In a very recent issue of Econ Journal Watch, Christina Jonung and Ann-Charlotte Ståhlberg have an interesting essay on the historical and current gender composition among the Swedish profession of economists. This is compared to recent data from Canada, Australia, USA and the UK. We know that most econ professors are men. But that a puny 1% of econ professors in Sweden are women might still surprise. The figures seem to be somewhat more balanced in the social sciences in general, including Business Administration. Jonung and Ståhlberg note that the gender composition among economists resembles that of mathematics more than the other social sciences. This makes Garett Jones argue in a reply essay that research on gender differences in cognitive abilities show men have higher means and higher variance on mathematical tests (hence a distribution with thicker tails), a skills which is highly valued in current economics. Jones argues that the demand structure of skills within the current economics profession would therefore suggest that the “equilibrium” gender balance between and women men in economics is not 50-50 (but certainly not 99-1 either). A wonderful essay by Deirdre McCloskey picks up on Jones’ notion of statistical “outliers” but argues that the creative works comes not from working in the mainstream:
“anyone who doesn’t believe in Max U as a full-feature description of economic agents and as the only method by which the study of humankind in the ordinary business of life may be pursued is being discriminated against, losing heart, wondering if it’s all worth it, depressed, confused. ‘Is this really science?’ In this sense the blessed Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Edwin Cannan, J. M. Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Ronald Coase, and Amartya Sen, represents a wisely feminine sort of male economist.”
