The theoretical, rational model of Economic Man has a major shortcoming – he’s not, and never could be, a womanAmong the most uplifting images from Syriza’s victory in Greece last week were the elated faces of a small group of fiercely determined women: the public sector cleaners who were laid off during the country’s brutal budget cuts and had been told they would be swiftly re-hired by the new government.The fate of a few low-paid mop operatives is a world away from the cut and thrust of international negotiations on debt relief for Greece. Yet it has so often been the fate of working-class women – standing in the bread queues, scrabbling to feed their families, laid off in their droves in the public sector job cuts mandated by the country’s troika of creditors – that has best illustrated the despair to which many in the recession-ravaged country have been driven.Models conceived of people as cool, rational, simplified robots who beetle around trying to maximise their utility Continue reading...
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