Guidance

Best Practice - further information

Updated 30 July 2020

GES Equal Gender Panels Pledge

Background

The underrepresentation of women in Economics is increasingly generating strong interest, and inspiring action across the profession. The GES itself has recognised this as an important issue and have committed to increasing diversity as part of the GES Strategy. Currently in the GES, women make up around 35% of the total workforce and this percentage decreases to around 27% at Senior Civil Service level.

In response, the GES launched the “Gender in the GES” (GiG) initiative to promote gender diversity within the GES as well as across the economics profession more broadly. In an effort to change the culture and improve gender balance within the profession, the GES is taking specific action to improve the identity of female economists, by improving the representation of women amongst panel speakers at events.

Aims of this pledge

1) Increase representation of female Economists within the GES to promote career progression, retention and the achievements of women in Economics as a profession.

2) Increase visibility of women in Economics therefore helping to showcase the variety of work done by female Economists and their achievements in their respective fields.

3) Providing role models for younger Economists, regardless of gender, for the fields within which these female Economists work.

4) Raising awareness around there being a low representation of females in the Economics profession and addressing part of the issue by establishing a precedent for change in the composition of Economics panel discussions.

Pledge

The purpose of the pledge is to ensure that women are visibly represented at GES organised events.

The GES pledge is mandatory for all GES organised events.

This includes those organised centrally by the GES (for example the Annual Conference) and those organised by GES members in individual departments. The pledge reads as follows:

“No-one from the GES will take part in a GES-organised panel discussion unless the organised event will be gender balanced in aggregate across all panels.”

The GES pledge for externally-organised Economics events and non-Economics events organised by the GES (i.e. events where GES members are representing being Government Economists) is as follows:

“No-one from the GES will take part in an externally-organised panel discussion unless the event’s organisers have made a considerable effort to ensure that the event is gender balanced in aggregate across all panels.”

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

What does it mean to have an event that is “gender balanced in aggregate across all panels”?

This means that across all the panels in that event, there are at least [n/2]* panel members in total who are women, not including the chairs. This responsibility lies with the event’s organisers.

*Where n is the number of total panel members for ALL panels occurring in that event. This is a flooring function, meaning that if the aggregate figure is an odd number you take the lower bound of the number and if it is even the value is a perfect 50/50 split, E.g. for an event with 2 panels, one with 5 people and one with 4 people, 4 people across these 2 panels must be women, etc.

What is meant by a panel?

A panel is defined as a small group of people who are chosen to do something, for example to discuss something in public or to make a decision. In the context of this pledge it would be the former example, to discuss something in public.

What if I end up with an all-female panel?

The odd female majority in aggregate at an event is acceptable. The purpose of the pledge is not to ensure a perfect male-female ratio but to increase the representation and visibility of female Economists. It is recommended however to try and maintain a gender balance in aggregate across events.

What does “considerable effort” mean?

By considerable effort we mean that you can see that they have made some effort towards gender equality in their event. For instance, they have already asked some female Economists to attend but none could make it due to scheduling conflicts or they have tried to balance the gender split by including more women in another part of the event which may or may not involve a panel. E.g. the event has 2 panels of 5 with only 1 woman, but it also has 3 talks about different fields of Economics all being presented by women.

How would an organiser provide evidence of the considerable effort that they put in?

This evidence would be anything which is in line with the point above about considerable effort, i.e. evidence of a shortlist of speakers which include female Economists and reasons why these women were not chosen to be at the event/ could not attend.

What if the event I am attending has no female representation and I (as a male) have been asked to sit on a panel?

You can ask the event organiser firstly why they don’t have any representation, if they do not provide a robust response, offer to nominate a woman to go in your place who you think will be suitable for it.

Who can I nominate to go in my place?

Anyone who you think is suitable to cover your area, they don’t need to be the same grade as you (unless this is a requirement of the event).

What if I am organising an event and can’t find a woman?

If you are organising an event, there are plenty of women who you can ask to attend it. If you are not able to secure a female economist (e.g. due to the research area or schedules), you will be required to provide evidence that considerable effort had been made.

What if I am organising an event and require the author(s) to attend?

If you are organising an event that requires the authors of a research paper etc to attend, it is permissible to stick with the author(s) i.e. irrespective of gender. However, you should consider whether gender balance can at least be introduced through other roles (e.g. the Chair).

What if the GES is organising a non-Economics event, does this pledge still apply?

The first question to this is, will GES members/ Economists be speaking on a panel at this event, in which case yes it applies. If not and the GES is organising an event where there are NO GES members or Economists involved then we would take the same approach as we do towards externally organised events. The aim of the pledge is to increase female participation and representation in the GES and by extension highlight the lack of female representation in the Economics profession and attempt to address and lead on this issue as a large employer of Economists in the UK.

