Abstract

Feminist Economics, 2023 Vol. 29, No. 1, 298–305 BOOK REVIEWS The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy,by Nancy Folbre. New York: Verso Books, 2021. 320 pp. ISBN: 9781786632951 (pbk.). US$29.95. This is a pathbreaking book in several ways. Over decades, Nancy Folbre has provided important insights into the various structures and implications of the gender construction of economies and societies, particularly with regard to how the care burden is distributed. In this book, these ideas coalesce into an analytical framework that helps us understand how patriarchal systems have shaped economies, polities, and societies through history, and how they affect our current reality in different parts of the world. In the process, Folbre cuts through past debates and revises traditional Marxist and other approaches that have provided more clear- cut and therefore more simplistic perceptions of gender differences and their economic outcomes. Folbre’s approach is fundamentally “intersectional,” focusing on intersecting and overlapping forms of exploitation that cannot be easily pigeonholed into either neoclassical economics or traditional Marxian political economy. Folbre rejects some standard binaries: economic interests versus social identities; class versus non-class divisions; exploitation versus oppression. She interrogates and extends concepts that have been seen as