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Economic Insights 1 Centre for Economic Empowerment Economic Insights 1 Centre for Economic Empowerment No women please – we’re economists! A discipline dominated by men? Professor Ailsa McKay Professor of Economics Glasgow Caledonian University In this paper Professor Ailsa McKay proposes that the discipline of economics has a gender bias towards men; examines the impact this has on current policy agendas and explores the potential and need for change. In 2010 women represented 22% of all ‘The ideas of economists and political academic staff in UK University Economics philosophers, both when they are Departments and only 10% of full wrong and when they are right are Professors. In the US the picture is more powerful than is commonly strikingly similar. In 2011 women make up understood. Indeed the world is ruled just over 22% of all faculty in PhD granting by little else. Practical men, who University Economics departments and believe themselves to be quite exempt only 13% of full Professors are women from any intellectual influence, are (data derived from Blanco and Mumford, usually the slaves of some defunct 2010, and the American Economics economist.’ (Keynes, 1936, p 383) Association, 2011). In 2009 Professor Elinor Ostrom became the first, and to Thus, the more relevant question in date only, woman to be awarded the considering the gender imbalance within Nobel Prize in Economics since it was the academic economics profession is established in 1968. Thus economics, at what influence does this male dominance least as an academic discipline, is a male have on the nature of the discipline and dominated discipline. what difference would more women economists make? So why are there so few women academic economists? Perhaps more crucially does In answering this question it is useful to any of this matter and to whom? In begin with the premise that economics exploring the relevance of this question it will be done as ‘men do it’. That is, male is crucial to consider the actual power and economists will define the discipline in influence of the discipline in determining terms of what they understand, and as public policy. As Keynes, a very influential consequence they will study, or rather they male economist, so eloquently argued: will consider worthy of study, issues Economic Insights 2 relating to their world, how it operates The gendered assumptions of and how it appears to them. Male economics dominance matters then in that the Economics has at its core the study of construction of the discipline itself human behaviour. Concerned primarily displays a gender bias. It has evolved with exploring and analysing the within a limiting framework - limiting in the behaviour of individuals in pursuit of the sense that it is has been defined and resources required to meet a range of documented almost exclusively by men. needs and wants, both individually and Thus as Julie Nelson, one of those rare collectively determined, economics can be ‘women academic economists’ points out; identified with the study of choices. Given the nature of those choices and the actors involved economics is very much a social ‘The subject of the economist’s model science. That is, as an academic discipline world is an individual who is self – it seeks to provide us with a greater interested, autonomous, rational and understanding of the factors at play in whose active choices are the focus of informing our choices and the impact interest, as opposed to one who would across a range of indicators of the be social, other-interested, dependent outcomes of those choices. However, in and, emotional and directed by an striving for accreditation in a hierarchical intrinsic nature. In many ways, this academic community, economists have description resonates with the persisted in favouring the tools of rigorous economist’s self image as well.’ scientific analysis almost to the exclusion (Nelson, 1996, p22-3). of all other methods. As a result mathematical models are favoured over less formal descriptive measures that rely So male economists study behaviour on qualitative approaches to study. This associated with male economic agents. facilitates the economist’s ability to Accordingly those male economists build abstract, simplify, measure, analyse and into their theoretical frameworks the subsequently predict the outcomes of a assumption that this behaviour is the norm very complex set of interactions. and as a result preconceived notions If this privileging of particular approaches about how modern economies do, and to study is considered alongside the indeed should, operate heavily influence framing of gender categories, where the research process. This privileging of a ‘masculine’ equals hard, strong, separate, set of ideals, in particular a male defined scientific and ‘feminine’ equals soft, and understood set of ideals, has not connected, intuitive or emotional, the happened by accident nor is it a natural gender bias in the actual construction of occurrence, but rather it can be criticised the discipline becomes more apparent. as part of a process that results in inherent Masculine approaches are favoured over gender bias within the discipline itself. approaches associated with feminine characteristics, resulting in a polarisation of a set of ‘ideals’. Those behaviours or 3 Centre for Economic Empowerment characteristics that do not fit with the male hands, done as men do it and with model norm, and therefore not the associated assumptions that that is the understood, are viewed as subordinate way it must be done. So where are all the and in a binary sense become negative; women? Have they been waved aside? Is there any evidence to suggest that the practice of studying economics is defined So absolutely interwoven are our by a ‘naively masculine’ approach and if so existing concepts of maleness and is this because a feminist approach is humanness, so sure are we that men ‘scouted as absurd”. The gender are people and women only females, imbalance within the academic economics that the claim of equal weight and profession is of course a cause for concern dignity in human affairs of the feminine with reference to equal opportunity in instincts and methods is scouted as employment. In addition, viewing and absurd. We find existing industry understanding the world through a almost wholly in male hands; find it masculine lens has resulted in a very done as men do it; assume that that is constrained view of the choices we make, the way it must be done. When women both in terms of what choices are suggest that it could be done considered relevant to study and with differently, their proposal is waved respect to the variables at work in aside – they are ‘only women” – their influencing those choices. As a result the ideas are ‘womanish.’ (Charlotte Perkins economist’s world is a very partial world Gilman, 2001, p88) that serves to limit the terms of reference for conceptualising human relationships. It would seem therefore, that the gender In my view Gilman’s words, originally imbalance within the academic profession published in 1914 in a text entitled the is not simply a reflection of barriers to ‘Man-Made World or Our Androcentric occupational choice but also acts in Culture’, seem just as relevant now as they framing the discipline in such a way that were then. Indeed for Gilman the excludes issues of relevance to women subordination of woman and women’s from both the research agenda and the ideas was particularly obvious in the approach to study. ‘infant science of political economy’ in that Why it matters ‘current teachings are naively masculine’ The marginalisation of women throughout (ibid, p186). Perhaps no longer an ‘infant the economics profession has effectively science’, but rather economics, as rendered the discipline impractical and it indicated above, is a well established and would appear that women and ‘womanish’ very influential academic discipline yet it ideas are not welcome. The ‘norm’ is continues to be dominated by both the understood in terms of gender constructs physical presence of men and a ‘naively and the masculine continues to be masculine’ approach to study. privileged over all that is feminine. This Economics as an academic discipline results not only in a limited understanding therefore continues to be almost wholly in of the world in which we all live but Economic Insights 4 perhaps more crucially informs policy public expenditure, output levels and prescriptions that are designed in prices. This will provide quantifiable data accordance with economist notions of on how effective the shift in emphasis how we should live. For instance, policy from public to private provision, within a aimed at improving labour market public policy context, has been in participation, which fails to account for the reducing state deficits. However the very different sets of socially and exclusive reliance on such data will fail to economically determined constraints account for the distributional faced by men and women, will have consequences of the cuts and is therefore differential gender impacts. Policy a very limiting approach to policy analysis. designed and implemented with a sole State intervention in the provision of focus on the impact of behaviour in the public goods and services is itself a paid economy will have gender effects. response to an identified market failure. Activity in the paid economy is inextricably That is, the private market will fail to linked with activity in the unpaid economy provide certain goods and services, such and men and women occupy very as health care, education and care different positions within each. Economic services, in sufficient quantities due to the policy tends to ignore this nature of such goods. The very significant interdependence, primarily because social benefits, as opposed to private or impacts in the unpaid economy, which is individual benefits, associated with the predominately occupied by women, are consumption of ‘merit goods’ such as less visible and therefore less tangible education and health care are not than impacts that appear in the accounted for in private market mainstream.
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