Waring, Marilyn

Marilyn Waring (born in 1952) is a New Zealand feminist, a former politician, an academic, and an activist for female human rights. She holds a Ph.D. in political economy. Her book, Counting for Nothing, originally published in 1988 and reprinted several times under its original title as well as its 1989 title If Women Counted, is considered one of the classics in terms of feminist economy. In 1995, a Canadian video documentary, Who's Counting: Sex, Lies and Global Economics, was based on her work.

In her groundbreaking work, Waring criticizes economic theory as well as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the economic measure that became a foundation of the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA) following World War II, for ignoring women's unpaid work, as well as the value of nature.

Her awakening to the importance of the UNSNA occurred during her chairing of the Public Expenditure Select Committee as a member of the New Zealand Parliament from 1975–84, when she discovered that nature literally “counted for nothing,” and this dismissal of the environment was accompanied by evidence of the invisibility of the work of women.

Waring discusses the concepts of work, production, and value, problematizing the distinction between the spheres of production and reproduction and between use value and market value. How is it, she asks, that destruction of nature, such as oil spills, counts as production, while preservation of nature does not? Why is caring only called work when it is carried out in the market for pay, but not when it is carried out by women for their own dependents? And how is it that the work and production of women in poor countries who work hard as farmers to feed their families are not counted?

Waring's critique of economic thinking is, however, more fundamental and far-reaching than her attack on GDP for not reflecting women's unpaid work and the value of nature. Rather, she criticizes the one-sided economic thinking that dominates politics and planning for failing to deal with more urgent and important questions such as global warming, ecological breakdown, and human development and well-being.

In 2006, Waring was appointed Professor of Public Policy at the Institute of Public Policy at AUT University in Auckland. She has held Fellowships at Harvard and Rutgers Universities and is a member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Association for Women's Rights in Development

(AWID) and the Canadian Index for Well-Being.

In 2008, she received one of New Zealand's highest honors, becoming a Companion of the Order of Merit for services to women and economics.

In between her academic and political careers, Waring has also been a consultant and an activist, as well as a goat farmer. She has worked as a consultant for organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Yukon Territorial Government, the Ford Foundation, the Ontario Provincial Government, the United Nations Development Fund, and the Commonwealth Secretariat, and is gender and governance coordinator for the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI).

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