CAPABILITIES AS FUNDAMENTAL ENTITLEMENTS: SEN AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Amartya Sen has made a major contribution to the theory of social justice, and of gender justice, by arguing that capabilities are the relevant space of comparison when justice-related issues are considered. This article supports Sen's idea, arguing that capabilities supply guidance superior to that of utility and resources (the view's familiar opponents), but also to that of the social contract tradition, and at least some accounts of human rights. But I argue that capabilities can help us to construct a normative conception of social justice, with critical potential for gender issues, only if we specify a definite set of capabilities as the most important ones to protect. Sen's "perspective of freedom" is too vague. Some freedoms limit others; some freedoms are important, some trivial, some good, and some positively bad. Before the approach can offer a valuable normative gender perspective, we must make commitments about substance.     

GENDER AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL CHOICE: THE ROLE OF SITUATED AGENCY

Amartya Sen defends a rich conception of social choice theory against tendencies to limit social choice theory to the formal investigation of rules of collective decision-making. His understanding of social choice theory makes the field a natural candidate for exploring gender issues in the evaluation of democratic policy. Not surprisingly, Sen has applied the insights he developed from his study of social choice to the evaluation of gender inequality, in particular to women's well-being in the context of the family. I focus on Sen's distinction between well-being and agency, and argue that from the perspective of women's movements and related social movements, the role of agency has so far been unduly neglected in social choice theory.     

Fragments of Development: Nation,Gender, and the Space of Modernity

Adam Smith argued that capitalism was best achieved when individuals temper their economic self-interests with ethically grounded motivations. Unfortunately, Smith stopped short of articulating precisely how individuals might manage these seemingly competing interests in a way that is practical for actors in modern day organizations. We believe that a set of effective principles of justice can be found in the writings of political philosopher John Rawls. We argue that due to the empirical realities of entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial context is aligned with Rawls' original position. We consider how Rawls' principles might inform founders of new organizations with regard to their interaction with organizational stakeholders.     

SEN'S CAPABILITY APPROACH AND GENDER INEQUALITY: SELECTING RELEVANT CAPABILITIES

This paper investigates how Amartya Sen's capability approach can be applied to conceptualize and assess gender inequality in Western societies. I first argue against the endorsement of a definitive list of capabilities and instead defend a procedural approach to the selection of capabilities by proposing five criteria. This procedural account is then used to generate a list of capabilities for conceptualizing gender inequality in Western societies. A survey of empirical studies shows that women are worse off than men on some dimensions, better off on a few others, and similarly placed on yet others, while for some dimensions the evaluation is unclear. I then outline why, for group inequalities, inequalities in achieved functionings can be taken to reflect inequalities in capabilities, and how an overall evaluation could be arrived at by weighting the different capabilities.     

SLAVERY,FREEDOM, AND SEN

Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom argues that the ability to make choices is fundamental to economic development, and that the evaluation of outcomes can provide misleading answers. He uses the example of the high material consumption of US slaves relative to some free whites to illustrate this contrast. This paper discusses some of the implications of such comparisons and the problem of evaluating what might be regarded as favorable outcomes which come from unfavorable institutions (e.g., slavery). It appears that all good things do not necessarily go together. The past relation of enslavement to the need for subsistence is discussed. Differences in gender roles under slavery and after emancipation are also examined.     

Economists, value judgments, and climate change: A view from feminist economics

A number of recent discussions about ethical issues in climate change, as engaged in by economists, have focused on the value of the parameter representing the rate of time preference within models of optimal growth. This essay examines many economists' antipathy to serious discussion of ethical matters, and suggests that the avoidance of questions of intergenerational equity is related to another set of value judgments concerning the quality and objectivity of economic practice. Using insights from feminist philosophy of science and research on high reliability organizations, this essay argues that a more ethically transparent, real-world-oriented, and flexible economic practice would lead to more reliable and useful knowledge.