Women are under-represented in the economics profession worldwide. This has a wide social 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, 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 effect 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 2% for female economists. In 2017 Alice Wu, an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, 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, in contrast when discussing male economist they tended to use terms emphasizing their intellectual abilities.
Statistics
The number of undergraduate women majoring in economics in the United States peaked in the mid to late 1990s and has decreased since. Women earn the majority of undergraduate degrees across all subjects in the United States, but in 2016 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, 157 were awarded to women. In the United Kingdom, women make up 57% of all undergraduate students, but 27% of those are studying pure economics. Women's participation in economics is less than in any other social science.
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 work to increasing 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.
