Carolyn Shaw Bell (June 21, 1920 – May 13, 2006) was the
Katharine Coman
Katharine Ellis Coman ( – ) was an American social activist and professor. She was based at the women-only Wellesley College, Massachusetts, where she created new courses in political economy, in line with her personal belief in social change ...
professor in economics at
Wellesley College known for her mentorship of her own students' careers,
as well as mentorship of female economists more broadly, through the efforts of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, of which she was founding chair.
The "Bell Award", given by the American Economic Association each year to economists who promote the success of women in the profession, is named for her.
Personal life and education
Bell grew up in
Framingham, Massachusetts
Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The city proper covers with a pop ...
and studied economics at
Mount Holyoke College. She married, and at the end of the war, both she and her husband moved to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
for graduate school. She completed her doctorate at the
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...
in 1949, and, newly divorced and the mother of a young daughter, returned to live with her parents. She took a job at nearby
Wellesley College.
In 1953, she married Nelson Bell, a
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Wellesley () is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Wellesley is part of Greater Boston. The population was 29,550 at the time of the 2020 census. Wellesley College, Babson College, and a campus of Massachusetts Bay Communit ...
small business owner. The couple were known for entertaining Wellesley students, and her students were inspired by her example of having both a family and a successful career.
Career
Employment
She took a job as an assistant to
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through t ...
at the federal
Office of Price Administration
The Office of Price Administration (OPA) was established within the Office for Emergency Management of the United States government by Executive Order 8875 on August 28, 1941. The functions of the OPA were originally to control money (price contr ...
, responsible for
price controls during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, after graduating from Mount Holyoke College. She took at job at
Wellesley College after receiving her doctorate at the London School of Economics. Bell retired from teaching in 1989, due to hearing loss, but continued writing columns for
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
until the year 2000.
Author and researcher
Bell wrote two books on consumer economics, ''Consumer Choice in the American Economy'' (1967) and ''The Economics of the Ghetto'' (1970), as well as numerous journal articles on
human capital,
income distribution
In economics, income distribution covers how a country's total GDP is distributed amongst its population. Economic theory and economic policy have long seen income and its distribution as a central concern. Unequal distribution of income causes ec ...
and the
economic data
Economic data are data describing an actual economy, past or present. These are typically found in time-series form, that is, covering more than one time period (say the monthly unemployment rate for the last five years) or in cross-sectional data ...
. In her role as the founding chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession for the
American Economic Association she began surveys of women in the economics profession that continue to the present day.
Selected works
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Mentorship
Bell encouraged many of her Wellesley female students to pursue careers in economics and business, and to tell later students about their successes.
Along with fellow economics professor
Marshall Goldman, she started the "FEM files." These referred to "Former Economics Majors," with whom she kept in touch, and asked to describe their experiences to other alumnae of the department. Her encouragement, and the network of alumnae she mentored, helped Wellesley graduates succeed. The model she established sent a disproportionate number of Wellesley graduates into careers in economics and business. At least 58 of her students received doctorates in economics while she was a professor at Wellesley, and another 30 were enrolled in such programs at the time of her retirement.
Advancing women in economics
After a group of graduate students, including
Francine Blau and
Heidi Hartmann
Heidi I. Hartmann is an American feminist economist who is founder and president of the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a research organization created to conduct women-centered, public policy research. She is an e ...
, demanded to know why so few female economists were on the program for the
American Economic Association Annual Meetings in 1971, Bell undertook a survey of all the employed female members of the AEA who had completed their graduate degrees at least ten years prior, to demonstrate to AEA president
Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Joseph Arrow (23 August 1921 – 21 February 2017) was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. He was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with John Hicks in 1972.
In economics ...
the number of female economists willing and able to present papers at these meetings.
Bell was then named chair of a new Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP). Under her leadership CSWEP began surveying graduate programs in economics to find out the numbers of female graduate students and female faculty, to demonstrate the numbers of qualified women for positions in economics. The committee's pressure also led to changes in the job market for economists from networks of male professors to open hiring, including the publication of "Job Openings for Economists", a public listing of open positions in the field.
Bell Award
In 1998, as part of the 25th anniversary of CSWEP,
the
American Economic Association established an annual award named for Carolyn Shaw Bell, given to economists who promote the success of women in this profession.
This award has been presented to:
1998:
Alice M. Rivlin
Alice Mitchell Rivlin (born Georgianna Alice Mitchell; March 4, 1931 – May 14, 2019) was an American economist and budget official. She served as the 16th Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve from 1996 to 1999. Before her appointment at the F ...
1999:
Sandra Ohrn Moose
2000:
Eva Mueller
2001:
Marianne Ferber
Marianne A. Ferber (January 30, 1923 – May 11, 2013) was an American feminist economist and the author of many books and articles on the subject of women's work, the family, and the construction of gender. She held a Ph.D. from the Univers ...
2002:
Margaret Garritsen de Vries
Margaret Garritsen de Vries (1922-2009) was an economist and historian known for her work for the International Monetary Fund.
Education
deVries received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute o ...
2003:
Robin L. Bartlett
2004:
Barbara Bergmann
Barbara Rose Bergmann (20 July 1927 – 5 April 2015) was a feminist economist. Her work covers many topics from childcare and gender issues to poverty and Social Security. Bergmann was a co-founder and president of the International Associati ...
2005:
Claudia Goldin
Claudia Goldin (born May 14, 1946) is an American economic historian and labor economist who is currently the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. She is a co-director of the NBER's Gender in the Economy Study Group and was th ...
2006:
Barbara Fraumeni
2007:
Olivia S. Mitchell
2008:
Anne Carter
2009:
Elizabeth E. Bailey
2010:
Elizabeth Hoffman
2011:
Sharon Oster
2012:
Catherine C. Eckel
2013:
Rachel McCulloch
2014:
Hilary Hoynes
Hilary Hoynes is an economist and Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. She studies the impact of tax and transfer programs on ...
2015:
Janet Currie
Janet Currie is a Canadian-American economist and the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, where she is Co-Director of the Center for Health and Wellbeing. S ...
2016:
Cecilia Rouse
2017:
Rachel Croson
2018:
Rohini Pande
2019:
Yan Chen
2020:
Nancy Rose
Nancy Rose is an American economist, currently the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2014 to 2017, Rose served as the deputy assistant attorney general for ec ...
2021:
Joyce P. Jacobsen
2022:
Martha Bailey
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Carolyn Shaw
1920 births
2006 deaths
American women economists
Mount Holyoke College alumni
Wellesley College faculty
People from Framingham, Massachusetts
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Economists from Massachusetts
20th-century American economists
20th-century American women
21st-century American women