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economy
Why It Matters That Male and Female Economists See the Economy Differently
In a significant new study published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Canadian economist Mohsen Javdani reveals that gender shapes views on power, equality, and inclusion in ways politics alone can’t explain.
Sep 14, 2025
Men and women might check the same box on election day, but they see the economy through different lenses. Just ask professional economists.
That’s the striking implication of a new study by Mohsen Javdani, associate professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, who surveyed over 2,400 economists across 19 countries. His research reveals that gender shapes how they understand economic issues in ways politics alone can’t explain—and warrants attention from policymakers and campaigns alike.
Javdani wasn’t just chasing numbers; he was looking for patterns in what economists believe and focus on. What he found: Women in the field (still underrepresented) are more likely to challenge traditional theories, promote equality and social justice, and push for a more inclusive economics. They tend to lean further left than their male colleagues, who are more often centrists or right leaning.
Probably no surprise there.
But here’s the twist: Even when the men and women shared the same political beliefs, they still interpreted economics differently. Right-leaning female economists, for example, were more likely than their male peers to question orthodox ideas and emphasize equality and inclusion. Javdani’s data suggests that as economists shift right politically, men abandon progressive views more quickly than women do.
Simply put, political labels often try to explain it all, but they miss a big piece: Gender is at work behind the scenes.
If right-leaning women are more receptive to progressive economic ideas than their male counterparts, then campaigns that speak directly to these women could unlock a powerful, untapped base for fairness and inclusion.
So, just pack the room with more women and expect the conversation to shift? Not so fast.
Javdani points to earlier research by Giulia Zacchia and others, showing that numbers alone don’t cut it, especially if the loudest voices still echo the same old male-dominated, market-centered dogma. Without structural changes and real efforts to open the field to new ideas, the issues women tend to bring to the table, like labor protections, inequality, and a more hands-on role for government, keep getting sidelined. New faces, same soundtrack. Female economists are out there pushing for redistribution, calling out bias, and demanding better, but if no one’s listening, the system stays stuck.
This isn’t just academic—what’s at stake is a real understanding of how the economy hits women, what they contribute, and why their labor keeps getting undervalued.
Javdani’s study breaks new ground by showing how politics can blur—but never erase—the gender gap in economic thinking. As he writes:
While moving rightward on the political spectrum is consistently associated with weaker support for progressive and equity-oriented positions, the decline is less steep among women. In several cases—particularly among right- and far-right-leaning economists—women remained more supportive of positions emphasizing inequality, structural disadvantage, and concern about corporate power.
For anyone trying to grasp how voters think about the economy, this research is very suggestive.
Javdani study samples only economists, but it is difficult to believe that the differences he documents do not extend far more broadly, and that if we want to understand economic opinions at the ballot box, we have to look beyond party lines and pay attention to gender.
A recent NBC News poll, for example, shows a wide gap between conservative young male voters and their liberal female counterparts on issues like financial independence, debt, and home ownership. And a new Gallup survey reveals meaningful differences in how male and female respondents view capitalism and socialism—with men viewing capitalism more positively than women, and the reverse for socialism.
But significantly, there are also large gaps among men and women in the same political categories. A March 2025 Pew analysis found Republican women were more than twice as likely as Republican men to see employer bias as a major cause of the gender wage gap (43% vs. 18%). Meanwhile, polling by Navigator Research shows American women are consistently more pessimistic about the economy than men, across race, income, and party lines. This stems from how women experience the economy day-to-day—focusing on costs like groceries, rent, and healthcare rather than abstract numbers like GDP or the stock market.
As a result, women tend to strongly support policies that directly ease these burdens, from paid family leave and the Child Tax Credit to cracking down on corporate price gouging.
Yet much economic messaging still treats the economy as gender-neutral—a costly oversight for anyone hoping to connect with voters. Javdani’s research points to a missed opportunity: If right-leaning women are more receptive to progressive economic ideas than their male counterparts, then campaigns that speak directly to these women could unlock a powerful, untapped base for fairness and inclusion.
Talking about economics like gender doesn’t matter is like playing checkers in a chess game. When you meet people where they actually are, not where your ideological playbook says they should be, you stop talking past each other, and start building something real, like an economy that works for everybody.
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Neoliberalism in France Receives a New Blow as Yet Another Government Falls
France has now lost its third prime minister in 12 months as political parties from the far-right to the hard-left refuse to back draconian budget proposals as a means of addressing the country’s financial woes.
