Gender inequality is ubiquitous in economics. The recent Women in Economics Index (2020) found that men still dominate the economics profession across the academic, private and public sectors. It highlighted academia as particularly bad; finding that men comprise 80% of the staff in the world’s top 25 economics departments, 95% of the world’s top 100 economics authors, and 75.4% of positions within the world’s top think tanks. Moveover, while gender inequality exists within academia across social sciences, it is far worse in economics, where women are ‘woefully underrepresented’ (Formella et al, 2020).
The lack of gender diversity within the economics department at the University of Manchester (UoM) is synonymous with the findings of this report despite UoM striving to ‘employ a workforce and educate a student body that reflects the diverse community we serve’ (UoM, 2021). UoM offers two, single honours, undergraduate economics degrees: BScEcon and BAEcon. The Economics BSc programme has fifteen compulsory modules across first and second year and the Economics BA programme has four. All of the nineteen compulsory modules are taught by men. Furthermore, the majority of optional economics modules are also taught by men – making it very easy for students, through no fault of their own, to experience a three-year undergraduate course, with exclusively male lecturers.
Very low or no gender parity within economics departments has major implications on the education of economics students; it limits diversity of thought, excludes the lived experience of half of the population and deters female students from pursuing academic careers. Research by May et al (2018) illustrates the differing views of male and female economists, finding significant differences in opinion across: core economic principles and methodology; market solutions versus government intervention; government spending, taxation, and redistribution; environmental protection; and gender and equal opportunities. Moreover, ‘female economists place much less confidence in the market than their male counterparts do when it comes to solving problems in the economy and society’. While economics curricula exclude the voices of female economists, they are delivering an education with an inbuilt bias towards favouring market outcomes.
The Women in Economics Index (2020) concludes that ‘economics as a discipline will be able to serve society best when we recognise and foster talent of every kind’; to do so requires institutions to challenge the systemic barriers to equality and diversity within the profession. Economics departments have a responsibility to improve their practices, such that they perpetuate gender equality. I believe this requires departments to recognise: firstly, that the perspectives of women are essential to economics education; secondly, gender, race and class must be present in economic analysis; and finally, accepting that the inclusion of pluralist economic perspectives can attract a broader range of students towards studying economics. While men gate-keep economics, the discipline is losing relevance, talent and credibility; reform is just, necessary and urgent.
Written by Paddy Nelson
References:
May, A. M., McGarvey, M. G. and Kucera, D. (2018) ‘Gender and European Economic Policy: A Survey of the Views of European Economists on Contemporary Economic Policy’, Kyklos, 71(1), pp. 162–183. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/kykl.12166
May, A. M., McGarvey, M. G. and Kucera, D. (2018) ‘Including More Women Economists Influences Policy Choices, Research’, IMF F&D Magazine. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2018/06/including-more-women-economists-influences-policy-and-research/may.pdf
Formella, C et al. (2020) ‘The Women in Economics Index 2020’. https://women-in-economics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/WiE_Index_2020.pdf
Advani, A et al. (2019) ‘Economics in the UK has a diversity problem that starts in schools and colleges’ VoxEU.org
Hanspach, P et al. (2021) ‘Few top positions in economics are held by women’ VoxEU.org
University of Manchester (UoM) (2021), ‘Equality Information Report 2021’.