I have recently been approached by Georgetown University Press to serve as an editor to a special edited book about gender discrimination, misogyny, and racism and racial discrimination within economics. I am really excited about the idea and would like to start by preparing a book that focuses on women. I have myself published a short article on the issue The gender gap in economics is huge – it’s even worse than tech and I think that this is a really important topic that needs our attention.
Overview of the manuscript
Most people know that women are underrepresented in STEM fields - science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but unfortunately do not realize that economics is one of the worst academic fields in which to be a woman. Even though women are actually less well represented in economics, there seems to be little awareness of how bad things are in that field and how slowly they are changing.
What is more, the consequences of this are not felt only by the women who work in the field and must endure sexist policies and hostile behavior. This affects everyone! Persistent misogyny in economics leads to other problems that affect broader policymaking. Government policies would likely look very different were more women involved in drafting them and their voices included in the debate.
Numerous articles on this topic have been published in various scientific journals, newspapers articles and blogs, but this book would be the first formal, empirical investigation about the experience of women in economics all in one place. The book will combine chapters documenting and analyzing the “leaky pipeline” for women in economics. Studies show that women are less likely to take AP economics classes in high school, are less likely to major in economics, obtain a graduate degree in the field and are significantly less likely to be promote to tenured position than men. Why?
Drawing on quantitative and qualitative empirical data, the book will try to consider both the personal and professional lives of women economists that present unique challenges as well as opportunities to improve educational and professional outcomes. The book will delve deeper into the issues of discrimination and implicit bias in the form of silencing, mansplaining, and the presumption of incompetence, to name a few. Through examining teaching, hiring, colleague interaction, and tenure and promotion, the book will bring the experience of diverse female students and faculty to life and propose several mechanisms to increase diversity within economics and to improve the experience of all faculty members.
Finally, the book will investigate the broad consequences of missing women’s voices in economics. The lack of gender diversity has consequences for policy. The prevailing range of views among economists is likely to be biased by the relative lack of women and minority economists and have major impact on the economic policy adaptations. If the ultimate goal of economic research is to develop and communicate lasting insights, the evidence supplied in this book will show that the value and impact of the economics profession is failing us all and must be changed.
The focus of the book will be mostly on North American/Anglo-Saxons experience for women economists in academia but comparisons to other geographic locations and professional realities will also be included.
We are particularly interested in projects that aim to reach a wide audience of nonacademic readers and welcome applications from scholars around the world, from previously published authors and first-time authors alike.
Market for the book
The book could serve as a helpful resource for economics professors, chairs of economics departments, deans that host economics programs, and those who work in higher education in general and are interested in how to promote and help women and minorities in economics programs and STEM or with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in general.
The book can also serve as the main or supplementary reading material in classes that teach feminist economics or labor economics. It could serve as an excellent case study when talking and teaching about race, gender, and inequalities in the labor market.
The book will also be of interested to feminist/women studies scholars, students, and general readers who care about bias in tech, STEM, and other fields.
Table of contents
Some, though not all, of the topics and questions that this book could address include:
The current status of women in economics
High School experience with economics
Undergraduate experience with economics
Mater level experience
The path to PhD - who goes to the grad school (is there a difference between MA and PhD experiences?)
Who graduates with a Ph.D. and then goes to the academic job market
Issues with getting positions in academia
Experiences of assistant professors
Tenure issues
Work/life balance and parenting issues
Bias in research and publishing
Promotion and tenure issues
What happens after tenure? What are the issues and challenges? Who makes to the status of a full professor?
Is North American/Anglo-Saxon experience different from other place? Are things better/worse elsewhere?
Is life of women Ph.D. economists outside academia different?
The consequences of missing voices in economics. Are women Ph.D. economists different? Do they support/oppose different policies?
Benefits of writing a book chapter
The book and each chapter will be blind peer reviewed – something that might matter in the tenure and promotion process to some.
We are looking for chapter proposals that could fit into the broadly defined topics listed above.
