Sex, Drugs and Economics: Gender bias and peer recognition at the top of scientific disciplines

Sunday 18 December 2022

Gender bias and peer recognition at the top of scientific disciplines

The gender gap in economics is pervasive (see the links at the end of this post), and is most obvious at the top of the discipline (there have only ever been two female Nobel Prize winners in economics). While there is a distinctly larger share of males among economics undergraduates, the share of males increases as you move up to postgraduate, faculty, and senior faculty. The pipeline for ensuring adequate representation of women in economics is clearly broken (and some of the research discussed in the links at the end of this post looks at the reasons why).

However, the discipline has been taking small steps towards becoming more inclusive (although we have a long way to go). Even so, I was quite surprised by some of the results in this recent article by David Card, Stefano DellaVigna (both University of California, Berkeley), Patricia Funk (Università della Svizzera Italiana), and Nagore Iriberri (University of the Basque Country), published in the journal Econometrica (ungated earlier version here). Card et al. looked at the selection of Fellows of the Econometric Society over the period from 1933 to 2019. They fit separate models for 1933-79, 1980-99, and 2000-19, allowing the effects of gender to vary by decade within each period. The results are clear:

Across all three periods we find that publications and citations are strong predictors of election to Fellow. Cumulative Econometrica (EMA) publications play an especially large role, while those in the Review of Economic Studies (REStud) matter slightly less. Publications in the other top 5 journals and in the field journals also matter, as do citations.

While the effects of publications and citations are relatively consistent over time, the impact of author gender shifts dramatically. For the period up to 1979 we estimate a large negative impact of female gender on the probability of selection as a Fellow (145 log points – a penalty equivalent to about 1.5 extra EMA’s in models that control only for top 5 publications). For the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s we estimate positive but more modest effects (all statistically insignificant). We then estimate a larger and highly significant effect (93 log points) in 2010-2019, equivalent to an additional EMA publication.

In other words, female economists were less likely to be selected as Fellows of the Econometric Society than equivalent male economists up to 1979, there was no statistically significant gender bias (in either direction) from 1980 to 2009, and then female economists were more likely to be selected than equivalent males from 2010 onwards. Looking at the mechanisms, Card et al. find that visibility (appointment to an editorial role at the journal Econometrica) and connections (co-authorships with current Fellows and members of the nominating committee) both matter for selection as a Fellow, but do not alter the significance of the effect of gender.

Is this recent positive gender bias in recognising the achievements of top scholars specific to economics, or more general across all disciplines? This recent NBER Working Paper (ungated version here) by the same co-authors, performs a similar analysis for the National Academy of Science (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS), focusing on the fields of psychology, mathematics, and economics, and covering the period from 1960 to 2019. The choice of those three fields is purposeful:

The three fields of focus therefore include one field that is on the higher end of female representation - psychology - one at the bottom end - mathematics - and one that was historically at the bottom but has recently caught up, at least in AAAS - economics.

Again looking at the results by decade, Card et al. find that:

For the earliest time period, 1960-79, we estimate negative or small positive coefficients, though we can never reject the null of a zero difference in the probability of selection for females relative to males with the same record. It thus appears that in this period female candidates faced roughly similar or higher bars for selection as members of the two academies compared to males. We emphasize that this apparent “gender neutrality” should be interpreted in light of the fact that women selected for honors in these years likely faced many obstacles over their careers, and that no women were selected for the NAS in mathematics until 1975 and in economics until 1989.

From the 1990s onward the estimated female coefficient are all positive, and in the last two decades they become larger and often statistically significant. For example, for the 2010-19 period the coefficients for NAS are 1.056 (s.e.=0.364) for psychology, 1.897 (s.e.=0.518) for economics and 1.173 (s.e.=0.371) for mathematics. The latter coefficient implies that in mathematics a female candidate is exp(1.17) = 3.22 times more likely to be elected than a male with the same publication and citation record.

In other words, the selection of female scientists at a higher probability than equivalent male scientists is not specific to economics, but generalises to other disciplines (although it is stronger in economics than in either psychology or mathematics).

Is this turn of events something to be applauded (as it may address decades of under-recognition of female economists, and create new female role models at the top of the discipline) or to be concerned about (since gender bias in either direction means that top performers are not being rewarded based purely on merit)? Card et al. don't provide an answer to that subjective question. However, they do offer some caution on the interpretation of their results (from the more recent piece of research above):

A possible interpretation of this finding is that members of the academies may have decided to try to redress the past under-representation of female scholars and have aimed at election rates for new members that are similar for men and women. In fields with lower female representation, such as economics and mathematics, this requires a more sizable boost to the election probability of female candidates. Conversely, in a field with more equal representation as psychology, this does not require a large difference...

We caution that our estimates are subject to the criticism that female researchers may face a harder time publishing in top journals, or receiving credit for their work. In fact there is some evidence in the recent literature of such barriers. If so, women who succeed in publishing may in fact be better scholars than men with a similar record, potentially justifying a boost in their probabilities of selection as members of the academies.

With that in mind, it is an over-simplification to consider Card et al.'s results as demonstrating a reverse bias in favour of women in recent years. What we don't know from these analyses is the underlying quality of the research that led to their selection. If publication records, credit for co-authored work, and citations are biased against women, then controlling for those in an analysis and finding that women are over-represented in election as Fellows would not be a surprise. The quality of the work could simply be shining through, even if it is not captured in the 'usual' metrics of research performance.

One thing is clear though, for economics at least. We are continuing to take small steps towards a more gender-equal representation at the top of the discipline (although, we are still substantially short of female Nobel Prize winners).

[HT: Marginal Revolution, for the first Card et al. article]