The gender gap in UK academic economics 1996-2018: progress, stagnation and retreat

Victoria Bateman and Erin Hengel

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This article reports on women’s representation in UK economics over the last quarter century. While progress has been made, women in 2018 were only 32 percent of economics undergraduate students and 26 percent of academic economists. Our data also suggest several areas of stagnation and retreat. First, the percentage of female UK nationals studying economics is low and falling over time. Second, female economists are substantially more likely to be employed at lower academic ranks and in fixed-term—and generally lower status—teaching- and research-only positions. Third, the representation of women is especially low among ethnic minorities studying for an economics PhD. And finally, the percentage of economics professors with Asian ethnicity who are women has been falling over time, and at no point between 2012-2018 was a Black female professor of economics employed anywhere in the UK.

Keywords: gender; diversity; labour market equality; women in the economics profession; gender gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 I23 J24 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2023-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-hpe, nep-sea and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in OEconomia, 1, June, 2023, 13(2), pp. 163 - 200. ISSN: 2113-5207

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118205/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:118205

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().