Sep 08, 2025
Europe’s second-largest economy has plunged into political paralysis again, as the French government has been overthrown by yet another no-confidence vote. This time, the no-confidence vote was against Prime Minister François Bayrou and his proposals to reduce the country’s public deficit from a projected 5.4% in 2025 to 4.6% in 2026—and to fall within the European 3% by 2029—with highly unpopular measures that would have included a “freeze” on government spending, over 5.3 billion euros in cuts to local authorities, and 5 billion euros in cuts in the country’s healthcare budget, yet with plans underway to significantly boost defense spending in the next few years. Bayrou’s 2026 budget envisaged in total around 44 billion euros ($51.3 billion) in cuts, tax increases, and even the scrapping of two public holidays, with the latter stirring as much outcry in France as the austerity budget itself.
Essentially, France has now lost its third prime minister in 12 months as political parties from the far-right National Rally (RN) to the hard-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) refuse to back draconian budget proposals as a means of addressing the country’s financial woes. The collapse of the Bayrou government was not a surprise, and some of us had even predicted that it would “meet the same fate” as the government that preceded it, namely that of Michel Barnier. Indeed, there is no other country in Europe with continuous anti-neoliberal struggles as France. Opposition to the normalization of the neoliberal socioeconomic reality has been in constant motion since the mid-1990s when President Jacques Chirac launched a direct attack on the foundational principles of the welfare state.
However, since assuming the presidency in 2017, Emmanuel Macron and his various governments (France has a semi-presidential system) have sought to shove neoliberalism down people’s throats at a record-breaking speed. Unsurprisingly enough, in a recent IFOP poll conducted for Le Journal du Dimanche, French President Emmanuel Macron and his now ousted Prime Minister François Bayrou emerged as the most unpopular leadership duo in the history of the Fifth Republic.
On August 25, Bayrou, who wanted to be known as “Mr. Anti-Debt,” stunned even his political allies when he announced that he would call for a vote in the National Assembly for his neoliberal budget proposals to rescue France from its ailing finances. It was a political grenade that no one had expected. Moreover, Bayrou did so even though he was fully aware of the fact that he was not, in all likelihood, going to avoid the collapse of his government. In fact, he seems to have predicted the outcome of the confidence vote on Monday, September 8, when he said on a radio interview just a few days earlier, in a rather philosophical and quintessentially French fashion, that “there are worse disasters in life than the collapse of the government.”
The most obvious reason why Bayrou gambled with a confidence vote on his plans to reduce France’s public deficit is because he had miscalculated all along the concerns of the French people about deficits and debt. He had embarked on a PR campaign to convince the public that the future of France was at stake on account on the nation’s worrying state of financial affairs. He employed distressful images by invoking the Greek debt crisis of the early 2010s as a warning of what might happen to France and spoke with an apparent earnestness of the possibility of a market meltdown if the French government failed to act boldly and quickly. In his speech to the National Assembly ahead of the confidence vote, Bayrou said that France’s excessive debt load is “life-threatening.”
Yet, typical of neoliberal attitudes and self-serving policies, Bayrou failed all along to realize that while the average French citizens were not insensitive to the realities of the country running a budget deficit of 5.8% of GDP and a national debt of 114% of GDP, they found socially unacceptable the neoliberal economic measures proposed for addressing its financial woes. One could say that, from their own point of view, if the organization of the economy along the principles of neoliberal capitalism is the cause of France’s financial woes, then neoliberalism certainly could not be the answer to their solution. Indeed, an IFOP survey conducted in July found that 57% of respondents believed that a plan was needed to reduce the country’s public deficit and national debt, but only 26% found the measures to be “just.”
The French people, from the far-right to the far-left, have made it very clear that they do not consider neoliberal policies as a remedy either to economic problems such as unemployment or to financial situations like public deficits and national debt.
As a matter of fact, both Bayrou and Macron failed to grasp the fact that it is neoliberalism itself that has fueled the surge both of RN and the New Popular Front (NFP), a coalition of left-wing parties that won the largest number of seats in the snap parliamentary election that was held in July 2024, even if the far-right and the hard-left are worlds apart in terms of the overall social and political values that they embrace and advocate.
