies in the interplay between theory and practical work. Applying the vision involves much more than theory; detailed familiarity with specific people and places is vital.[46] Feminist ecological economics theory is informed at each step by practical experience and by knowledge gained at the local level.

III. Local and Global Implications of Feminist Ecological Economics

At this stage we must ask a somewhat tricky question: By focusing on what happens in households and communities, do feminist ecological economists risk missing the forest for the trees? Are we ceding the terrain of the global to those willing to employ cutthroat macroeconomic policy measures to structurally adjust the world economy, including all the communities in which we live? Is concern with local economies at best hopelessly anachronistic and at worse a futile dead end?

This is a criticism of local economic work which I have heard from a number of progressive colleagues. I would like to offer a few thoughts on the theoretical importance of developing a local-economy focus along the lines sketched above.

First, any local-economy activist knows that global trends are driving the emergence of local economies. All of the grassroots initiatives described above involve awareness of and interaction with global-economy issues. This does not mean, however, that local activists feel disempowered by globalization -- quite the opposite! Their work is essentially a process of growing things in the cracks in globalization's facade. The resulting micro-environments create space and support for a vast diversity of human-scale economic alternatives to dependence on the global economy. Simply because these are so diverse and far-flung, we should not fall under the false impression that they are weak and uncoordinated. Together, as I have attempted to outline above, they make up a picture of defiance and "refusal to be homogenized" that is a source of tremendous hope.

Just as most local-economy activists see their work as both global and local in scale, the theory of local economies needs to be (and, in my experience, IS) conscious of its global ramifications. Exactly because of their diversity and variety, local economies fly in the face of the simplifying forces of globalization. What local-economy theory is about is a new sort of economic development that honors ecological realities and finds efficiencies in small-scale, shared knowledge at the community level. By recognizing and refusing to accept the externalization of costs spun off by the juggernaut of broad-brush globalization, people in local places worldwide are in effect seeking to minimize those costs. From an ecological and "sustainable development" viewpoint as well as a social-economy viewpoint, this process is theoretically important.

To the extent that globalization depends on accelerating consumption of nonrenewable resources, it is destined to be relatively short-lived. Trade in goods which are sent long distances using fossil fuels cannot continue at current rates. Transport prices will rise, the goods' final prices will rise, and locally-produced substitutes will become competitive. Anything made from metal, or which is otherwise energy-intensive in its production processes, will see a similar trend, as will goods which generate toxic or hazardous wastes as waste disposal costs rise. Production/consumption/disposal loops are already becoming shorter, and local economic linkages more important. The use of renewable energy sources is much easier in small-scale, dispersed settings. Decentralization is congruent with ecological economic development.

Environmental crises in resource consumption and waste disposal require local responses. Global capitalism needs local economies and especially local environmental management strategies or it won't be able to continue.[47] Socially, local economies can serve to "keep the lid on" social pressures arising from global economic restructuring, allowing globalization to continue longer than in their absence. The "economic rents" generated by local economic activity are, by definition, fairly dispersed and difficult for corporations to skim off, which is bad for the global economy; on the other hand, it may be worthwhile for corporate interests to turn a blind eye to local economic activity which makes possible the continuation of parallel activity in a global market.

As community economies grow in response to economic globalization and global ecological realities, their characteristics and implications will become clearer. Whether they represent an accomodation to the global economy or an alternative to it, community economies seem destined to play an important role in many people's lives. If for this reason alone, studying their emergence and characteristics is a worthwhile endeavor![48]

IV. Feminist Ecological Economics and Research Needs

This is all well and good, but what about the global (and local) economy as it now exists? How does feminist ecological economics help quantify and analyze women's economic role, both in the present and in working now to create forward-looking, progressive economic change?

For a start, viewing the economy as centred on the household underscores the vital economic importance of the productive and reproductive work done at home. Any quantification of the size or health of economies must begin with discussion of the household sector and its viability in performing its essential functions of meeting basic human needs for (among other things) food, shelter, companionship, health care, and intergenerational support. If we do not have measures of these things, or even a commonly-accepted means of discussing them, we have no handle at all on the size or health of "the economy".

Statistics Canada has begun an attempt to add estimates of the value of household work and natural resource depletion to Canada's national accounts. Other national governments are involved in similar projects.[49] Groups such as Redefining Progress in the United States are advocating much broader changes to national accounting systems.[50] Perhaps the single highest priority of those concerned about women's economic role, as Marilyn Waring pointed out nearly ten years ago, should be to correct the ubiquitous misperception (fuelled by the neoclassical economic paradigm) that what happens in the household is relatively unimportant. The related issues which flow from this emphasis on household activities then assume a much higher profile as policy and research priorities: Just what is included in household work? Who does it? How many hours does this work take, and what is its comparative value, e.g. in money terms? Is this work being done well or poorly, and how can it be done better? What about the phenomenon of several things being accomplished at once? What are the characteristics of a strong household-economic sector?