Female Economists Directory

Joan Robinson (31st October 1903 – 5th August 1983) – Founder of the theory of Monopsony.

Studied Economics at Girton College, Cambridge graduating in 1925, became a lecturer in Economics at Cambridge in 1937, joined the British Academy in 1958, elected a fellow of Newnham College in 1962, became a full professor and fellow of Girton College in 1965 and became the first female honorary fellow of King’s College in 1979.

Joan was heavily influence by Keynes and Marx. In 1933 in her book “The Economics of Imperfect Competition” she coined the term “monopsony”, which is the inverse of a monopoly where one can be seen as the sole buyer of a good, most commonly this is used to describe certain labour markets.

Reading:

• Book – The Economics of Imperfect competition (1933)

Anna Schwartz (11th November 1915 – 21st June 2012) – Co-authored with Nobel Prize winning Milton Friedman to develop theories around monetary policies.

Graduated from Barnard College at the age of 18, gained a master’s in Economics from Columbia University in 1935 at the age of 19, earned her PhD from Columbia in 1964, joined the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1941.

In 1963 Anna co-authored with Friedman to produce “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960” which hypothesised that changes in monetary policy had large effects on the economy and a sizable portion of the blame for the Great Depression was attributed to the Federal Reserve System.

Reading:

• Book – A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (1963)

Esther Duflo (25th October 1972 – present) – Development/ Social Economist who wrote the first paper to show that increased education leads to increased wages in developing countries.

Studied History and Economics at Ecole Normale Superieure in 1994, received a master’s from the Paris School of Economics jointly with the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales and the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1995, completed a PhD in Economics at MIT in 1999 under the supervision of Banerjee and Angrist and was promoted to associate professor (with tenure) at MIT in 2002 at the age of 29, making her one of the youngest faculty to be awarded tenure.

Her PhD dissertation focused on the effects of a natural experiment from Indonesia based on the impacts of a school expansion programme in the 1970’s on wages. She provided evidence that more education resulted in higher wages in developing countries. In 2014 she won the Infosys Prize in Social Science – Economics, in 2010 she was award the John Bates Clark Medal for Economists under 40 and in 2009 she was name a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

Reading:

• Publication – Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment (2001)
• Link - https://economics.mit.edu/faculty/eduflo/short

Janet Yellen (13th August 1946 – present) – First woman to be the Chairperson of the United States Federal Reserve.

Graduated from Pembroke College in Brown University with a degree in Economics in 1967, gained her PhD from Yale University in 1971 as the only woman in her doctoral class, she was an assistant professor at Harvard in 1971-76, an Economist with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 1977-78 and a lecturer at the LSE in 1978-80, she is now a Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

She served as Chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors from 1997-99, Vice President of the American Economic Association and became the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve, nominated under President Obama and under President Trump until her term ended in February 2018. During her tenure as chair unemployment figures showed the greatest improvement since 1948 and the highest returns.

Reading:

• Publication – Efficiency Wage Models of Unemployment (1984)
• Publication – Efficiency Wage Models of the Labor Market (1986)
• Book – The fabulous Decade: Macroeconomic Lessons from the 1990s (2001)

Barbara Bergmann (20th July 1927 – 5th April 2015) – A key figure in Feminist Economics, co-founder and President of the International Association for Feminist Economics.

Studied at Cornell University on a scholarship for mathematics, graduated in 1948 with a BA, worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the New York Office where she noticed first-hand the levels of racism, sexism and discrimination present, in 1959 she received her PhD from Harvard University and died from suicide in 2015.

She researched discrimination in the workplace and focused on many topics, from childcare and gender issues to poverty and social security. Bergmann had a passion for gender equality and wanted to see government provision for the equitable treatment of women in the workforce.

Reading:

• Book – The Economic Emergence of Women (1986)
• Book – Saving our Children from Poverty (1996)
• Book – In Defense of Affirmative Action (1996)

Elinor Ostrom (7th August 1933 – 12th June 2012) – First woman to receive the prestigious Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Graduated with a B.A. in Political Science and completed a PhD, also in Political Science, from UCLA. She was discouraged in obtaining an Economics PhD due to her academic background lacking in mathematics, which she had been advised, as a girl, against taking in high school.

She received the Nobel Prize in Economics, shared with Oliver E Williamson, in 2009 for her analyses of how individuals and communities can often manage common resources, going against the theory of the tragedy of the commons.

