Since 1997 the Royal Economics Society Women’s Committee has commissioned ten reports monitoring the status of women in the UK economics profession. The 2014 survey covered the webpages of 99 economics departments and 15 leading research institutes. It found that women make up 26.8 per cent of all academic staff in the economics discipline but they were disproportionately in lower ranks. Close to half of all women in economics held lecturer positions, and only one in six was a professor. In 2014 women held 13.5 per cent of professorial positions and 36.1 per cent of researcher and lecturer positions. The discipline of economics has seen an increase in women’s participation over close to two decades, with the Committee’s first survey in 1996 finding that women were 17.5 per cent of the workforce. The proportion of women at professorial levels almost tripled between 1996 and 2014, from 5 per cent in 1996 to 14 per cent in 2014. The share of women in lecturer positions has more than doubled 1996-2014, from 15 per cent to 31 per cent. While a slight reduction in the gender gap has been reported since 2009, women’s share of doctoral students has remained relatively unchanged at around 30 per cent (Mitka, Mumford & Sechel, 2015).
Figure 1. Academic staff in economics departments in UK, by position and gender, 2014
Source: Mitka, Mumford & Sechel (2015, p. 8).
Figure 2. Percentage of staff in economics departments in the UK who are women, by position and year, 1996, 2004, 2014, 2016
Source: Mitka, Mumford & Sechel (2015, p.8); Burton & Humphries (2006, p. 6).
The 2016 survey collected data from 64 UK economics departments' websites which was then verified by each department (Tenreyro, 2017). The survey found that despite a substantial increase in the proportion of women in the workforce over the twenty years of surveys, with the proportion of women at all academic levels having more than doubled, women continue to be underrepresented in the discipline as a whole and particularly in the higher ranks. Among full time employees, male academics were nearly twice as likely to be in Professor positions and substantially less likely to be Lecturers than female academics.
Since the 2014 survey, the proportion of women in academic positions increased from 27 per cent to 28 per cent, consistent with small increases in women’s representation in all ranks. Women comprised 35 per cent of Assistant Professor/Lecturers, 26.5 per cent of Readers/Senior Lecturers/Associate Professors, and 16.6 per cent of Professors. Women held a higher proportion of research-only roles, comprising 39.8 per cent of Researchers. Around 20 per cent of both male and female academics worked in part-time roles, however, women were more likely to hold research-only part-time positions, less likely to hold part-time teaching and research positions, and less likely to hold higher ranked part-time positions.
In contrast to the hypothesis that departments with women Professors tend to recruit, promote or retain more women (a role model effect), the report indicates that the presence of women in professorial positions did not lead to enhanced representation of women in other ranks in the department. Tracking the flows into and out of academic positions, the survey found that women professors tended to be more commonly promoted within their own department than be hired into a higher ranking position from outside the department. When hiring from outside the UK academic sector, departments were less likely to hire women than men.
The report notes that the rate of change in women’s representation is slow. If change continues at the current rates, it would take another 50 years for economics in the UK to see a 50-50 gender balance. If the rate of change slows, as several indications (such as changing retirement legislation and female undergraduate student numbers) suggest it may, it could take much longer (Tenreyro, 2017).
The AdvanceHE Equality + Higher Education Staff Statistical Report (2018) gives the female proportion of academic staff in ‘Economics, econometrics’ as 29.8 per cent. The underlying data from the Equity Challenge Unit (using HESA data) shows that 14.1 per cent of professorial appointments are women and 33.2 per cent of all other appointments are women.
References
AdvanceHE (2018) Equality + Higher Education Staff Statistical Report. Available at: https://www.ecu.ac.uk/publications/equality-higher-education-statistical...
Jonathan Burton and Jane Humphries (2006) Royal Economic Society Survey on the Gender and Ethnic Balance of Academic Economics 2004. Royal Economic Society Women’s Committee.
Malgorzata Maria Mitka, Karen Mumford and Cristina Sechel (2015) The 10th Royal Economic Society Women’s Committee Survey: The Gender Balance of Academic Economics in the UK 2014. Royal Economic Society Women’s Committee.
Silvana Tenreyro (2017) Royal Economic Society’s Report on The Gender Balance in UK Economics Departments and Research Institutes in 2016. Royal Economic Society Women’s Committee.