A recent study shows that the number of women studying Economics in American Univeristies has declined. This can be concerning because economics is related to public policies and decline in the number of women would be mean men's voices would be more dominant. The number of women getting Ph.D.'s has also decreased over time. Only 35 percent of women were economics major which is the same as 1980's. There are several reasons behind the decline of a number of women in the Economics field. Women are usually not given credit for their papers written with their male counterparts. Even in discussions of economics research, women are consigned as secondary. The gender-neutral parental leave has worsened the situation as men utilize their leaves to improve their careers while women spend their time providing child-care. Janet Yellen, the only woman to have served as the Chair of Federal Reserved had failed to get tenure at Harvard. The lack of women in Economics can result in negative outcomes for the society. Studies show that women focus more on labor markets, education, health issues income distribution while men focus on the macroeconomics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/business/why-womens-voices-are-scarce-in-economics.html
3 comments:
It will be interesting to see now how the ratio of men to women in economics changes as millenials continue to enter the workforce and Gen X begins their college careers. One of my favorite Economists to read, Christina Hoff Sommers, discusses how the current education system heavily favors women and feminine societal standards. She points out that Women generally have higher GPAs, higher graduation rates, higher starting salaries, and higher probability of getting a job 2-1 than a Man. It should also be noted that young girls are more emboldened to enter into fields generally dominated by men as the typical - “your a girl, you probably shouldn’t go into this or that field” — is spouted much less frequently. I believe we could see an increase in the number of Women in economics in the coming years.
That is very interesting. I think it is also very interesting to look at our own economics department at Ohio Wesleyan and despite having some very strong and influential female professors the department is still mostly dominated by male students. I also think this has to do with personal interests and what as seen as common for most fields. Nursing and Teaching are professions in which women greatly out number males. I believe in my labor class a couple of years ago we were talking about this and Dr. Gitter spoke about an old OWU professor who noticed in his class there were only 4 females. This professor I believe made the prediction this would not change because of the lack of attraction of economics had to females. Funny enough there were only 4 females in my class over 30 years later. I think the type of economics the different genders focused on was very interesting. I remember Dr. Yazar talking about being one of the few females in game theory.
I am curious what has caused this decline in economics as well as Ph.D's in general. Women make up half our population and are equally as affected by economic policy, so these are concerning statistics. I wonder what fields we have seen increases in women studying.
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