Economics is having a #MeToo moment. The profession has long lagged behind other social sciences, and even most hard sciences, in recruiting female students, faculty hiring and promotion. Female economists often face hostile teaching evaluations, more exacting reviewing processes by journals and less credit for co-authoring. A recent paper by Alice Wu of Harvard University also documented a particularly toxic culture of misogyny on an economics jobs website.
At this year’s American Economic Association meeting, several top female economists, including Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chair, talked about their own struggles with gender bias and discrimination in economics.
But male economists, who held 72 per cent of US assistant professorships and 87 per cent of full professorships do not view the profession’s gender problem as seriously, as shown by a recent study that I conducted with Ha-Joon Chang of Cambridge university.