Crossing Economics

D. M[a]cCloskey

Deirdre McCloskey, although having transitioned and lived full time as a woman for four years, is still a Chicago-School, quantitative, historical economist who continues to "believe in markets". But the impact of living as a woman and inculcating values more highly prized by the "opposite" sex leads to a reconsideration of what is important and how it ought to be valued. Economics is about value, but those values do not come without political and social considerations. In considering, for example, the classic virtues prudence is the one almost exclusively considered by economists, but it is argued, faith, hope and love must also be brought into the formulation.Sara Davis Buechner, you know, is a world class concert pianist who until not long ago was "David." Her first concert in her correct gender was in the fall of 1998, accompanied by a spread in the New York Times Sunday magazine. In a bow--or rather curtsey--to the crossgendered community she gave a splendid concert in Provincetown [Oct. 1999]. It was haunting. I could hear the female in the right hand and the male in the left.Afterwards I joined the line of people congratulating her. When it came to me she said, "Oh, you're Deirdre: do you know that you are my mother's heroine?" I laughed, and she explained: "We musicians often have parents, especially mothers, who wish we had a more regular job. You know, doctor, lawyer, businessperson, professor. She was thrilled to see that someone doing the same thing as her new daughter was in such a straight-arrow job as an economist!"Economics is not the most progressive discipline one can imagine. Better to change gender among, say, anthropologists, who regard it as socially constructed, or among literary people, who regard it as a postmodern statement. Yet on the whole the reaction to my gender change from economists and calculators has been calm. From the beleaguered women in the profession the reaction has been welcoming, though a welcome tinged with a regret that one of the few men who seemed to support having more women had become one instead. The male economists have on the whole--with some startling exceptions, such as my former colleague at the University of Chicago, Robert Lucas--taken the view that comes naturally to the grandchildren of Adam Smith: laissez faire : "If he . . . I mean she. . . wants to do that, and it doesn't hurt anyone, well, um, OK."