Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Reaching the Top? On Gender Balance in the Economics Profession

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Abstract

Despite an increasing number of women entering the economics profession during recent decades, it is still dominated by men. This paper summarizes the situation in academic economics in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, the United States, and Sweden (substantial appendices, not previously available in English, detail the situation in Sweden). Women constitute about a third of the PhD graduates in each country, but their share of the economics full professors is still between 5 and 9 percent. Compared to other academic fields, economics has the greatest gender discrepancy in career attainment. We discuss various reasons for the under-representation of women, and call for continued efforts to increase the presence of women.