“The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.”
- Bella Abzug
10
I'm glad that the story is accurate about Alice Wu's paper. It concerned a popular online forum for graduate students, not an official job search web site as reported in other outlets like NPR.
Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley seem to have been careful to be accurate.
One problem with the code of conduct idea is that economics is not really a "profession" like medicine or law. Nobody has to pass a legally enforced exam to qualify as an "economist."
4
Any field that bases its models on "assume rationality" has a pretty shaky foundation. So one could assume that without a valid foundation, wrong roads will often be taken. Thank goodness for behavioral economics that has given a nod to real human behavior before reaching conclusions.
9
Another article pushing the line that the percentage difference in women and men in the area of society under examination is the result of "toxic masculinity" or some version thereof. Women and men make different choices based on the different physiological and psychological makeup of the sexes.Those choices result in uneven representation in the workforce, the professions, academia and every other area of society. Will these articles stop when we have the same percentage of women and men in nursing and mechanical engineering? And every other field of endeavor? Not before. The narrative is too convenient for the feminists to use to tip the scales to women in competitive environments.
The increase of women in the workforce since the advent of the pill has been a cultural revolution and we are in the process of setting the rules of the game between the sexes in the new environment. Women want men to see them as sexual beings when it serves their interests and not when it doesn't. Good luck to us in sorting that out. Of course, there are boorish and predatory men, and to a lesser extent women, in every field and such behavior should be condemned. That doesn't mean that percentage differences in representation of the sexes are a result of invidious discrimination by men against women.
4
@Lacedaemonian And just how many days of your life have spent as a woman? None? Then you truly have little idea what you are talking about.
16
People cite anecdotal experiences in the comments as support for 'a mounting crisis' of sexual harassment, discrimination, and bullying of women. I've been a professional woman for decades; during the times when sexual harassment was just developing as a concept and mostly ignored. Yes, I've been sexually harassed and bullied by my male counterparts. It was a part of a culture that was changing. Not fast enough for the youth today who have no concept at all of what women dealt with when they first started entering the professional workforce decades ago. However, this over-sensitivity to words and looks from others completely negates all we fought for. I had no problem saying no to advances, regardless of who they came from. When I sensed I was being sidelined, I got a new job. Proved myself, and continued to succeed. Very disappointed in most of the comments and this trend of whining. Again, negates everything we worked for; and if someone liked my shirt, I said thanks. I didn't take it to HR and get them fired. If someone hugged me, I saw it as a sign of affection, not sexual, and kept a distance just in case. No problems. Fight for yourselves, but don't join this identity politics nonsense. PS Don't whine that you didn't pursue a profession because you were afraid of being harassed. That is a non-starter.
8
As a victim and after enduring the "norms" for over two decades, the #MeToo feels as too little too late. Worse, the confirmation of the unfair treatment received over years only deepens and brings back the pain. Even though I am now tenured in an econ dept (and well published and ranked), I know I could have had a much more intellectually-engaging career if it had not been for all the unfair treatment I and my work received over the years. Yes, I persisted in academia, but me and my family have suffered the consequences of it. I have fought and worked so hard to overcome all the obstacles... just to realize that I am now old, exhausted, and that all that work was never (ever!) going to be rewarded fairly.
23
Life is harsh, especially in competitive fields where the stakes are highest and people are competing for recognition and fame.
Men bully other men.
Let me repeat that: men bully, humiliate, steal the work of, and otherwise undermine other men.
It is what happens in the unsavory, lying world of smash-mouth competition.
Women have used sex to advance in careers, find a mate, divide and conquer groups of female competitors.
Women need to grow up.
7
@Stuart
How about men and women grow up together, stop the nonsense and behave like civilized adults who take responsibility for their own actions and interactions?
11
I hope this is a failure at parody. The kind of “bullying” among men you’re talking about is not even close to demanding sexual favors or have your career permanently injured or even ruined.