Reading:

• Book – Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (2015)

Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg (1963 – present day) – Current Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Received a Diploma in Economics from the University of Freiburg and a PhD from Stanford University and is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Economics at Yale University. She was the first woman to be appointed the as editor of the American Economic Review, one of the most prestigious journals in Economics, is a Research Affiliate of the International Growth Centre (IGC) of the London School of Economics and in April 2018 was appointed the Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Her Published work focuses around applied microeconomics, international trade and industrial organisation. Recently, she has studies the impact of trade liberalisation on growth and the income distribution, the effects of intellectual property rights enforcement in developing countries, and the determinants of incomplete exchange rate pass-through.

Reading:

• Publication – Distributional effects of Globalisation in developing countries (2007)
• Publication – Goods Prices and Exchange Rates: What have we learned? (1997)

Dame Kate Barket (1957 – present) – Played a principle role at the Bank of England and a key external adviser to the British Government on many policy issues.

Studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, before joining a large pension fund in London. She was the Chief Economic Adviser at the Confederation of British Industry and from 1996-7 was a member of HM Treasury’s Panel of Independent Economic Advisers. She is presently a Senior Adviser to Credit Suisse and a non-executive director of for a number of private sector companies. She is also a non-executive member of the Office for Budget Responsibility, and a senior visiting fellow in the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge.

Kate was a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee from 2001 until May 2010. During this period, she also led two major policy reviews for the government, on housing supply and on land use planning.

Reading:

• Book - Housing: Where’s the Plan (2014)

Diane Coyle, OBE (February 1961 – present) – A key figure in academia with prominent government roles.

Read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University before obtaining her MA and PhD in Economics from Harvard University, graduating in 1985. She worked an economist at the HM Treasury from 1985-6, and later became the European Editor of Investors Chronicle between 1993 and 2001 and economics editor of The Independent. She is currently a visiting Professor at the University of Manchester and managing director of Enlightenment Economics, an economic consultancy specialising in new technologies and globalisation.

Although her economic remit is wide, her research tends to focus on productivity and national accounting measurements.

Reading:

• Publications listed here: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/diane-coyle(97945f2c-0faf-45bf-abab-a302eda6d2d8)/publications.html

Kate Raworth - A renegade economist focused on exploring the economic mindset needed to address the 21st century’s social and ecological challenges.

Read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University and has an MSc in Economics for Development. She is a Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Over the past 20 years, Kate’s career has taken her from working with micro-entrepreneurs in the villages of Zanzibar to co-authoring the Human Development Report for UNDP in New York, followed by a decade as Senior Researcher at Oxfam.

Her internationally acclaimed idea of Doughnut Economics has been widely influential amongst sustainable development thinkers, progressive businesses and political activists, and she has presented it to audiences ranging from the UN General Assembly to the Occupy movement.

Reading:

• Publications listed here: https://www.kateraworth.com/publications/

Lee Hopley – Chief Economist at the EEF, championing manufacturing and engineering in the UK and EU

Lee is the Chief Economist at EEF, responsible for developing and communicating EEF’s policy thinking to its members, the media, the government and other key policy makers. She leads their work on the economy and industrial policy, dealing with macroeconomic issues and matters relating to productivity and manufacturing competitiveness. Lee also co-ordinates the organisation’s work on policy issues including investment, tax, innovation and infrastructure, and oversees its economic forecasting.

Before joining EEF, Lee worked as an economic adviser to the Scottish National Party in both the Scottish Parliament and the House of Commons.

Reading:

• Publications listed here: https://cms.eef.co.uk/campaigning/campaigning-team/policy-team/cam_lee-hopley

Mariana Mazzucato (June 1968 – present) – Academic Economist with renowned research in innovation and growth.

Obtained a BA in History and International Relations from Tufts University and a Masters and PhD in Economics from the New School for Social Research in 1999.

She holds the Chair in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) and is Founder and Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). IIPP is dedicated to rethinking the role of public policy in shaping both the rate of growth and its direction—and training the next generation of civil servants with a focus on the dynamic organisational capabilities required for mission oriented policies.

She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led inclusive growth and is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisors and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Leadership Council.

Her highly-acclaimed book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (was on the ‘2013 Books of the Year’ list of the Financial Times.

Reading:

• Publications listed here: https://marianamazzucato.com/publications/

Dame Nemat (Minouche) Shafik (5th February 1962 – present) – Youngest ever Vice-President at the World Bank and first woman to be Director of the LSE.

Graduated with a BSc in economics and politics from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst before achieving her MSc in economics at LSE. In 1989 she went on to complete her PhD in economics at the University of Oxford.

