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Counting for Nothing:

What Men Value and What Women Are Worth
Front Cover
3 Reviews
University of TORONTO Press, 1999 - Social Science - 310 pages

Safe drinking water counts for nothing. A pollution-free environment counts for nothing. Even some people - namely women - count for nothing. This is the case, at least, according to the United Nations System of National Accounts. Author Marilyn Waring, former New Zealand M.P., now professor, development consultant, writer, and goat farmer, isolates the gender bias that exists in the current system of calculating national wealth.

As Waring observes, in this accounting system women are considered 'non-producers' and as such they cannot expect to gain from the distribution of benefits that flow from production. Issues like nuclear warfare, environmental conservation, and poverty are likewise excluded from the calculation of value in traditional economic theory. As a result, public policy, determined by these same accounting processes, inevitably overlooks the importance of the environment and half the world's population.

Counting for Nothing, originally published in 1988, is a classic feminist analysis of women's place in the world economy brought up to date in this reprinted edition, including a sizeable new introduction by the author. In her new introduction, the author updates information and examples and revisits the original chapters with appropriate commentary. In an accessible and often humorous manner, Waring offers an explanation of the current economic systems of accounting and thoroughly outlines ways to ensure that the significance of the environment and the labour contributions of women receive the recognition they deserve.

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Review: Counting for Nothing

User Review  - MrsPL - Goodreads

Essential reading for anyone interested in economics and/or women's issues. Read full review

Review: Counting for Nothing

User Review - Goodreads

Makes the very obvious but important point that the only things that 'count' in conventional economics are those things that are counted: namely money. Unpaid work, the environment, quality of society and community - all count for nothing. This leads to really bad economic policy.

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References from web pages

Canadian publisher University of Toronto Press Online Book Catalogue
Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth Second edition. Paper 0802082602 (£0.00) $25.95. to shopping basket ...
www.utppublishing.com/ pubstore/ merchant.ihtml?pid=7143& step=4

Sketchy Thoughts: Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What ...
And now at last, and with some trepidation, on to my final take on Marilyn Waring’s Counting For Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth. ...
sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/ 2005/ 10/ counting-for-nothing-what-men-value.html

BWB - Commentary Home
Counting for Nothing Marilyn Waring. Review, By Yvonne Preston. 'What's a woman worth?', Ms. magazine, July/August 1999 ...
www.bwb.co.nz/ store/ comment_book.asp?idAuth=71

Women & The Economy - A Short History of Economics
... across Canada as are her books, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth and Three Masquerades: Politics, Work, and Human Rights. ...
unpac.ca/ economy/ historyecon.html

UNIFEM BANGKOK
(First published in New Zealand as Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth. Wellington: Allen & Unwin.)
www.unifem-eseasia.org/ resources/ factsheets/ UNIFEMSheet1.doc

Marginal Notes: Grossly Distorted Product (GDP): It Pays to Kill a ...
Waring's ground-breaking book Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, first published in 1988, is devoted to demystifying the UNSNA. ...
marginalnotes.typepad.com/ pj/ 2007/ 04/ grossly_distort.html

E. Patricia Tsurumi - Women, Work, and Family Revisited - Journal ...
Perhaps, as Marilyn Waring argued in Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth, the arbitrary division between productive work and ...
muse.jhu.edu/ journals/ journal_of_womens_history/ v011/ 11.3tsurumi.html

Mothering Magazine Article: Motherhood and Feminism
Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), xxvii. ...
www.mothering.com/ articles/ growing_child/ family_society/ count_us_in.html

glbtq >> social sciences >> Waring, Marilyn
The groundbreaking book that resulted from Waring's studies was Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, published in 1988. ...
www.glbtq.com/ social-sciences/ waring_m.html

2008 April « In a strange land
Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing:What Men Value and what Women are Worth, 1988. Categories: Feminists · Maybe all those hungry kids are just dieting ...
inastrangeland.wordpress.com/ 2008/ 04/

About the author (1999)

Marilyn Waring is a professor in the Institute of Public Policy at the Auckland University of Technology.

Bibliographic information