There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth a couple years back over a New York Times article that bemoaned the fact that women were experiencing a “toxic environment” in economics departments on campus:
A pathbreaking new study of online conversations among economists describes and quantifies a workplace culture that appears to amount to outright hostility toward women in parts of the economics profession. . .
The underrepresentation of women in top university economics departments is already well documented, but it has been difficult to evaluate claims about workplace culture because objectionable conversations rarely occur in the open. Whispered asides at the water cooler are hard to observe, much less measure.
If women aren’t faring well in economics, it can’t be because women face discrimination in general. A tipping point was reached in 2018, and women faculty now outnumber male faculty in higher education. What glass ceiling?
Chaser, from Nature magazine:
Female researchers in mathematics, psychology and economics are 3–15 times more likely to be elected as members of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) or the American Academy of Arts and Sciences than are male counterparts who have similar publication and citation records, a study finds. . .
Lead author David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the boost does not seem to be due to an analogous increase in the number of potentially qualified female candidates for membership.
Yeah, but let’s keep screaming that women face a “toxic environment” in academia.
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