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This paper explores the relationship between feminist theory and rising economic inequality. It shows how greater inequality reflects the valorization of the stereotypically male qualities of competition and hierarchy, producing a greater concentration of wealth among a small number of men at the top, shortchanging men more than women through the rest of the economy, and altering the way that men and women match up to each other in the creation of families. By creating a framework for further research on the relationship between the norms of the top and the disadvantages of everyone else in more unequal societies, the paper provides a basis for feminists to develop a new theory of social power.

The paper demonstrates how the development of winner-take-all income hierarchies, the political devaluation of families and communities, and the terms of the family values debate diminish equality and community. The paper addresses how to understand these developments as they affect both the structure of society and the allocation of power within our families in ways that link to the historic concerns of feminist theory. It accordingly ends by asking the “woman question” in a new way: one that revisits the stereotypically masculine and feminine and asks how they connect to hierarchy, one that considers whether the inclusion of women changes institutional cultures in predictable ways, and one that wonders whether the values that today are associated with more women than men offer a basis for the reconstruction of society more generally.

This chapter incorporates gender consciousness into critiques of the rational actor model by revisiting Carol Gilligan's account of moral development. Economics itself, led by the insights from game theory, is reexamining trust, altruism, reciprocity, and empathy. Behavioral economics further explores the implications of a more robust conception of human motivation. We argue that the most likely source for a comprehensive theory will come from the integration of behavioral economics with behavioral biology, and that this project depends on the insights from evolutionary analysis, genetics, and neuroscience. Considering the biological basis of human behavior, however, and, realistically considering the role of trust, altruism, reciprocity, and empathy in market transactions requires a reexamination of the role of gender in the construction of human society.

First, we revisit Gilligan, and argue that her articulation of relational feminism faltered, in part, because she could not identify the source of the stereotypically feminine. Second, we consider the ways in which the limitations of the rational actor model meant that law and economics could also not resolve the relational concerns that Gilligan raised. Third, we discuss the rediscovery of gender that is emerging from the gendered results of game theory trials and the new research on the biological basis of gender differences. Finally, we conclude that incorporating the insights of this new research into law and the social sciences will require a new methodology. Instead of narrow-minded focus on the incentive effects in the marginal transaction, we argue that reconsideration of stereotypically masculine and feminine traits requires an emphasis on balance.

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, several prominent feminist legal scholars made a case for “difference feminism.” Inspired by psychologist Carol Gilligan’s classic text, In a Different Voice, these scholars argued that social relationships, caring, and the emotions should be recognized as important to jurisprudence and legal regulation. Today, difference feminism is no longer a dominant movement within legal scholarship, but reformers are bringing “mindfulness,” “emotional intelligence,” and attention to relationships into law and business – a development dubbed “therapy culture” by its critics. This essay describes some of the manifestations of therapy culture in law and argues for more feminist engagement.

In the Fall of 2006, the Center on Corporations, Law & Society (CCLS) at Seattle University School of Law, in collaboration with Professor Jack Kirkwood, co-editor of this Research in Law and Economics book series, hosted a symposium to explore the relationship between law and economics principles and the promotion of social justice. CCLS has a robust history facilitating scholarship about the role corporations and corporate law plays in promoting, as well as undermining, social, economic, and environmental justice, having organized numerous conferences with published proceedings on topics connecting corporate law and governance to health care,¹ first amendment protections,² business ethics,³ and diverse progressive social movements, including environmental activism, worker rights, racial justice, and electoral democracy.⁴ Given that corporations play such a dominant role in almost every aspect of society, and given that much of governing corporate law doctrine and theory derives from neoclassical law and economics, the theme of the symposium, Law and Economics: Toward Social Justice, was both natural and fundamental to CCLS's work. This book-volume is a collection of the papers accepted for presentation at the symposium and revised for publication.

Of all the major, global professional sports where women have made inroads, striving toward equality in terms of status, earnings and media attention, tennis stands at the forefront. This chapter traces this historical development, outlining the sport's earliest socio-cultural features that afforded the inclusion of female players and charting the progress of notable women who thrust tennis into the limelight and turned themselves into commodities – the essence of professionalisation. Suzanne Lenglen blazed the trail by becoming, in 1926, the principal attraction in the sport's inaugural professional tour. Female players were encouraged to cast aside the shackles of restrained femininity and chart their own courses in a sport still dominated by men and played according to male standards. The rise of ‘Open Tennis’ in 1968 removed the playing restrictions and stigma of professionalism, but by opening up to the male-dominated corporate world, unsurprisingly it was the male players who initially competed for the lion's share of new money. Billie Jean King's efforts to galvanise her fellow female professionals to compete on a rogue tour sponsored by Virginia Slims left them ousted by the sport's main officials, but the tour's commercial success propelled them toward equality in terms of prize money and status. Still more or less a white, middle-class-dominated pursuit, the arrival of Venus and Serena Williams in the late 1990s turned tennis toward new markets, and the sport's significance for women remains apparent in the fact that its leading players are the most recognisable and well-paid of all professional female athletes.