Reading Elinor Ostrom through a Gender Perspective

This paper concentrates on the scientific work of Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012), who for more than forty years carried out theoretical and empirical research on common-pool resources. Ostrom theorizes that the commons often prevent resource exhaustion more effectively than the state, international institutions, or private owners. However, one of the foundations of commons, as an alternative program to the private/state dualism, ought to be the principle of equality that includes a gender perspective in theory and practice. The goal of this article is to provide thoughtful ways of incorporating gender in economic research from the viewpoint of feminist epistemology and to indicate the place of gender in Ostrom’s work. The methodology of this study could be used for reading economic publications through a gender perspective as well as for inspiring economists to use both gender as a category of analysis and gender-sensitive language in their theoretical and empirical studies.