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From ROSEMARY SPIOTA

The review by David Pearce of Marilyn Waring’s book If Women Counted:
A New Feminist Economics (Review, 14 April) could convey the impression
that Waring is some kind of ‘green’, unfamiliar with real economics.

Waring has a PhD in economics, spent nine years in the New Zealand Parliament
(1975-84), including chairing the Parliamentary Accounts committee, and
has since 1984 been on advisory panels for the United Nations, seriously
considering the present system.

She is respected by ‘real’ economists – I recently attended a speech
she gave in Canberra to Australian government officials. Waring is a clear,
concise thinker and writer, and very down-to-earth. Her desire to incorporate
the values of wild places and women’s work in the National Accounts is hardly
‘a fruitless search for a new economics’. She has practical and thought-provoking
suggestions already tried in many countries she has visited.

I thoroughly recommend this book.

Rosemary Spiota Canberra, Australia