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Nikita Sharma is an economics editor and writer based in London.
More than once, Milton Friedman expressed regret in interventions to promote women in the economy. Concerned that preferential treatment could lead to adverse selection, the Nobel laureate believed that “in the long run, numbers don’t matter, but quality does.”
The long term is already here, but gender equality is a long way off. In the UK, the proportion of women in economics is 25.7 percent. Progress has stalled lately, with diversity trends bad, if not worse, than in other STEM disciplines . The Royal Economic Society has called it “one of the most adverse disciplines for women”. Since the The gender pay gap decreased by just 1 percent. between 2012-2022 and will take 100 more years to close, it very well could be.
While female economists typically earn less than their male counterparts, the pay gap is largely due to female economists holding only a small fraction of senior positions. The United Kingdom illustrates the capacity of economic academia to “leaky pipe“problem, since women represent only 36.5 percent of teachers, 26.3 percent of readers and 18.3 percent of professors.
Numbers do It matters: diversity among economists implies diversity in the questions one even thinks to ask. So why are there fewer women economists at higher academic levels?
The short answer is that women are held to higher standards. The long answer involves systemic gender biases in every step along the academic path to seniority: the tenure track. (And no, it’s not just about women wanting to start a family.)
Tenure requires publishing research, obtaining citations, creating collaborations, and navigating the dark and slimy world of academia. All this feeds back. You write more articles, you increase in citation rankings, the more you collaborate and the faster you get tenure.
For female economists, the tenure trajectory (as in much of the world) is not the same and is plagued by gender stereotypes that stack the odds against them. While articles, citations, and co-authors may collectively be driving male economists toward tenure, the systemic gender biases associated with each mix into a toxic cocktail that sets women economists back.
What the growing body of literature examining these gender biases in economics tells us is that “Every rock we look at reveals another way in which existing institutions are biased against women.”.
For starters, gender stereotypes have raised the bar higher for articles written by female economists. When published, articles written by women get 25 percent more appointments and they are 1-6 percent more readable compared to similar articles written by men.
You would think that getting more citations (an indicator of research quality) and writing well would clear the path to publication success. However, women remain underrepresented in the top five economics journals. From 1990 to 2015, only 11 percent of the authors were women.. (In 2015, his participation was only 15 percent). For several years, the five largest magazines She did not publish any articles written exclusively by women..
Before publication, if this happens, articles written by women languish for three to six more months in peer review. Instead of initiating new research, economists spend their time addressing “Comments of lower quality, more difficult to implement and/or less relevant.” for your existing work to satisfy a biased referee who views your article as “more risky”.
Being subject to stricter standards for publishing and having to work harder to achieve it is a drag on the efforts of economists, who on average produce an estimate 20 percent fewer publications and 43 percent fewer publications in the top five journals. This directly affects your success in the role, which rewards having more prestigious publications. If female co-authors were more like their male peers, The production gap between men and women would be reduced by 18 percent..
In addition to concerns about the rigor of the economists’ work, doubts also abound about the importance of their contribution to academic group work. For example, a co-authored article increases the chances of male economists staying by 7.4 percent, but only 4.7 percent for women (greater when women are co-authors with women). These differences add up. If female economists received the same credit as their male peers for co-authored research, the gender gap in tenure rates would close by a calculated proportion. 40 percent.
In a losing game, any winning strategy will surely be ineffective.
The main force that leads economists to defeat is the lack of recognition of their abilities, their work, their contribution to the discipline. This could be a possible manifestation of misogynistic currents in the economy that perpetuate the male dominance from which it arises.
Other symptoms include how you talk to women in public and private. Seminars and talks are important opportunities for economists to present their work, gather feedback, and network. Since these bring together everyone from senior academics to novice PhD students, the potential for role model effects is also in the air. But during 2014-2019, Only 22.8 percent of invited talks were given by women. and only 0.5 percent by underrepresented minority women. (These were largely the conversations organized by the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economy, whose efforts Friedman lamented at the beginning of this post.)
And when they are invited to economics seminars, the economists are treated with more condescending and hostile behavior. they are asked 12 percent more questions that men and interrupted more often and earlier. Perhaps at this point it does not even surprise the reader that during the presentations of economists, the men give more comments than ask questions.
Under anonymity, the undercurrents of misogyny become waves of rain. Analysis of an online portal popular among economists revealed Women are systematically trivialized and sexualized.and were discussed in 196 percent more non-professional terms. In more private letters of recommendation, Women are praised for their ‘hard work’ while their similar male peers are praised for their “brilliance.” Seemingly harmless, but research has proven it sets women back 5 to 8 percent in postdoctoral career success compared to their equivalent male counterparts.
Can the economy change? Can more female economists succeed?
A recent study reveals a ray of hope: economists can overcome gender differences by recognizing the work and contribution of their peers. Analysis of fellows selected for the Econometric Society between 1933 and 2019 shows that while the chances of female economists being chosen were negative (compared to their similarly successful male counterparts) until 1979, they became positive (but not significantly) from 1980 to 2010 and over the last decade, they were overwhelmingly positive and even doubled. This could have been inspired by a 2012 mandate to nominate more women, demonstrating how change can happen once the doors are opened.
Success still demands more from women in economics, but that doesn’t stop them from achieving it. The victory of the last Nobel Prize winner, Claudia Goldin, coincided with the publication of his study in “why women won”. Given that she is the first female economist to win the prize alone in its 55-year history, it is hard to believe that women actually won. But as with change, Goldin answersIt is with time.