Each chapter is about 20-30 pages or approximately 5000-6000 words. You can think about writing a chapter for this edited book as writing for a special edition of a journal article. But the main difference is, that your writing can be more general suited for a broader audience. In addition, it is quite likely that more people will actually have access to the book chapter and the book and as a result more people will read it.
I know that writing a book chapter is not a typical research and writing practice in economics, but it is not that much different than writing an economics journal. In fact, writing a book chapter allows for greater freedom and flexibility. Imagine what we typically do when submitting a working paper to an academic journal: we make all the writing extremely lean and succinct - many times deleting valuable and relevant information in order to satisfy the word count requirement or expectations. In addition, we cut out some data, tables and graphs, in order to work with other limits imposed by the journal. By writing or rewriting your article on the topic of women/minorities in economics for this edited book you can delve much deeper into the topic.
As you are writing this chapter you will also get some additional help and manuscript guidelines from Georgetown University Press. So, if this is your first time writing a book chapter you can think about this as a great entry into to this world of writing and publishing. Who knows, this might lead you to decided to write your own book as well.
Even more importantly, many of us know that it is not enough just to conduct research on this topic and publish it in academic journals. We can actually use our work to help make a change. By publishing your work in an edited book like this, your work will be more broadly disseminated and read. Many times the research articles that we write are available only behind a paywall. In addition, the articles are also written in such a way that are easily understood by other fellow research economists with graduate degrees, but might not make that much sense to a more general audience. Chapters in this book will be more easily accessible and written in such a way that are more easily understood especially by those we are tying reach and get more actively engaged in economics - young undergraduate or even high school students that are thinking if economics might be a field for them and how can their presence help.
Here is also an example of an edited volume published by Georgetown University Press that can serve as a good example of what we are looking for:
The book will include about 8-10 chapters. Each chapter is about 20-30 pages or approximately 5000-6000 words.
Winter 2023 and spring 2023 will be used to send out the call for book chapters. Article summary or abstract should be 500 words in length with an accompanying biographical paragraph1 of about 150 words introducing the prospective contributor.
Submissions and enquiries should be sent by May 1, 2023 to Veronika Dolar via email [email protected].
Notification of acceptance/rejection will be send out by May 30, 2023.
Summer and fall 2023 will be used to prepare selected chapters. Completed chapters are to be submitted by December 1, 2023.
Winter 2023-24 will be used for double blinded peer review and feedback. Reviews back by January 30, 2024.
Resubmissions due by April 1, 2024.
Book production in summer 2004.
Book published in the Fall 2024.
In addition, I will be attending ASSA 2023 and Eastern Economic Association Conference in February 2023 - if you are interested in meeting with me and talking more about this opportunity.
If you have additional questions about the publishing or Georgetown University Press you can reach out to Hilary Claggett, Senior Acquisitions Editor for Business and Economics at Georgetown University Press via email [email protected].
Deo. (2019). Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia. Stanford University Press.
Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, Y. F., González, C. G., Harris, A. P., & Gonzalez, C. G. (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia. Univ. Press.
Curtis-Boles, Adams, D. M., & Jenkins-Monroe, V. (2012). Making our voices heard: Women of color in academia. Nova Science Publishers.
White. (2008). Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower. In Telling histories: Black women historians in the ivory tower. The University of North Carolina Press. https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807889121_white
To recruit and advance women students and faculty in U.S. science and engineering. (2006). National Academies Press.
Frida, Khan. “Diversity Economics: Chipping Away at the Oxymoron” In Diversity in the College Classroom: Knowing Ourselves, Our Students, Our Disciplines, edited by Fujimoto, Eugine, Akindes Fay, and Mason, Roseann Common Ground Publishing 2015
Few Recent Newspaper Articles
It should also be pointed out that a number of newspaper articles have been written about this topic. This seems to suggest that there is a broader interest in and audience for this topic. Below is a short list of few more popular articles.
