Marilyn Waring
Dame Marilyn Joy Waring DNZM (born 7 October 1952) is a New Zealand public policy scholar, international development consultant, former politician, environmentalist, feminist and a principal founder of feminist economics.
Dame Marilyn Waring
Electorate abolished
Electorate re-established
7 October 1952
Ngāruawāhia, New Zealand
National (1974–1984)
- Public Expenditure Committee (chair)
- Senior government member of the Foreign Affairs Committee
- Disarmament and Arms Control Committee
In 1975, aged 23, she became New Zealand's youngest member of parliament for the liberal-conservative New Zealand National Party. As a member of parliament she chaired the Public Expenditure Committee. Her support of the opposition Labour Party's proposed nuclear-free New Zealand policy was instrumental in precipitating the 1984 New Zealand general election, and she left parliament in 1984.
On leaving parliament she moved into academia; she is best known for her 1988 book If Women Counted, and she obtained a D.Phil in political economy in 1989. Through her research and writing she is known as the principal founder of the discipline of feminist economics. Since 2006, Waring has been a professor of public policy at the Institute of Public Policy at AUT, focusing on governance and public policy, political economy, gender analysis, and human rights. She has taken part in international aid work and served as a consultant to UNDP and other international organisations.
She has outspokenly criticised the concept of gross domestic product (GDP), the economic measure that became a foundation of the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA) following World War II. She criticises a system which "counts oil spills and wars as contributors to economic growth, while child-rearing and housekeeping are deemed valueless".[1][2] Her work has influenced academics, government accounting in a number of countries, and United Nations policies. Waring has had a long-time involvement with the Association for Women's Rights in Development, a progressive feminist organisation that advocates inclusive feminism, and served on its board until 2012.[3] In 2021 she was appointed by the World Health Organization as a member of the WHO Council on the Economics of Health For All.[4]
Early life[edit]
Marilyn Waring grew up at Taupiri, where her parents owned a butchery. Her great-grandfather Harry (Arthur Henry) Waring had emigrated to New Zealand from Hopesay in Herefordshire, England, in 1881, and established the family butchery business at Taupiri.[5] In 1927 Harry Waring stood unsuccessfully for election to parliament in the Raglan seat for the Reform Party, the forerunner of the National Party.[6][7][8] A talented soprano in her youth, her parents had hoped that she would become a classical singer.[9] In 1973, Waring received an Honours BA in political science and international politics from Victoria University of Wellington.
Appointments and affiliations[edit]
Waring was a member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand from 2005 to 2009.[47] She has been a consultant for, and a board member of, international organisations such as the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), United Nations Development Programme, Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), the International Development Research Centre (Ottawa, Canada) and the Association for Women's Rights in Development.[32][48]
Farming[edit]
Since 1984 and in between her academic and activist engagements, Waring farmed angora goats and dry stock, latterly on her hill-farm north of Auckland. Her experiences of life on the farm, international questions, New Zealand politics, feminist issues, and women of influence, were recorded In the Lifetime of a Goat: Writings 1984–2000; her popular Listener columns Letters to My Sisters from 1984 to 1989, form the basis.[49] She organised her farm for maximum simplicity and self-sufficiency.[50] Waring gave up goat farming in 2003.[10]
Waring's work was the subject of a 1995 film by Oscar-winning director Terre Nash, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, titled Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics.[59] In 2012, she was included on the Wired Magazine Smart List of "50 people who will change the world."[30][60] An anthology named Counting on Marilyn Waring: New Advances in Feminist Economics was published in 2014, edited by Margunn Bjørnholt and Ailsa McKay and with contributions of a diverse group of scholars on advances made in the field since the publication of If Women Counted.[61]
Waring's work is discussed in Melinda Gates' 2019 book The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.[62][63]