14
@Stuart Women need to grow up? How about men stop bullying ANYONE? What gives men the right to be such jerks? All of us should stand up and shout as often as necessary that MEN need to change their boorish behavior no matter who it is directed at. We've had ENOUGH!
16
Ok let's go over it again. Sexual harassment/discrimination has been outlawed since app. 1980. Since then countless women have come forth complained and/or sued and won.
I know I saw many in the large corporation I worked for.
What not to do?...
1-Adult women who wait 20+ yrs to report sex abuse even though it has been outlawed since 1980 and countless women have come forth.
2-Women who complain about sex abuse only when the raises or movie roles stop.
3-Feminist women groups who don't complain re predators like Weinstein as long as he is contributing money to their causes.
4-Women who start the sexual abuse/illegal contact.
5-Gold diggers at work who milk men for everything they got and most women who use their gender to get ahead in some way shape or form.
7-Condemning 98% of today's men for five millions yrs. of being a man despite the fact they have nothing to do with abuse.
4
@Paul
Look up the Civil Rights Act of 1964 re sexual harassment; the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
Visit eeoc.gov to learn about discrimination laws; 6 comes before 7 and after 5.
6
Where can female economists go to get the support they need to be made whole and be treated with respect?
I have been living through this nightmare for my entire career! As a full time, tenured, Economics faculty member, for over 38 years, I have experienced it all!
Discrimination, attacks, harrasments, inequalities, aggressions, character assasinations, alienation, disrespect, bullies and lechers just to mention a few of the systematic abuses that Women Economists face everyday every step of the way!
Where can we go, what can we do to get the help we need to change the draconian conditions under which we labor?
#METOO
7
For black men and women, the economics profession is even harder to break into than for white women.
9
Where can female economists go to get the support they need to be made whole and be treated with respect?
I have been living through this nightmare for my entire career! As a full time, tenured, Economics faculty member, for over 38 years, I have experienced it all!
Discrimination, attacks, harrasments, inequalities, aggressions, character assasinations, alienation, disrespect, bullies and lechers just to mention a few of the systematic abuses that Women Economists face everyday every step of the way!
Where can we go, what can we do to get the help we need to change the draconian conditions under which we labor?
#METOO
13
Science and mathematics don't involve emotions. Does the absence of basic courtesies constitute bullying? Just the same, look at the gross disparity of women to men in the field of Social Work, grade school counseling; K-12 teaching - yet, with more and more STEM schools that percentage may begin to balance.
Harassment occurs everywhere, in the workplace - private and public sectors - and anywhere two [at least one], people are present. And a very small percentage of men are the victims, too.
'Toxic masculinity' is now the topic du jour. It's not the masculinity that takes away the emotional 'skill set', its the dispassionate careers and spectrum of interests that feeds our coping mechanisms.
@Coffee Bean
If you think that lack of social graces is the only issue affecting women in science or econ, I suggest you do some talking to women actually in those fields.
8
@Anon
That was merely an example. My sister is a PhD. Statistical Psychologist at a Univ. and, while the last time she visited she took my 'Go Away' door mat to put outside her office door, it, like her, is not a 'people person' career.
In the most sincerest way, why are there never articles about males who are underrepresented in a field?
Hart amend in ANY form imposed on either sex is never acceptable under any circumstance but if we are talking balance, why are we failing young men?
Thoughts?
1
@Paul Men tend to be underrepresented in any field where the pay is especially low. Does this worry you?
11
@Paul
Where are your offerings of discrimination against men?
3
To people commenting, the stuff in this article is common knowledge among folks in academia. And the reasons for it are themselves standard economic ideas.
First, people's self-interested choices means that culture perpetuates itself. If econ as a field is generally hostile and unpleasant to women, and if you're a brilliant woman, you may well choose to do biology instead. Why choose a field where you will suffer rather than one where you will be rewarded? So they go elsewhere.
