Rendering the invisible visible: Methodological constraints on economic ethics in relation to women's impoverishment

Methodological assumptions and presuppositions which obscure or illumine the impoverishment of women as a social ethical issue are the primary topic of investigation of this study. In the first part, the scope and extent of the global economic vulnerability of women is established through a review of documents from governments and women's organizations prepared for the United Nations Decade for Women. The fact that women as a group are suffering increased marginalization and pauperization, both absolutely and relative to men as a group, is documented.; In the second part of the dissertation the marginality and invisibility of women's economic vulnerability in progressive religious economic ethics is demonstrated. The two chapters of this part deal with Roman Catholic social teaching and the ecumenical ethics of the World Council of Churches. It is argued that two different methodological problems contribute to the obscuring of women's economic reality. For Roman Catholic social teaching a primary factor is the perpetuation of static organic notions of women's nature. For World Council teaching the continuation of presuppositions of a public/private dichotomy typical of liberal social theory is a main dynamic.; The third part of the dissertation turns to an examination of theoretical resources which more adequately illumine women's economic vulnerability. Again, documents from the United Nations Decade for Women are used. In the fourth chapter it is argued that during the Decade there is a shift in theoretical perspectives from liberal sex-role and structural frameworks to a multidimensional structural perspective, most fully articulated by networks of third world women at Forum 85. The fifth chapter more fully analyzes the theoretical adequacy of liberal feminist, marxist, cultural feminist, social feminist and multidimensional structural frameworks. The author contends that while in continuity with the other perspectives, the multidimensional perspective which examines race, sex, class and international structures, most fully illumines the impoverishment of women. The conclusion examines the implications of the study for the work of economic and social ethics. The author identifies criteria for theoretical adequacy of social analysis and more effective policy proposals drawn from the experience of poor women.