Second, feminist ecological economics places the community context in which households are situated at a more fundamental level of importance than the "external", production-oriented economy. But we know very little about the relationship between community organization and economic productivity, economic health or economic growth. This area, too, deserves a much higher research and policy emphasis than it presently receives.[51]

Again, related issues of importance are both quantitative (how to measure and value the community-economic sector) and qualitative (how to recognize whether it is healthy and how to contribute to its development). Since the bulk of work involved in maintaining community organizations and ties is apparently done on a volunteer basis, valuation of this work in money terms is subject to many of the same complexities as valuation of household work.[52]

Most of the existing literature which attempts to quantify women's economic contribution relates to women's work in the formal labour market.[53] A third insight of feminist ecological economics is that it is no surprise that this "external", formal, production-oriented sector is highly unstable, subject to cyclical and externally-driven fluctuations, and unsatisfactory as a proxy for human well-being. While it may be of interest to know more about women's contributions in this realm of the economy, vastly more important economic sectors are vastly less well-understood.

Areas for research which are relevant to understanding women's role not only in the formal labour market, but in the household and community sectors as well, include: the economic implications of violence against women and children and of household violence; the economic importance of educating women and girls; potential benefits of shorter working hours in the formal economy; pay equity, "equal pay for work of equal value", and labour market discrimination; welfare, family benefits, social services and women's work; and integration of ecosystem health indicators, human physical, emotional and social health indicators, and economic indicators in overall assessments of economic "efficiency" and well-being.

To sum up, some of the specific areas in which feminist ecological economics can make contributions include the following:

-- "Redefining Progress", the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), and other new economic indicators which measure the value of women's work and of environmental degradation.

-- Proposals for shorter working hours as a means of reducing unemployment, reducing women's "double day", reducing material throughput in the economy, and contributing to growth of community social networks.

-- Rationalizing economic policy by increasing taxes (or abolishing subsidies) on economic and environmental "bads" such as overwork, urban sprawl and resource depletion.

-- Specific proposals for modifications to international trade agreements, and government policies at all levels, which harm the growth of strong local communities.

-- Assessment of the social and economic value of creating the conditions for service provision at the local level (child care, health care, elder care, environmental remediation).

-- Elaborating the short and long-term connections between pollution, human health, and economics so that the economic rationale for environmental and health policy becomes clearer. These connections are particularly relevant for women, with regard to breast cancer and other reproductive cancers.

In order to understand and begin to describe or quantify the economic contribution of women at present, a balanced and realistic view of what constitutes "the economy" is necessary. Examining only the formal economy distorts the analysis and grossly underrepresents women's vital economic role. But prevailing economic paradigms serve to justify and undergird existing systems of power and privilege; questioning them is not a purely academic, or economic, issue. Much work is required -- at the theoretical, political and empirical levels -- before a reasonably accurate assessment of women's total economic contribution, and its relation to local and global ecologies can be made.

Feminist ecological economics provides theoretical justification and impetus for a revisiting of research priorities by anyone concerned with economic sustainability, or with the economic contribution of women. This involves rethinking women's economic roles not only in the formal economy, but also in the household and community infrastructure which supports and sustains the formal economy.

Given that resources are always limited for progressive social research and action endeavours, what are the top research priorities indicated by feminist ecological economic theory? Empirical examinations of the value of household work are important, surely, and the prime importance of the household in sustaining economic production needs far broader documentation and description. Perhaps even more pressing, however, is the almost-unexplored question of the importance of community structures in making economic exchanges possible, and of women's roles in building and maintaining the fabric of communities.

V. Conclusion

The formal, money-denominated economy is only one aspect of the overall economic picture, one leg of a three-legged stool which would fall down without human/social reproduction and ecological reproduction. Attempting to assign money values to what happens in households and communities everywhere (for the sake of commensurability with processes in the formal economy) -- or even terming these activities "work" -- loses meaning and relevance in the context of the economy's sustainability as an integral, functioning whole.

Through a vibrant combination of theoretical and empirical academic research with grass-roots community organizing, political action and home-based discussion, ideas are taking shape which radically alter the way "the economy" is perceived. This process is, in turn, central to understanding and respecting women's economic role.

In terming these ideas, as a group, "feminist ecological economics", we give a name to a body of analysis and experience which holds tremendous hope for the transformation of our planet.

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