Second: Why doesn't competition mitigate this? that is, why don't departments that hire fabulous female economists start to gain an advantage over departments that don't? Because econ suffers from the kind of objective tests of being a fabulous economist that can overcome prejudice. That is, econ has a general lack of falsifiable hypotheses. In physics, which was traditionally equally hostile, women could nevertheless find a toehold because it was possible to come up with a brilliant theory that is testable, falsifiable, and proves its worth to everyone in the field. Or they can go into the lab and test a theory with a brilliantly conducted experiment that produces data everyone agrees on. But econ typically does not operate that way, instead tends to "schools of thought" on how the world should operate, making it harder to break in. This is the field after all where they gave the Nobel only a few years ago to people who disagreed with each other! That could never happen in physics.
30
@Anon
Note the typo in this comment - I meant of course "suffers from the LACK of the kind of objective tests..."
3
@Anon It appears that physics faculties have fewer women than economics departments. About 15%. So your explanation doesn’t appear to hold.
7
@Shiv
No one would argue that physics is perfect - note that I said "toehold" only. Physics is still pretty toxic culturally in most departments. But the lack of objectivity in Econ provides an extra burden on changing the culture.
The objectivity of physics allowed women to make inroads much earlier than in economics, especially in nuclear physics and astronomy. Nuclear physics had 2 female Nobelists before WWII, (Marie Curie 1903, Irene Joliot-Curie 1935), one who arguably deserved a share of the 1944 prize (Lise Meitner) and a 3rd Nobelist, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, in 1963. Econ didn't award a prize to a woman til 2009.
Astronomy has a long tradition of female success stories from the mid-1800s onward, in part because women were hired early on to do the repetitive labor of "computing" and their insights and discoveries were eventually recognized. Maria Mitchell, Henrietta Leavitt, Annie Jump Cannon, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Vera Rubin - some of the biggest names in the history of astronomy are female, and not because the path was easy for them.
7
Something that doesn't get discussed or understood by the mainstream is how ruthless the world of research academia is (and not even at the highest levels, even at mid-ranked and lower institutions). I was, a few years ago, very close to this epicenter, but got out.
It's been a genuine blessing, to be honest. The corporate world is insane, in it's own ways and in the general human drive for power and politics, but at least you make more money.
Imagine you are 5-7 years deep into a Ph.D. program. Assuming you went straight from undergrad to grad school, you're almost 30. You may have delayed things like marriage and starting a family. You are probably living paycheck-to-paycheck and have very poor healthcare (measly stipend + student health center benefits). Your adviser won't give you your Ph.D., not because your research is invalid, but because they don't like you or agree with you, for whatever reason. Meanwhile the "star" of your year has their pick of $150k plus job offers. You languish for months, maybe even years, until you finally get the sign off because they want you gone. Your research was sound, but you picked the wrong person who wasn't an advocate or mentor.
Most of these "rejects" are now making high six-figure salaries in industry. Much of our financial institutions, scientific think-tanks and federal government are composed of these people and others who abdicated academia on their own free will because of the low pay and insanity.
26
@ABThis is definitely true, but for men as well, as my friend's husband chose to start his entire PhD over because of a rejection by his adviser. So it may not be a gender bias thing exclusively.
3
@AB Yes, it's true. But it's even more than that. Even if the advisor supports you and you get an academic job you still have six or seven more years trying to get tenure, which is no joke. And many times you have no control on what type of institution you'll end up next. Many people go to industry after being denied tenure. That is, at 37 or 38, imagine that. Academia is an amazing life once you get tenure, but never before that.
5
Re: competition rooting out discrimination in academic economics. Don't forget that peer review is 100% anonymous and publication records are largely how departments decide who to hire and tenure. Even if departments systematically chose to hire women with slightly weaker records than men (I am not aware of such evidence but it seems plausible), it's hard to see how that would undo discrimination that exists in peer review. I don't know what the right solution is to this problem but I don't think the Becker argument necessarily applies here.
