Guest Post by DIVYA BHAGIA

On the face of it, it is hard to believe that our beloved science of economics that has provided enough space to discuss, and at some levels promote, the idea of women’s empowerment could actually be sexist itself. Earlier, I would have offered an aggressive defence of the dscipline. So before I move on, I need to convince you with some facts, just as I had to convince myself that not everything is as it appears and there is enough reason to probe further in this direction.

Leaky Pipeline

The 2012 Annual Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession reported that there were only 32.5% women amongst all the people who attained a PHD degree in 2012 at 122 economic departments with doctoral programs, and there were only 28.3% women amongst assistant professors, 21.6% amongst associate professors and 11.6% amongst full professors. The fact that an already skewed women-men ratio of 3:7 in the field skews up to 1:9 ratio as we move up does ring the ‘sexist bell’. This pattern which has characterised the participation of women in economics profession for the longest time is referred to as the ‘leaky pipeline’, where we see that women are being dropped out at each step of the academic ladder.

One reason not to dwell deeper on these numbers maybe that the percentage of women as full professors today should depend on the percentage of women as assistant professors say fifteen years back. But as the figure above shows that the numbers for each category remain more or less the same throughout the fifteen years. Also if we look at similar numbers confining ourselves to only top 10 or top 20 Economic departments in the sample, the ‘pipeline’ is even more ‘leakier’.  Continue reading Is economics sexist? Divya Bhagia →