“Feminomics” is a term I coined to bring together the ideas of the feminine and economics in a way that is positive and powerful.  While feminomics brings into clear focus the importance of the economic empowerment of women to the future well being of the world, its primary focus is on bringing a gender balance to our economy and social structures.  Feminomics incorporates the substantial literature on the androcentric (male) focus of classical economics and documents the important role that women already play in national and global economies and highlights the potential women have to make an even larger contribution.  Economic data clearly document that women are already making enormous contributions to the world’s economy, a great deal of which is unrecognized. However, what is truly exciting and challenging is the enormous potential women have to make an even more significant contributions in the future.

My journey to create Feminomics began in the fall of 1996, the day I learned that 37% of American businesses and one third of Canadian companies were owned by women. I was stunned. These figures did not line up with my understanding of the world of economics.  Today, American women own 47% of all American companies. In 1996, I was a senior, female, Canadian Foreign Service officer specialized in economics and the commercial world. I was paid to know how the world economy worked. And Women being such an important part of the North American economy was a total surprise to me. I was in for many more astonishing discoveries. I learned that, women have been entering the world wide labor force in numbers twice as high as men since the early 1970s and that this is why the world economy has grown so significantly in the twentieth century. In fact, it was American women entering the USA labor force since the 1970s that has not only fueled American economic growth, but it was their participation in the labor force  which enabled the American middle class to maintain its standard of living! Without American women, the well being of the middle class may well have moved backwards.