Rachel Reeves certainly knows her mind. She is also, as the title of this original book suggests, a passionate and convinced feminist. Any number of great female economists from across the political spectrum helped create the discipline she loves. They suffered misogyny, sexism and prejudice – to an extent that sometimes made this male reader squirm – yet they won through. Their contribution is too little recognised and acknowledged. Reeves is determined to right that wrong and does so persuasively.
But this book has a double interest. It is written by Britain’s chancellor-in-waiting, who if elected would be the first woman in the job – as she reminds us. She not only offers a personal and intellectual portrait of a succession of intriguing and sometimes forgotten female economists, she delivers crisp, no-nonsense verdicts on their ideas. Values matter in economics, she writes, which is not a value-free science, agreeing with one of her heroines, Joan Robinson. You are left in no doubt about Reeves’s values. And although not acknowledging the copying of up to 20 of her sources without attribution as the FT reported – a mistake as her publisher acknowledges and which will be corrected in later editions – the judgments, overall style and opinions expressed are palpably Reeves’s own.
