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Women are under-represented in the economics profession worldwide. This has wide social and material implications, as economists work in banks and government, and have a direct role in policy making. Studies have shown that decisions made and executed by diverse teams delivered 60% better results. While many other fields, including
STEM fields Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used in the context of ...
, have seen growth in the share of professors and students who are women, economics has stagnated with little improvement at any level in the last 15 years.


Studies

In 2015 Harvard researcher Heather Sarsons published a paper on whether co-authored papers and the gender of the authors might affect tenure. The paper found that there was an 8% increase in the probability of a male economist getting a tenured post with a co-authored paper on their resume, but only 2% for female economists. In 2017 Alice Wu, an undergraduate at
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, published a study which used natural language processing on EconJobRumors.com, an online forum used by academic economists to discuss job openings and candidates. The study showed that when posters on the site discussed female economists they tended to discuss the women's appearance, whereas when discussing male economists they tended to use terms emphasizing their intellectual abilities. She found two main results: first, nine of the top 10 words predictive of a post about a woman are explicitly sexual references, and, second, posts about women contain 43% fewer academic or professional terms and 192% more terms related to personal information or physical attributes. Most recently, in 2021, the evidence comes from a research study with a systematic attempt at quantitatively measuring the seminar culture within economics. They find that during a seminar, women presenters are asked more questions and the questions asked are more likely to be patronizing or hostile. This paper is the latest addition to a mounting body of evidence of gender discrimination in economics. Similarly, in academia, where "publish or perish" is still the dominant credo, women are treated more harshly. For example, in an analysis of publications, it has been shown that men are tenured at roughly the same rate regardless of whether they co-author or solo-author. Women, however, become less likely to receive tenure the more they co-author. The result is most pronounced for women co-authoring with men, and less pronounced among women who co-author with other women. In addition, female-authored papers took six months longer to get published, even though they are more readable than those produced by their male counterparts. This amounts to a significant time tax for female authors, and these higher standards impose a "quantity versus quality trade-off" that affects female academics’ careers. According to The American Economic Association, compared with men, women disproportionately fall off the academic ladder at the time of promotion to tenured associate – a phenomenon that appears to be unique in the economics profession. Probably due to all of these reasons the research also shows that there is a confidence gap between men and women economists working in top U.S. universities. They find that women are still less confident than men; that women are less likely to give "extreme" answers in which they strongly agree or disagree, and that they are less confident in the accuracy of their own answers. Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) provides a comprehensive annotated bibliography on research related to women in the economics profession.


Statistics

The number of undergraduate women majoring in economics in the United States peaked in the mid to late 1990s and has decreased ever since. Nationwide there are about three males for every female student majoring in economics, and this ratio has not changed for more than 20 years. Women earn the majority of undergraduate degrees across all subjects in the United States, but in 2016 only 35% of economic majors were women. This is the same percentage as the early 1980s. In 2016 the share of women in PhD economics programs was 31%. This share has not increased in the last 20 years. Of the 500 doctorate degrees awarded in economics to US citizens and permanent residents in 2014 in the United States, only 157 were awarded to women. In the United Kingdom, women make up 57% of all undergraduate students, but only 27% of those studying pure economics. Women's participation in economics is lower than in any other social science. By many measures, the gender gap in economics is the largest of any discipline. For example, women received about 30% of doctorate and bachelor's degrees in economics in 2014, compared with 45% to 60% of degrees in business, humanities, and the STEM fields. Women are notoriously underrepresented at the top of the economics field. Just 8 of the 140 Fed presidents appointed since 1914 have been women. In addition, women are vastly underrepresented in Economics Nobel Prize awards, as women have won a
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
58 times, but only twice in economics, and one of the two,
Elinor Ostrom Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom (née Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American political scientist and political economist whose work was associated with New Institutional Economics and the resurgence of political economy. In 2009, ...
, had a degree in political science. Similarly, women are rarely selected for other prominent economics awards. For example, The
John Bates Clark Medal The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...
is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American
economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...
under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." This award was started in 1947, and the first time it was awarded to a woman, Susan C. Athey, was in 2007. This award has been given out 42 times, but only 5 times to women, with two of these being in the past two years (2019, 2020). In 2020, only 22% of the
National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...
(NBER) affiliates were women. In 2020, for NBER Faculty Research Fellows, of those who tend to be more recent appointments and are usually untenured, there were 103 women and 195 men, with women representing 34.6%. For NBER Research Associates, of those who tend to have been appointed earlier and who all have tenure, there were 255 women and 1051 men, with women representing 19.5%.


Strategies

One proposed strategy to increase the number of women in economics is to encourage mentoring relationships between female students and female faculty members. Increasing the hiring of female faculty members can be a way to also subsequently increase the number of female students. Male dominated fields might be off-putting to many female students due to biases against women, and female professors might help mitigate this concern. In 2017 the top 20 university economic departments in Europe had 12.87% of full professors who were female. Another strategy that many American universities have taken is implementing clubs designated for women in economics. Top universities such a
HarvardYale
an
Princeton
all have versions of this club. Yale University states that "The goal of the Women in Economics (WiE) organization is to support women, non-binary, and underrepresented minority students pursuing a degree in economics  and to introduce more undergraduates to the field." While this club is a relatively new phenomenon across American universities, there are many other STEM clubs for women, such as the Society of Women Engineers, with similar goals.


Notable women in economics

* Edith Abbot – Helped draft the US Social Security Act of 1935. *
Anna Schwartz Anna Jacobson Schwartz (pronounced ; November 11, 1915 – June 21, 2012) was an American economist who worked at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City and a writer for ''The New York Times''. Paul Krugman has said that Schwar ...
– Co-author of " A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960." *
Alice 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 ...
- First Chair of the US
Congressional Budget Office The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency within the United States Congress, legislative branch of the United States government that provides budget and economic information to Congress. Ins ...
, and
Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
Vice Chair. *
Elinor Ostrom Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom (née Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American political scientist and political economist whose work was associated with New Institutional Economics and the resurgence of political economy. In 2009, ...
– First woman to ever win the
Nobel Prize in economics The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
. Ostrom won in 2009. *
Millicent Fawcett Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (née Garrett; 11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English politician, writer and feminist. She campaigned for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, women's suffrage by Law reform, legal change and in 1897– ...
– Wrote ''
Political Economy for Beginners Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
'' in 1870. *
Joan Robinson Joan Violet Robinson (''née'' Maurice; 31 October 1903 – 5 August 1983) was a British economist well known for her wide-ranging contributions to economic theory. She was a central figure in what became known as post-Keynesian economics. B ...
– Developed the concept of
monopsony In economics, a monopsony is a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers. The microeconomic theory of monopsony assumes a single entity ...
, and was one of the most prominent founders of the post-Keynesian school of economic thought. *
Janet Yellen Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist serving as the 78th United States secretary of the treasury since January 26, 2021. She previously served as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. Yellen is ...
– First woman to be the chair of the
Federal Reserve Bank A Federal Reserve Bank is a regional bank of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. There are twelve in total, one for each of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts that were created by the Federal Reserve ...
and
Secretary of the Treasury The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal a ...
of the United States. *
Esther Duflo Esther Duflo, FBA (; born 25 October 1972) is a French–American economist who is a professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is the co-founder and co-director of the Abd ...
– 2019 laureate of the
Nobel Prize in economics The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
. * Hundreds more Notable Women in Economics can be found through the Wikipedia Category, Women Economists.


References

{{Reflist Women economists