Ah, you say, but what about the editors who want papers more likely to get cited? Doesn't the competition argument apply then? Maybe somewhat but authors have a lot of discretion regarding which papers they cite and are more likely to cite papers by people they know and like (most likely white dudes). Most editors are also too busy to read 50+ page papers and so rely very heavily on peer reviewers and don't know what biases the peer reviewers might have. The profession definitely needs more activist editors but who has the time?
It is surprising that the article does not mention that there has been a vast literature on discrimination published from at least the 1960s, and fails to mention the class action lawsuits undertaken to reduce the discrimination against women, as well as other minorities. There is lots published about only hiring people--men or women--who dress in ways that the person hiring thinks appropriate. Women have long been advised to keep their office door open if someone wants to talk to them, to avoid any inappropriate behavior. In some cases, I was told that the only thing a grant-awarding group discusssed about my application was what I would be like in bed. In another case, I was told that I was invited to present a paper because they needed a woman.
In relation to the job market, not just for economists, it is suggested that men go for market share, and that their aggressive behavior causes many of their firms or organizations to fail, while women take fewer risks, so that their firms and organizations survive. Their success, apparently, is tied to hiring a woman.
10
The code word that established economists use as a bludgeon against any challenge to their Libertarian theology is "soft". That should tell you all you need to know.
6
I don't know, I think it's a little tone-deaf for the New York Times to write this article and completely leave out any mention of the pioneering work on gender discrimination in labor markets by female economics professors (Claudia Goldin at Harvard, being among the most prominent examples). Instead, they sum up our attitude towards gender discrimination in labor markets with the following...
"Many male economists ...pointed to theories that predict that, in the simplified world of economic models, discrimination on the basis of characteristics like gender and race would disappear because of competition."
Hm
23
Men hating feminists want to destroy everyone male in this country. Now it is economics turn. Tomorrow they will start on physics and computer science. All men are guilty until proven innocent. How sad...
4
@Ilya You sound threatened. Don't worry: we'd only like an equal slice of the pie.
5
The only concrete fact in this piece is the percentage of Economics professors that are female (23%). Everything else is vague generalities. An identical piece could be written about men being discriminated against in psychology departments. A quick google search shows that 70% of PhDs in psychology are awarded to women. And that pipeline then translates into substantially more women entering the academic ranks. About two-thirds of lecturers in psychology are women, which pretty much guarantees that psychology departments will be overwhelmingly female in the next two decades as these lecturers advance in their careers. I don’t expect editorials decrying this reality.
The economics profession is also not lacking in minorities. They’re just not underrepresented minorities. East and South Asians are disproportionately represented.
The article also evades the question that anyone with any training in economics would ask (and which the male economists did ask): if women are underpaid or under recognized despite displaying the same or greater competence than men, then why do economics departments not hire them disproportionately? Asians are hired disproportionately in economics departments. That could only happen if economists are sexist but not racist. Which is garbage.
The supporting evidence for the charge of discrimination is the claim that women exhibit higher standards of writing and “rampant misogyny”. Some facts would be welcome instead of such fact-free accusations.
11
@Shiv
Seems like the supporting evidence is the widespread reporting (unless most women who choose economics are liars) and the acceptance of the leadership that this is a valid issue.
Never mind the on-going investigation and loss of position of at least one man mentioned by name in the article for behavior described above.
So yeah, I guess there is no real evidence. And what would be real evidence? Maybe video of the behavior?
5
In regards to the economists' claim that discrimination can't survive competition, I am put in mind of that old joke about the economist whose comment on another's postulate was "Well, that may be true in practice, but is it true in theory"? Or the other one: "Just because something is happening doesn't mean it's possible".
27
"Simplified world of economic models," indeed. Our society's vaunted, so-called classical economics, such as that of the Chicago and Virginia schools, is of, by, and for a privileged white male elite and their enablers--and at the expense of everything else. This arrangement has prevailed since the mid-1970s after the well-planned overthrow of the Keynesian model, a balanced (if uneasily) socialist/capitalist hybrid that at least recognized labor, public works, conservation, and the public sector as economic drivers.
