Variation in Women’s Success across PhD Programs in Economics

Abstract

We document wide and persistent variation in women’s representation and success across graduate programs in economics. Using new data on early career outcomes for recent graduates, including first job placement, publications, and promotion, we rank (anonymized) departments on outcomes for women relative to men graduating from the same program. We then conduct interviews with faculty and former students from five programs with better and worse relative outcomes. We find that departments with better outcomes for women also hire more women faculty, facilitate advisor–student contact, provide collegial research seminars, and are notable for senior faculty with awareness of gender issues. We offer our qualitative evidence as the first step in learning about “what works” in expanding women’s representation in economics.

Lifting Diversity and Inclusion in Economics: How the Australian Women in Economics Network Put the Evidence into Action*

“…Overall the statistical picture of women's under‐representation in Australia's economics profession is largely consistent with broader gender disparities in economics that have been well documented internationally (Ginther & Kahn, 2014; Bayer & Rouse, 2016; Tenreyro, 2017; Lundberg & Stearns, 2018; American Economic Association Committee on Equity, Diversity and Professional Conduct, 2019; Auriol et al. , 2019; Boustan & Langan, 2019; Gamage et al ., 2020; Liu et al ., 2020; Megalokonomou et al ., 2021).…”

Gender pay gaps in economics: A deeper look at institutional factors

“…Women continue to face numerous barriers when climbing the academic career ladder across disciplines, and many of these barriers exist at an institutional level, such as within departments and universities. In addition to outright discrimination, such barriers may include, but are not limited to, insufficient female role models (Avilova & Goldin, 2018) and female managers (Langan, 2019; Kim, 2021), fewer same‐gender peers (Bostwick & Weinberg, 2022), less opportunity for mentoring and social networking (McDowell et al., 2006), less‐collegial environments within the department (Boustan & Langan, 2019), differential assessments by gender (Lundberg & Stearns, 2019), differences in attribution credit for contributions (Ross et al., 2022), and differences in the adoption of research (Cheng & Weinberg, 2023). However, little research distinguishes how much of the existing gender disparities stem from such institutional factors.…”

Publishing during a sociology PhD in Australia: Differences by elite and non-elite universities and gender

“…Third, women may have less involvement in academic networks that support publishing and may be less involved in co-authoring with their supervisors (Lindahl et al, 2021). Fourth, gender-based differences in productivity may reflect different expectations or less recognition of women's research (Boustan & Langan, 2019). Fifth, gender differentials may apply to the value being placed on research productivity and to the fields of research chosen (Stack, 2002).…”