Women in Economics: Stalled Progress

Shelly Lundberg and Jenna Stearns ()
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Jenna Stearns: University of California, Santa Barbara

No 2018-090, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: In this paper, we first document trends in the gender composition of academic economists over the past 25 years, the extent to which these trends encompass the most elite departments, and how women's representation across fields of study within economics has changed. We then review the recent literature on other dimensions of women's relative position in the discipline, including research productivity and income, and assess evidence on the barriers that female economists face in publishing, promotion, and tenure. While underlying gender differences can directly affect the relative productivity of men and women, due to either differential constraints or preferences, productivity gaps do not fully explain the gender disparity in promotion rates in economics. Furthermore, the progress of women has stalled relative to that in other disciplines in the past two decades. We propose that differential assessment of men and women is one important factor in explaining this stalled progress, reflected in gendered institutional policies and apparent implicit bias in promotion and editorial review processes.

Keywords: gender; economics; tenure and promotion practices; promotion; tenure; publishing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J21 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-his, nep-hme and nep-hpe
Note: IP
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Lundbe ... stalled-progress.pdf First version, November 12, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Women in Economics: Stalled Progress (2019)
Working Paper: Women in Economics: Stalled Progress (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2018-090

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