Economics as propounded in so many universities today is a dubious academic discipline that's inherently hostile to all disfavored populations, including women as an economic category, even as it deceives the unwary into believing it's adhering to a neutral and unassailable scientific method and representing a supposed natural state of affairs. Such a claim can only work in tandem with furthering a benighted view of human nature-- as if a person could see no good in human character beyond the thirst for personal power and wealth-- a view that can be cultivated from consuming a steady diet of Hobbes, Hume, Machiavelli, and of course, pseudo-philosophers like Ayn Rand. It requires making a travesty of values like altruism, justice, love, and even the act of being kind to your mother.
27
Economists cannot apply economic principles to the market place for economists based on gender? Makes sense.
Economists cannot report on differences in employment practices/results at different employers of economists. How helpless.
Econometricians cannot apply math to a 75% male to 25% female employment pattern to explain the difference. Right.
Economics schools/departments known as liberal or conservative show no variation in employment and promotion by gender. No such speciality as labor economics or political economy?
American women economists who know something about the history of labor economics and unionization might use their knowledge to force change. American labor history is replete with every tough practice up to and including murder to impede those pushing for change in the labor market. Women might consider they have to do more than whine and do it for a couple decades.
Where is Yellen's explanation for her success? Paul Samuelson was very clear that he suffered from professional/economics discrimination based on religion. Economists are people too.
4
It will be a long road to put a stop to the discrimination. In the field of mathematics and computational biology, the discrimination is so intense that it is essentially accepted as a fact of life. Many years ago I remember a discussion at a conference among women participants who agreed that just about every woman in mathematics has had to deal with turning down male colleagues (many of them married) in the most uncomfortable situations. In the field of computational biology, while there are a few more women in the field, the discrimination is compounded by an atmosphere of rampant stealing and back stabbing, and women are routinely pushed aside by people who have built their fame by stealing ideas from colleagues. The corruption includes women who steal from other women much more than from men. It will be a long long road to recover from this situation.
16
“... women are routinely pushed aside by people who have built their fame by stealing ideas from colleagues.”
Dr Watson and Dr Crick come to mind. Their work would not have been possible without viewing the work of Rosalind Franklin - without her permission.
14
Economics has been a field in which success is measured by the acceptance and adulation of the greedy rich in our world. Economists are rewarded, and many are rewarded very well, for theories which validate and perpetuate the endless striving for greater wealth. Professors at Harvard probably spend more time at conferences where they are well compensated, than teaching.
Seems like a perfect field for misogyny as well as racism and general contempt for the working classes. If the goal for a striving young economist is to get invited to Davos and feed the men there the pablum they crave, it seems likely that she will encounter plenty of experience for #MeToo both from "colleagues" and those paying the bill.
The point being, if you look at the core of the economic profession, the harassment is only the tip of the iceberg.
33
@adamwdsk
I doubt any junior economist expects or wants invitations to Davos. Most economists at Harvard and every other research university spend most of their time staring at computers running regressions or writing. Publications, not approval of the rich, are coin of the realm.
14
@adamwdsk Yes--This neoliberal/libertarian project is deeply out of balance with what's needed in our world today. As it denies the needs of natural systems and societies it exploits, the dominant economic system expropriates their rich resources, then treats them with contempt as we see in our shredded civic life and social safety net; in the treatment of and respect accorded to women in public, professional, and private spheres; and, of course, in our degraded and collapsing natural world. By privileging supply-side models, we also see such appalling effects as might-makes-right values corroding legal, political, and justice systems; an unchecked, imperial-style geopolitical militarism; and erosion of our privacy to expanding surveillance and security states on the lookout for someone to blame-- could it be you? The denial of our interdependence has now brought on climate catastrophe. This authoritarian dystopian moment was brought to you, in no small measure, by market fundamentalism.
7
@Greenshade
...by market fundamentalist pretentions.
