Genevieve Vaughan (1939) is an independent researcher. Born in Texas, she has lived between the USA and Italy most of her life. She became a feminist, participating in the Italian and international feminist movements, after her divorce in 1978. She began to see the fact of women’s free labor in the home as a gift economy, the unacknowledged free economy of women from which communication and community derive. Her two early essays “Communication and exchange” in Semiotica, 1980, and Saussure and Vigotsky via Marx, 1981, deal with language and economics, a theme introduced by her husband but which she elaborated in alternative directions, and which she has been working on throughout the rest of her life.
In 1983, Vaughan returned to Texas where she founded the all-women multicultural private operating “Foundation for a Compassionate Society” 1988 – 2005 and the academic and activist network “International Feminists for a Gift Economy” 2001-ongoing.
Her books are For-Giving, a feminist criticism of exchange, Plainview Press, 1997, Italian translation by F. Buffo Per Donare, una critica feminista dello scambio, Meltemi 2014, Homo Donans, Vanda Press, 2008, Italian translation 2022, The Gift in the Heart of Language: the maternal source of meaning, Mimesis Press 2015, Italian translation by Maria Nadotti Il Dono nel Cuore del Linguaggio, l’origine materna del significato, Mimesis 2022.
She is editor of Athanor: Il Dono/the Gift, Meltemi 2004; Women and the Gift Economy, a radically different worldview is possible, Inanna Press 2007, and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy, Inanna Press 2018. Other collective works regarding her themes are an Issue of the Canadian Women’s Studies Journal, Vol. 34, Feminist Gift Economy: A Maternalist Alternative to Patriarchy and Capitalism, 2020 and Mothering, Gift and Revolution: Honoring Genevieve Vaughan’s Life Work, Vanda Press 2021. Many of her books and articles as well as three children’s books and a collection of her songs can be found free at www.gift-economy.com.
Since 2021 a series of now more than 90 webinars on many aspects of the gift are available at www.maternalgifteconomymovement.org and on Youtube.
She has three daughters and two grandchildren.