Despite considerable innovations, current debates in comparative political economy and international political economy still revolve around traditional topics of political economy. Implicitly or explicitly, they convey a male view of the world.
To address this, Professor Waltraud Schelke and Professor Dorothee Bohle emphasised the need to make women's contributions more visible, to pay systematic attention to issues of gender in research, and to enter a dialogue with feminist political economists. The ultimate aim of their workshop 'Under the radar: female scholarship in political economy' was to find out how political economy that is sensitive to the gender dimension of research topics might change debates in political economy.
"There is a huge number of female scholars in political economy that do fantastic work but are really not seen, as much as they should, in the academic community," says Professor Bohle in the introduction of the video series. "Political economy is a topic considered to be male, and we know from research on politicians that female politicians are more likely to enter topics that are considered female," says Professor Laura Seekopf. Professor Sonja Avlijaš mentioned that "there's a perception that this (gender theory) is not really serious academia or that there’s this undervaluation of feminist and gender scholarship and that, thus, is not of interest to mainstream political economy."
About 20 scholars participated in the workshop, addressing the topic from different perspectives such as growth models, social welfare, capitalism, monetary-fiscal integration, and finance. They urged for a transformative shift towards a gender-sensitive perspective in the field.
Watch the full video series in the playlist.