Economists approach silence regarding monopolistic military procurement, agriculture subsidies, banking protections (insurance), welfare for the rich. Virtually all know that market immunity/protections for ensconced wealth are immaterial while similar measures aimed at the underclasses are material and harmful.
Remember an economist decrying the bankers and brokers $1 trillion bailout? Remember an economist sputtering about a minimum wage increase?
3
My PhD advisor was told as an undergraduate that she not take calculus because she was a woman. In 2009, she won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom
77
@Curmudgeon Dr. Ostrom's work figured prominently in my own econ PhD. And I love telling students the story of an attendee at a conference once asking her to bring some coffee (thinking that she was a waitress). An amazing woman.
47
@Curmudgeon
Love these fifty year ago throw back stories.
I was also told not to take Calculus, because it was rarely required and my advisor thought it superfluous to my academic goals.
I was being brainsplained I guess.
Both my daughters took AP Calculus. Time to catch up. They didn’t require gender quotas to earn their As.
5
@Curmudgeon
Well, we all have anecdotal stories about mistreatment and underestimation. (That, was a good one.) It reminded me of the ten percent or so people that have some form of dyslexia who are “advised” to channel themselves into one of the “trades.” This is millions of people. Not to mention the humiliation of getting an “F” on a simple spelling test, over and over. Ms. Ostrom, is obviously brilliant, in her own way, but can she write and direct a movie like Steven Spielberg? (A dyslexic.)
1
“Many male economists long dismissed claims of bias and discrimination, arguing that gender disparities must reflect differences in preference or ability. They pointed to theories that predict that, in the simplified world of economic models, discrimination on the basis of characteristics like gender and race would disappear because of competition.”
+1 for the Law and Economics crowd as well. If anything, the combination can bring out the worst in either field. Try being a female student in a male-dominated L&E style law school class. Deeply sexist and racist hypotheticals are considered necessary thought experiments, with any objections to a premise immediately shut down as intellectually lazy. Male profs sometimes openly lament how they avoid female students or always keep doors open to avoid “false accusations.” (These things actually happened in the very recent past in places that pride themselves as intellectually rigorous, meritocratic “marketplaces of ideas.”)
I’d like to say that this was limited to the tweed-elbowed dinosaurs, but it’s surprisingly widespread among younger men (and subsets of conservative women) as well.
That said, there will always be backlash among the powerful when you’re doing something right. I hope those in the Econ world with enough privilege to speak up continue to do so. Complacency and academic hand-wringing is how we often lose momentum.
40
@ES
"Male profs sometimes openly lament how they avoid female students or always keep doors open to avoid “false accusations.”"
Nothing wrong with this. As an instructor in a college, you will be a fool not to do this.
4
economics: opinion pretending to be science
to the extent that women open doors in this closed and closed minded field, i hope they shake up the prevailing orthodoxies, which consist of writing on a chalkboard 100 times that markets are perfect, despite the fact that they are subject to panics and bubbles, and that governement intervention is bad, despite the fact that the united states economy has been captured by the interests its government is supposed to regulate
19
@true patriot the economics that I studied didnt' teach that markets are perfect or government intervention is bad. On the contrary, it taught me about market failures and the necessity of government intervention.
But I agree that many economists wrap their ideologies in fabricated models. That is a problem with the fields.
17
@true patriot Yes--this "simplified" model conceals for personal gain the truth of the interdependence with natural systems and societies of any economic arrangement and marks it as a fraudulent enterprise. No wonder its proponents must engage in all manner of propaganda and thought-policing, which as Jane Mayer and others have shown, is effectively mainstreaming extreme-right views and shutting out of mainstream discourse any views not adhering to tenets of neoliberalism (quoting Jem Bendell) of hyper-individualism, atomism, incrementalism, and market fundamentalism.
