There is a problem with taking people's perceptions as fact, though. They don't always match up with reality.
Here are a few research articles cited in the NYT
based on data instead of perceptions:
Gendered Language on the Economics Job Market Rumors Forum (
American Economic Association)
This paper examines the existence of an unwelcoming or stereotypical culture using evidence on how women and men are portrayed in anonymous discussions on the Economics Job Market Rumors forum (EJMR). I use a Lasso-Logistic model to measure gendered language in EJMR postings, identifying the words that are most strongly associated with discussions about one gender or the other. I find that the
words most predictive of a post about a woman are typically about physical appearance or personal information, whereas those most predictive of a post about a man tend to focus on academic or professional characteristics.
Gender Differences in Recognition for Group Work (
Gender Differences in Recognition for Group Work)
I find that men are tenured at roughly the same rate regardless of whether they coauthor or solo-author.
Women, however, become less likely to receive tenure the more they coauthor. The result is most pronounced for women coauthoring with men and less pronounced among women who coauthor with other women. I contrast economics with sociology, a discipline in which coauthors are listed in order of contribution, and find that when contributions are made clear, men and women receive equal credit for coauthored papers.
Gender in the Journals: Publication Patterns in Political Science (
Gender in the Journals: Publication Patterns in Political Science | PS: Political Science & Politics | Cambridge Core)
This article explores publication patterns across 10 prominent political science journals, documenting a significant gender gap in publication rates for men and women. We present three broad findings. First, we find no evidence that the low percentage of female authors simply mirrors an overall low share of women in the profession. Instead, we find continued underrepresentation of women in many of the discipline’s top journals. Second, we find that women are not benefiting equally in a broad trend across the discipline toward coauthorship. Most published collaborative research in these journals emerges from all-male teams. Third, it appears that the methodological proclivities of the top journals do not fully reflect the kind of work that female scholars are more likely than men to publish in these journals. The underrepresentation of qualitative work in many journals is associated as well with an underrepresentation of female authors.
Diversity in the Economics Profession: A New Attack on an Old Problem (American Economic Association)
The economics profession includes disproportionately few women and members of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups, relative both to the overall population and to other academic disciplines. This underrepresentation within the field of economics is present at the undergraduate level, continues into the ranks of the academy, and is barely improving over time. It likely hampers the discipline, constraining the range of issues addressed and limiting our collective ability to understand familiar issues from new and innovative perspectives. In this paper, we first
present data on the numbers of women and underrepresented minority groups in the profession. We then offer an overview of current research on the reasons for the underrepresentation, highlighting evidence that may be less familiar to economists. We
argue that implicit attitudes and institutional practices may be contributing to the underrepresentation of women and minorities at all stages of the pipeline, calling for new types of research and initiatives to attack the problem. We then review evidence on how diversity affects productivity and propose remedial interventions as well as findings on effectiveness. We identify several promising practices, programs, and areas for future research.