Should-Read: Bridget Ansel: The gender gap in economics has ramifications far beyond the ivory tower: "The lack of women in economics—and their segregation into certain subfields—boast ramifications beyond individual women’s careers...
...Research establishes how economic policymakers’ life experiences affect the issues they elevate and the way they vote in the present. That makes the gender disparities within economics even more problematic because of the economics profession’s influence in determining public policy. There is statistical evidence that male and female economists think differently about many critical policy issues, even when controlling for age and type of employment. Unsurprisingly, that includes views on gender and equal opportunity, to cite one example, but the dissimilarities also extend to topics not explicitly about gender such as the minimum wage, labor standards, government regulation, and health insurance. Some female economists argue that large gender imbalances mean that the conventional wisdom on any given economic topic is likely to be biased...
