science

The Women Who Made Modern Economics

The Women Who Made Modern Economics is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Women Who Made Modern Economics rather than just read about it. In short: The Women Who Made Modern Economics is a 2023 non-fiction book written by then Labour Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, covering women in economics through biographical sketches of a collection of female economists. Synopsis The book profiles notable female economists.

Key takeaways

The Women Who Made Modern Economics belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Women Who Made Modern Economics to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Women Who Made Modern Economics from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Women Who Made Modern Economics is a 2023 non-fiction book written by then Labour Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, covering women in economics through biographical sketches of a collection of female economists.

Synopsis The book profiles notable female economists. These include Beatrice Webb, Eleanor Rathbone, Mary Paley Marshall, Harriet Martineau, Anna Schwartz, Carmen Reinhart, among others.

Reception Tanushree Kaushal, writing for the LSE Review of Books, found the book written from Labour's and particularly Reeves' securonomics point of view. Kaushal contrasted the "elaborate and overall largely positive" chapter on Beatrice Webb, with the "less forgiving" chapter on Rosa Luxembourg, a position that they thought "prevent[ed] a more in-depth reading of Luxembourg’s scholarship". Multiple reviews thought the work was a good way to gauge Reeves intentions for a possible future Chancellorship. Heather Stewart, in a review in The Guardian, found that while the "segue from scholarly exposition to personal manifesto can be clunky", the work as a whole represented "something much more like the outlines of a coherent political project here than Labour is sometimes credited with". John King, in the History of Economics Review, felt that Reeves was "clear about her intention to apply the lessons learned from [the stories in the book] to the British economy". Kaushal found Reeves' "writing [was] often clunky". On the other hand, Paula Bartley, in the Women's History Review, thought that despite the problems of plagiarism "Reeves' imaginative intelligence, her economic expertise and her compassion" shone through.

Plagiarism In their review, the Financial Times reported that a spot check revealed content had been plagiarised from Wikipedia. The Guardian and other sources, identified over twenty examples of apparent plagiarism in the book, including entire paragraphs, from many different sources including newspaper obituaries, in addition to Wikipedia. Initially, a Reeves spokesperson called the incidents "inadvertent mistakes" adding that they "strongly refute[ed] the accusation[s]" of the Financial Times. Additionally the publisher Basic Books claimed Reeves didn't intend to "present these facts as original research". Later, in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House, Reeves, while continuing to deny "claims of plagiarism", said that she "should have done better" and was "[taking] responsibility for everything that is in that book".

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Women Who Made Modern Economics

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Women Who Made Modern Economics claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Women Who Made Modern Economics before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Women Who Made Modern Economics ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Women Who Made Modern Economics

In research: The Women Who Made Modern Economics appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Women Who Made Modern Economics in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Women Who Made Modern Economics is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2023 non-fiction books, 21st-century history books, Books about women's history, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Women Who Made Modern Economics outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Women Who Made Modern Economics in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Women Who Made Modern Economics means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Women Who Made Modern Economics out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Women Who Made Modern Economics in simple terms?

Why does The Women Who Made Modern Economics matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Women Who Made Modern Economics?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Women Who Made Modern Economics.