She became the youngest vice-president in the history of the World Bank at the age of 36, and later permanent secretary to the Department for International Development. Prior to her current position as the first woman to be Director of the LSE, she held positions as Deputy Managing Director of the IMF and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.

Reading:

• Book - Globalization, Regionalism and Growth: Economic Prospects for the Middle East and North Africa (1996)
• Book - Getting Connected: Private Participation in Infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa (1997)
• Book - International Privatization: Theory and Practice (1999)
• Link - https://www.imf.org/external/np/omd/bios/mns.htm

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (13th June 1954 – present) – first female Finance Minister of Nigeria.

Studied Economics at Harvard, received a PhD from MIT in regional economics and development in 1981, and then worked for 21 years as a development economist at the World Bank. She then served two terms as Finance Minister, interspersed with a time as Managing Director of the World Bank. She currently works as a Senior Advisor at financial services firm Lazard, and as Chair of the vaccines alliance GAVI.

Ngozi worked to eliminate corruption and improve macroeconomic stability in Nigeria, leading negotiations with creditors that led to the elimination of $30 billion of Nigeria’s debt, and helping Nigeria obtain its first ever sovereign credit rating, in 2006. She has also been a chair or member of a number of international boards and advisory groups, and founded the think tank Center for the Study of Economies of Africa and Nigeria’s first opinion poll organisation. She was named by Forbes as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world for five years consecutively.

Reading:

• Book – Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria (2012)

Claudia Goldin (14th May 1946 – present) – Eminent labour economist, economic historian and the first female economist to gain tenure at Harvard.

Claudia received her BA in Economics from Cornell University in 1967, followed by an MA and PhD from Chicago in 1969 and 1971. She then worked at a number of American universities, and in 1990 became the first woman to be tenured in the Harvard economics department. Today she is Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard.

She has worked on a number of topics, from the female labour force to immigration, income inequality, technological change, education, and the economic gender gap. She is best known for her work charting the history of American women in the labour force, and has shown how education and technological change have contributed to increased economic inequality in the last 40 years. She was the President of the American Economic Association in 2013 and received the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2016.

Reading:

• Book – Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (1990)
• Book – The Race between Education and Technology (2008)

Caroline Hoxby (16th April 1966 – present) – Economist who developed many areas of the economics of education.

Finished her undergraduate degree at Harvard in 1988, then studied at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and completed her PhD at MIT in 1994. She was a member of Harvard’s faculty from 1994 to 2007, before becoming Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford.

As Director, she turned NBER’s Economics of Education Program into a leading education research group. She is known for her application of advanced econometrics and experimental methods to identify causality, particularly how school competition, choice and funding affect students’ achievement. She received The Smithsonian Institution’s Ingenuity Award for her leadership of Expanding College Opportunities project, which identified why disadvantaged students did not apply to selective universities, and showed a cheap intervention could substantially increase applications.

Reading:

• Publication – How New York City’s Charter Schools Affect Achievement (2009)
• Publication – Does Competition among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers? (2000)

Marianne Betrand (1970 – present) – Academic economist who revolutionised the study of discrimination.

Graduated from the Free School of Brussels in 1991/92, afterwards doing a PhD at Harvard. She then worked at Princeton, before joining the University of Chicago in 2000, where she is now the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics.

She is most famous for an experiment where she sent out fictitious CVs with names that are stereotypically associated with race – she found having an African-American sounding name meant that applicant was much less likely to be called to interview. This influential paper led to this method being widely used in economic studies of discrimination. She has also contributed to the evidence on gender in the labour market, corporate pay, lobbying and corruption, among a wide set of topics.

Reading:

• Publication – Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? (2004)

Rebecca (Becky) Allen (15th February 1977 – present) –Economist developing the future of education economics research in the UK.

Graduated from Cambridge in 1999. After five years as a financial analyst then economics teacher, Becky completed a Masters and PhD in education economics and then joined the Institute of Education. Between 2014 and 2017, she took leave from her position to found Education DataLab, an influential research organisation which uses statistics to analyse education policy. She is now Professor of Education at IoE, and will direct the new Centre for Education Improvement Science.

Becky has published on school accountability and teaching, with papers examining competition, school admissions, faith schools and league tables. She chairs the Teachers’ Workload Advisory Group. Becky ensures her work is relevant to policy makers and uses Twitter, blogs and newspaper articles to disseminate her work more widely. She also helps other researchers use English education data; for example, she runs a wiki about the National Pupil Database dataset. She launched the experimental teacher survey app TeacherTapp in 2017.

Reading:

• Publication - How can we encourage good schools to expand? (2012)

Ruth Lea

https://twitter.com/RuthLeaEcon