When women have that kind of control over their bodies, she explained, you get smaller families. That eventually creates higher wages and, in turn, a more productive economy.

To support her theory, one of many outlined in her recently published book, Bateman zooms out to before the Industrial Revolution, when women in Europe had “significantly greater freedoms” than those in other parts of the world. They could choose who and when to marry, inherit property and work. That, Bateman argues, let European economies surpass economies in China, India and the Middle East, where women weren’t as free.

Some economists say Bateman’s view might be too simplistic. Gender inequality, they argue, stems from unfair trade policies between the West and developing countries, inadequate government institutions and a complex chain of other factors.

But, according to Bateman, this kind of discussion is often ignored within economics, a field in which the concepts of feminism and women’s rights are clumped together as social, political and cultural issues best suited for other disciplines to study.

And so she shed her clothes.

A short while into that 2018 conference in Brighton, a naked Bateman did at least partially fulfill her aim: She started conversations about her ideas with fellow economists in the room. That is, until she was thrown out — an unsurprising turn of events, given the setting, but one that was perhaps the perfect metaphor for her theory.

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