Glossary

Equal Opportunity Proccess: A transformative process in the feminist movement that wants women and men to have the same opportunities including equal access to education, jobs, and pay. Click here to learn more about the Equal Opportunity Feminist process.
Externality: A cost or benefit created outside the economic transaction occurring for a good or service and experienced by a third-party (neither the seller nor the buyer). Externalities can be either negative (pollution) or positive (health benefits to those who don't receive vaccines but are around many who have) and be realized during production (when factories emit toxic waste) or consumption (when a cigarette is smoked).
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): A measure of the value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time. GDP is calculated by adding total expenditures, investment, government spending, and the difference between exports and imports. In mainstream economics, GDP is used as a proxy for the health of an economy: a bigger GDP is often equated with higher standards of living.
General Progress Indicator (GPI): A feminist value version of GDP, where household and volunteer economic contributions are added to the measurements of GDP and factors such as crime, pollution, and family breakdown are subtracted. The GPI takes a more humanistic approach to understanding the economy and tries to fill in the human welfare gaps inherent in GDP measurements. The GPI allows us to question money as the sole indicator of value in our economy, and to value important non-monetary contributions, as well as to recognize the many negative externalities of our current production and consumption practices.
Opting Out: When a woman who is working for pay decides to leave the paid labor market and focus on childrearing and unpaid work (normally in the home). Opting out, more generally, can mean choosing to reject the dominant value system, and to engage in practices that may be personally fulfilling, but are traditionally subordinated.
Traditionally Feminine Work: Activities that were once considered a comparative advantage for women to perform, including housework, childbearing, childrearing, care for the elderly, volunteer work, and charity work. The paid labor market equivalent, which has historically been dominated (numerically) by women, would encompass such fields as nursing, child care, and teaching children.
Traditionally Masculine Work: Activities that were once considered a comparative advantage for men to perform, including most paid labor and goverment work. Men were not expected to significantly contribute unpaid or caring work, rather it was expected that they show familial devotion by "bread-winning" (i.e paying for food, housing, and other needs).
Volunteer Work: Working with little or no compensation whether monetary or in-kind. It usually involves caring labor such as working in homeless shelters, tutoring in after school programs, and being a big brother or big sister to disadvantaged youth, etc.
Welfare System: A transfer program by which poor households receive monetary aid from the government. Also, a form of "opting-out" for low-income or single mothers, who are able to use the payments to stay home and care for their children. More information can be found at United States Department of Health & Services website.

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