Women and Academia

Many years ago, I really disliked the discussions around gender in academia. I wanted to be seen as a researcher, and believed that the best way to ensure gender was irrelevant was to avoid making it salient. Girl power was really not my thing, at all. I disliked any kind of organizations or meetings centered around women in academia. Now, I am older and wiser, I have changed my mind and believe that we should do all we can to get more gender balance in academia.

Why more gender balance? Of course equality across genders is appealing, but it will not be my main argument for why we need women in academia. We need women in academia because science progresses best when there is a diversity of ideas, when there are debates, when people bring in insights from different horizons. Women are different in many ways (we can debate whether this is nature or nurture, I won't do this here), they tend to specialize in different fields than men, they bring other insights, are sympathetic to different methodologies. Diversity is a great seed for knowledge.

What is currently going wrong? One argument that is often mentioned is that academia is a ruthless jungle, and women dislike the environment. My experience has been mixed. I think there are a few people who think they are in a jungle, but the vast majority of people is in fact quite nice. There are however two issues I see that need addressing: One is that I truly believe that all else equal, female academics are taken less seriously than male academics. It could be that it is because men come across as more confident and assertive, or it could be that we are just not used to see women in important positions. But this has been very salient to me. I think the way people speak to me is very different from the way they speak to a male equivalent. The second issue I see is that men and women are distributed differently across fields, and my experience has been that (some) men find it hard to consider people (men and women) in fields that are less male-dominated, like development, health, labour, well-being, etc. They are really thrilled at the idea of hiring an excellent female academic in their field, doing the work they like, but they are not so thrilled at the idea of hiring people who are outside their field, especially if that field is not techy. This is in my sense the key issue because this is also why we don't get the benefits of having more gender diversity. If departments hire women to hire women, and privilege women working in fields that have been established by men, there won't be much benefits of increasing gender diversity, besides the fact that it is of course more fun to have gender diversity, and women will take on some of administrative duties that men dislike. I see this problem as being quite acute because the first year of our graduate programs in economics is structured around male-dominated fields: Macro, theory and econometrics. I remember being quite depressed in the first year of my PhD and really missing courses that would be more centered around ideas...

What should we do? I think the first step is to become aware of these potential biases: Economics, like other fields, has been established by men. So the approach we have in economics follows what they thought should be the approach. Of course the field has changed tremendously, and will continue to change. But it would really help if we would be a bit more open and alert to other ideas. Should the core of economics really be only about the business cycle, game theory and econometrics? I can't argue that tools are not essential, but I feel the current balance is too much in favour of tools and too little in favour of ideas. Imagine we could press the reset button and start the field again. What if women were in charge? Could they come up with different set of "core courses" that they believe everybody should learn before doing any research. Probably, my prediction would be that it would be more balanced: perhaps half tools, half ideas. And when it comes to the ideas, would we think that growth and the business cycle are central? Perhaps, or perhaps not. The great thing about academics is that we can question ourselves. That is the first step forward.

Why should you stay in academia if you are a woman? Precisely to bring that change. I am pretty sure you did a PhD because you wanted to make a difference, and this is one you can help making. You can bring new ideas, shape the field, argue for why we should hire more broadly, argue for why we need different approaches. The worst thing I think is to try to "fit in", adjust to the norms you do not understand or do not feel comfortable with and basically try to fare like a man in a male world. We don't need female compliers, we need women who will bring the best they can bring to the academic debate.