This has wide social and material implications, as economists work in banks and government, and have a direct role in policy making.
[2] In 2017 Alice Wu, an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, published a study[3] which used natural language processing to analyze economics job market rumors, an online forum used by academic economists to discuss job openings and candidates.
She found two main results: first, nine of the top 10 words predictive of a post about a woman are explicitly sexual references; second, posts about women contain 43% fewer academic or professional terms and 192% more terms related to personal information or physical attributes.
[4] Most recently, in 2021, the evidence comes from a research study with a systematic attempt at quantitatively measuring the seminar culture within economics.
In addition, female-authored papers took six months longer to get published, even though they are more readable than those produced by their male counterparts.
[8] Probably due to all of these reasons the research also shows that there is a confidence gap between men and women economists working in top U.S. universities.
[10] The number of undergraduate women majoring in economics in the United States peaked in the mid- to late- 1990s and has decreased since then.
Nationwide there are about three males for every female student majoring in economics, and this ratio has not changed for more than 20 years.
[needs update] In 2020, only 22% of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) affiliates were women.
[citation needed] In 2017, female professors represented 12.87% of the top 20 university economic departments in Europe.