Well-being in the Capabilities Approach and Feminist Economics: any complementarity?

Abstract

The concept and assessment of well-being is an object of dispute within Economics, in which different theories claim its legitimacy and, by extension, scientific domination. Through a literature review, this paper aims to address this debate by providing parallels between the understanding of well-being from Amartya Sen's Capabilities Approach with that of Feminist Economics, as well as contrasting them with the understanding of neoclassical economic theory. According to the assumptions of the latter, well-being is seen as the satisfaction of preferences and is evaluated according to the Pareto efficiency criterion. What matters are the consequences of the choices and actions of individuals towards themselves and not ethical considerations unrelated to the satisfaction of preferences. In opposition to this perspective deemed of extreme informational reductionism, Sen develop the Capabilities Approach, an interpretation that understands well-being as a question of what subjects are capable of being and doing and, consequently, a question of the type of life they are, in effect, capable of leading or pursuing. The Feminist Economics, also criticizing the first interpretation, observes that well-being must be inserted in an emerging and more comprehensive methodology called social provision. Through this methodology, the maintenance of human survival is intertwined in a set of goods and processes that go beyond merely material variables. The Capabilities Approach adheres to the Feminist Economics research project because, by not restricting well-being to financial issues, it recognizes human diversity and allows thinking about issues inside and outside the market, and endorses the five criteria relevant to the approach of social provision.