Natalya Volchkova on the book by Kate Manne: “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny”

The book by American philosopher Kate Manne Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (the Russian translation is: Поставь её на место. Логика мизогинии) has a special place on the intellectual agenda of recent years. Its Russian translation is an important step toward understanding how moral, cultural, and institutional mechanisms of inequality influence the economic life of a society. For a teacher and researcher of gender economics, the Manne's book represents a rare example of how the analysis of social norms and expectations becomes a tool for understanding economic structures and incentives.

The book by Kate Mann does not offer quantitative models or econometric estimates, and this is a restriction for researchers seeking operationalizable concepts. However, the book's forte is different: it is the reconfiguration of the conceptual system, allowing to consider gender inequality in a new way.

From individual prejudices to institutional mechanism

The Manne's main contribution is that she proposes viewing misogyny as a social mechanism for maintaining the patriarchal system of power rather than an emotion or an individual feeling of hatred. Misogyny, in her view, is a form of sanctioning: it punishes women who violate the gender roles prescribed by this system and rewards those who correspond to these roles.

This approach, e.g., a shift from psychology towards economic logic of gains and losses, is fundamental to economic analysis. It is this framework that determines the behavior of agents, their incentives, and their constraints. The misogyny by Kate Manne serves as normative infrastructure that makes economic inequality possible. While discrimination in the labor market can be measured by the percentage of the wage or employment gap, misogyny establishes the deeper social and cultural foundations of this discrimination.

Moral economy of gender

One of the book's key concepts is the "moral economy of gender." Here, Manne draws on economists studying non-monetary incentives and forms of exchange from Gary Becker's classic models of household production to Nancy Folbre's concept of the care economy.

According to Manne, society expects women to provide "moral gifts" such as care, support, emotions and submissiveness. In return, women receive symbolic rewards: recognition, approval, and the "good" status. This logic resembles an unequal barter, where female virtue is exchanged for male dominance.

It is also worth noting the concept of himpathy introduced by Kate Manne, that is, a society's tendency to sympathize with men who commit violence or abuse power. This concept can be seen as a version of the information-perception asymmetry familiar to economists. The society "forgives" aggressors because the normative structure is designed to their advantage similar to market distortions that sometimes allow less-efficient firms to survive.

For researchers and teachers of gender economics, the Manne's book is important because it shifts the analysis of inequality to the realm of non-material incentives and expectations. Economics is increasingly moving beyond rational choice: the works by Esther Duflo, Claudia Goldin and others demonstrates that gender inequality is explained not only by access to education or markets, but also by social norms embedded in the system of social rules and practices.

Manne shows how these sanctions and expectations create internal barriers ("institutional inertia") and complements economic models by explaining the invisible side of incentives. The phenomenon of undervalued labor in caregiving sectors or the "glass ceiling" in corporate and academic hierarchies can be understood as a consequence of social attitudes that devalue "ambitious" women and reward those who are "easy."

This prospect is also important for teaching: it allows to discuss not only quantitative gaps in wages, employment, or access to capital, but also the qualitative mechanisms of inequality reproduction that remain outside the scope of statistics. Furthermore, the book stimulates discussion about the intangible aspects of human capital, such as confidence, risk propensity, self-esteem. In this sense, it helps economists take a fresh look at how gender differences are formed not only in the market, but also within individuals.

This translation is particularly important for Russian academic circles. For a long time, the discussion of gender differences in the Russian economy remained primarily empirical, relying on employment and earnings statistics. Kate Manne offers a different level of analysis, that is, normative, value-based, and structural. This opens up opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue, where economics meets moral philosophy and political economy theory. Her book has the potential to stimulate research linking institutional and cultural mechanisms of inequality to economic outcomes, for example, in the areas of labor, entrepreneurship and the allocation of caregiving time.

For a course on gender economics, a book by Kate Manne is more than just a source of citations; it's a methodological guide on how to combine the language of philosophy with the tools of an economist to see beyond the figures to the structure of power and inequality. Manne demonstrates that any system of incentives is based on expectations, and these expectations are gendered. Recognizing this fact enables a new type of analysis, where care, social sanctions and institutional power are viewed as elements of a single structure.