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This paper applies the feminist concept of epistemological communities to the project of promoting pluralism in the economics discipline. I argue that the economics profession does not resemble a unified and coherent epistemological community and is better viewed as many different yet overlapping and intersecting smaller communities. I argue that this reimaging of the community of economists implies a different conception of pluralism. In an environment where theory is developed at different intersections of epistemological communities, pluralism requires distinguishing between the public process of debate that provides critical evaluation of knowledge claims and the private process of determining what is published and it requires different strategies for evaluating work for publication. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study proposes that feminist research be integrated into the field of comparative economic systems (CES) and that CES return to its traditional institutionalist methodologies to facilitate more complete analyses of economic systems and feminist alternatives to these systems and institutions. The study describes the evolution of CES, drawing attention to an increasing reliance on econometric modeling that reflects a shift in focus away from systems. An inventory of research on women and gender that has appeared in CES journals and textbooks finds little on topics other than formal labor markets in transition economies. The study contrasts this literature on women and gender in transition economies to research on this topic by women from transition economies, a literature that CES journal authors do not reference. It concludes by proposing a feminist economics approach that focuses on gender-differentiated impacts of economic systems, analyses of households, and equity as a measure of progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changes in China's gender regime during the reform period, especially during China's accession to the WTO. The analysis provides a framework to relate these changes to the consumption behavior of women, especially the increased consumption of cosmetics, to interpret the impact of accession on the gender regime in China. Institutionalist theories that model consumption decisions as a personal display of group identity are extended to the special case of gender identity. According to this framework, the desire to display identity, such as social status or lifestyles, shapes the decision to consume commodities that also display gender such as cosmetics. Thus, the new gender regime is an unintended consequence of a complex pursuit of identity. When consumption is understood as a performance of identity, we can see how the expansion of aggressive marketing tactics affects consumption by influencing the associations of goods with social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]