There is, however, an additional and probably more important reason why Bayrou gambled on a confidence vote over his neoliberal budget proposal even though he knew that the odds of carrying the day were stacked against him. He was hoping that his decision to do so would compel lawmakers in the National Assembly to think twice about toppling his government by reflecting on the impeding consequences stemming from the planned actions of the grassroots protest movement organized around the cry “Block everything” (“Bloquons tout”), scheduled for September 10. The movement’s organizers hope to bring the country to a complete standstill (which, coincidentally, is what the US needs in light of the autocratic actions of President Donald Trump which are turning the country into a third world dictatorship), but the prevailing climate in French politics and society is such these days that even mainstream political parties have offered backing to this nationwide shutdown that will, apparently, take place even with the collapse of the Bayrou government.
Love it or hate it, one must agree that French politics is never boring. More important, the protest movements in the country—starting at least with the French opposition to the Algerian war, later on with the May ’68 events and more recently with the yellow vest protests and now with the new protest movement dubbed “Block everything”--should provide tremendous inspiration to popular struggles against exploitation, oppression, and social injustices everywhere in the world.
What French President Emmanuel Macron’s move might be following the collapse of Bayrou’s government remains to be seen. Nonetheless, it would be politically naive of him to think that a new government will fare better in the future if it insists on pushing neoliberal measures as a solution to the country’s financial woes. For the French people, from the far-right to the far-left, have made it very clear that they do not consider neoliberal policies as a remedy either to economic problems such as unemployment or to financial situations like public deficits and national debt.
Indeed, even the center-right in France, which in recent years has rallied around Emmanuel Macron and his neoliberal vision, has generally been very cautious about the Anglo-American economic model with its attack on government and worship of the market. No doubt, this is why the prevailing sentiment in France is that not only Macron’s governments cannot sustain themselves in the current political climate but that Macron himself is finished and must go.
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Trump’s Attack on Lisa Cook Is an Attack on Fed Independence and Black Leadership
Dr. Cook has earned her position through expertise, service, and integrity. She should be allowed to continue her work without intimidation or political interference.
Sep 04, 2025
When US President Donald Trump attempted to remove Federal Reserve Governor Dr. Lisa D. Cook from her post, he didn’t just target one individual. He threatened the independence of the Federal Reserve and sent a chilling message to every leader serving in public life: No matter your qualifications, your service is never safe from political retribution.
Trump’s attack on Dr. Cook is also yet another attempt to delegitimize Black leadership across the highest levels of American government. That’s why my organization, the Joint Center—America’s leading Black think tank—convened a coalition of leading civil rights, economic justice, and policy organizations to stand with Dr. Cook and push back.
Dr. Cook’s credentials are beyond dispute. She’s a world-class economist who’s advised governments during global crises, served at multiple levels of the Federal Reserve System, and earned acclaim as a professor at Michigan State University.
She was elected by Midwestern community bankers to the boards of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago—proof of the broad trust she’s earned across the financial community.
In 2022, Dr. Cook made history as the first Black woman appointed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Her appointment was a breakthrough for Black representation in economic governance. Today, that breakthrough is under threat.
President Trump’s attempt to force her out is part of a broader pattern. Time and again, he’s sought to discredit and remove Black leaders from positions of power—from insulting Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) by calling her “low IQ” to attacking prosecutors like Letitia James and Fani Willis, undermining federal judges like Tanya Chutkan, and dismissing the leadership of Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
Attacking the tenure of a Federal Reserve governor—especially one as qualified and effective as Dr. Cook—undermines that independence and destabilizes the very system Trump claims to protect.
Trump has also ignored the will of DC residents and Mayor Muriel Bowser by ordering National Guard troops into the city’s streets.
These attacks are not random. They’re part of a deliberate strategy to weaken and delegitimize Black leadership across our institutions—from the courts to the military to economic governance.
The attack on Dr. Cook marks a dangerous escalation. The Federal Reserve is one of the most important independent institutions in our democracy. It safeguards our economy and makes decisions that affect virtually every family and business in this country.
Attacking the tenure of a Federal Reserve governor—especially one as qualified and effective as Dr. Cook—undermines that independence and destabilizes the very system Trump claims to protect.
We cannot allow this to stand.
In moments like this, silence is complicity. That is why we are calling on policymakers, civic leaders, and the public to speak out—not just in defense of Dr. Cook, but in defense of every public servant facing illegitimate harassment as part of a politically motivated attack.
The coalition’s message is simple: Dr. Cook has earned her position through expertise, service, and integrity. She should be allowed to continue her work without intimidation or political interference.
If we fail to take action now, we risk sending a dangerous message to future generations of leaders: No matter how qualified you are, your leadership can be erased at the whim of those in power. We also risk losing some of the small gains in Black political representation that has emerged over the last 30 years.
We must not let that message stand.
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