Part of this neoliberal project requires undermining all communitarian or pro-social values. By these lights, women's worth can only be measured by her ability to reproduce the social resources exploited by this economic system; devaluing women's labor in the home, lowering pay scales for women and within female-dominated professions, and exercising state control over women's bodies are just part of the effects of this worldview. As it denies the needs of natural systems and societies it exploits, the dominant economic system expropriates their rich resources, then treats them with contempt as we see in our shredded civic life and social safety net; in the treatment of and respect accorded to women in public, professional, and private spheres; and, of course, in our degraded and collapsing natural world.
8
@Amir
The economics that you studied may have taught you about market failures and the necessity of government intervention, but unfortunately these days the kind of government intervention we have these days is encapsulated in the year's tax bill - a giveaway to corporations and the rich at the expense of everyone else.
6
And to think these men are the people helping to shape our national economic life.
A personal plea to Janet Yellen: Could you use your leadership to help us all take steps toward an economy that doesn't rely on the exploitation of the weak, the vulnerable, oh and, yeah women and people of color?
43
@NCTransplant Economics as it's almost everywhere presented in US schools is the inculcating of sophistry to expound a system that favors the financial sector over all other values, particularly those not readily monetized, in a false (if internally consistent) narrative far removed from the messy realities of its setting within society and the natural world, which are "externalized," demonized, extracted and expropriated from, and then simply trashed--as though the whole mystery of the natural world in its abundant biodiversity, magnificence, and wonder was to be exploited and dismissed, consigned to use as a sewer. I think the gender parallel is clear.
9
@Greenshade
One look at the business pages makes this so.
If looking there for broader views of society at large, and how economic decisions might affect it, they're not to be found.
4
@NCTransplant
That is anti-Darwin, anti-evolution, and anti-science.
It is actually pro-Jesus Christ.
Surprising in this paper.
Harvard University has made a strong effort over the years to hire minority economists, but the results haven't turned out well. We know about Roland Fryer and his problems with women students. Before him, there was Glenn Loury, who had a serious drug problem and was violent towards his wife. Both of these men are of outstanding intellect, but their personality weaknesses tripped up their careers.
7
@Diogenes Personality weaknesses? Tripped up? Way to minimize violence and misogyny.
25
@Diogenes °...their personality weaknesses tripped up their careers° eventually, but not soon enough.
10
@Diogenes
There are very legitimate issues being raised about economics, but it is best to get the facts about people correct:
http://augustinecollective.org/an-interview-with-professor-glenn-loury/
1
A significant but unspoken reason among some minority groups for not going into certain professions is the stress of harassment and bullying.
They know they can do the work and excel but they refuse to subject themselves to the daily barrage of stress and harassment knowing they won’t be promoted or accepted.
Good for the people taking this issue seriously and shining a light on it. Choosing to hobble ourselves by sidelining women and minorities is backwards.
56
@SM
Sounds a great deal like post-hoc rationalization
Women have flooded Laws School and Medical Schools and in the Law they have exceeded 50% since 2016.
Those were traditionally hostile environments as well but they are huge success stories now - women may simply - like me - not like economics.
And seriously - why would a smart person choose Eco in this day and age?
8
@SteveRR
This article isn't about women who don't like economics. It is about women who apparently love it enough to make it a profession, but don't think they should face a continuing level of nasty behavior in exchange for doing what they love. Really, we are 40 years on from some of these struggles in law and medicine and no one with half an eye open thinks they are over. And gosh, after so many years why are we still having to have the same issues go on and on and on and not get addressed?
Physics, engineering, architecture - I know women in each of these professions, who, after years of study and achievement are still treated poorly.
We need to fire a dozen or so of the prominent men who are most beastly and let them pay the price publicly so that the rest will get the message.
That is an economic idea: financial and social consequences for abusers.
17
@s parson
The plural of anecdote is not data
I know and work with plenty of women in engineering and they like it just fine. I know lots of men who don't like their engineering, law or medical careers - they just don't claim it is because of their sex.
Being treated poorly and being treated well are not gender issues and this constant drumbeat to make them into gender issues is what causes the knee-jerk eye-rolls from many folks - male and female