Guidance

Gender in the GES (GiG) Initiative 18 Months Note

Updated 30 July 2020

Overview

The gender in GES (GiG) initiative was created in January 2018 with endorsement from the GES board. The main aim of the initiative is to promote diversity within the economics profession in government. Within this, three main objectives have been identified:

1. to increase the share of women applying to study economics at university level;
2. to increase the share of female economists working in the GES, making it the employer of choice for female economists in the UK;
3. to increase the share of female economists in SCS positions in the GES.

The GiG is supported by a committee of three senior civil servants: Jenny Bates (Director, EU Exit and Economic Partnerships, BEIS), Osama Rahman (Director of Analysis and Chief Scientific Adviser, DfE) and Vanessa MacDougall (Director, Economics, HM Treasury).

The initiative is structured in five strands:

• Research – focuses on the development of evidence around gender equality, diversity and inclusion in the GES and more broadly in economics. The strand aims in particular at investigating and reaching a deeper understanding of the root problems and their solutions.
• Education – investigates how economics is taught in schools and universities and what drives female students to study economics.
• Marketing and Outreach – encourages outreach initiatives to give the broadest range of women easier access to career paths in the GES; showcases female role models and their success as professional economists in the Civil Service and wider public sector.
• Retention – seeks to identify sources of attrition and develop initiatives that encourage the retention of women in the GES; it also aims to enhance the success, experience, and retention of women by working with all departments to research, understand and address retention issues.
• Best Practice – aims to change and standardise workplace practices across departments to create a more inclusive, supportive and representative environment for female economists to work in.

Highlights from the First Year

Research strand

In the first year of the initiative the Research Strand aimed at bringing together evidence on gender diversity and inclusion that could serve as a robust analytical basis to develop the GiG’s objectives. This work and its outputs were conducted in collaboration with the other strands in the initiative, in order to support their needs and goals. The strand also completed ad-hoc analytical requests for the other strands, as well as providing advice on the lessons learned from the GiG Survey to external stakeholders.

The Gender in the GES Diversity and Inclusion Survey was developed and launched in the summer of 2018. The survey aimed at answering research questions outlined by the strands, from understanding gender differences in educational paths and in the take-up of economics as a discipline, to investigating issues of recruitment, progression and retention in the GES. The survey was piloted extensively across Whitehall and received over 900 responses. An adapted questionnaire was also administered to the Government Social Research Service in order to obtain comparable results for a control group. Preliminary findings from the GiG Diversity and Inclusion Survey were presented at the 2018 Government Economic Conference in September 2018.

The strand has also completed the drafting of the Gender in the GES Alumni Survey in collaboration with the Retention strand. The questionnaire aims at understanding issues of retention in the profession, including reasons for leaving the GES and patterns in the destination of leavers.

Along the surveys, the strand drafted a comprehensive literature review (Perceptions of Economics: Gender Differences in the Decision to Study and Work on the public’s perceptions of economics and economists in the media and in the public life, and how this perception affects the decisions to study economics and work in the discipline. The literature review will contribute to inform the programme of work of the Marketing and Outreach strand.

More recently, the strand organised a public speaking event (Gender in Economics Research Findings from Two Surveys) for GiG’s volunteers. The event was sponsored by Osama Rahman at DfE and presented the findings from the Gender in the GES Diversity and Inclusion Survey. Rebecca Holmes, a sixth form student in economics also presented the results from a survey she carried out in her school on A-level students’ perception of economics.

Education strand

During the first year, the Education strand worked closely to the Research strand to develop questions for the development of the GES and GESR Diversity and Inclusion survey, mainly when it came to understand why GES and GESR women chose/didn’t choose to study economics. It also organised and ran four focus groups with placement students and AEs to get more under the skin of the problem, by understanding rationale for choices of study areas and experiences at school/university. The results were presented at a GiG meeting in August and at the GESR conference.

There was also some joint work with the GESR team responsible for marketing the GES DAP (Degree Apprenticeship Programme), to make sure that the campaign was sufficiently addressing gender issues. The strand cooperated by further developing the GES ambassadors’ slides for the following events:

• Laura Pauling (HMT) presented GES roles and the apprenticeship programme to a girls’ private school Career Fair, Francis Holland School. Laura was welcomed with many questions and a lot of interest from the students (November).
• Sarah Billingham (BEIS) took part to a day Economics Conference organised by NIESR (as part of the RES “Women in Economics Outreach”) at Woodhouse College. The conference had an audience of about 1,000 students and Sarah received a lot of interest, and questions in particular on the GES degree apprenticeship programme.

Marketing and outreach

An Open Day recruitment Fair pilot took place in London (November 2018) followed by another one in Leeds (April 2019). These aimed at promoting the GES as a career for women by:

• Organising a panel discussion showcasing different professional journeys and variety of GES economists’ work;
• Hosting stands representing different departments providing one to one information to students.

New material (Vlogs and blogs) were produced to showcase role models and the profession for external audiences. This material was brought together in a Women in Economics webpage on the GES website. The webpage link has been circulated to wider GiG members.

A new Career Fair for Women in Economics event is planned to take place in London on 26th of September and currently being promoted via a social media campaign – with new visuals and short videos with a wide range of female students.

A GES mini-conference on inequalities was organised and sponsored by GES Women in Economics on 3 July 2019, in partnership with the Nuffield Foundation. The aim is to better understand the drivers that create inequalities in our societies and economies, make the teaching and practice of economics more pluralist in principle – bring in other disciplines, critique our models, explain and communicate to the wider public how and why inequality matters. The first mini-conference focused on some facets of inequality: gender, income and wealth and spatial inequalities. Key messages from speakers were relayed via social media.

All the outreach activities, as well as other activities of the GiG initiative, are communicated via our webpage, which is updated on a monthly basis.

We have started building links with the Royal economic Society to join our efforts to progress this agenda.

Best practice strand

The equal gender panels pledge is being rolled out across the GES (with a general consensus from the GES board and to be announced later officially in a mass GiG email to the whole of the GES). The purpose of the pledge is to ensure that women are visibly represented at GES organised events and reads as follows:

1. “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.”
2. “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.”

It is mandatory for all GES organised events and regulated by the Chief Economists in their respective departments. People can email their respective Chief Economist or any of GiG’s sponsors if they think the pledge is not being adhered to. An email will then be sent to the organisers to remind them of the pledge and why we are doing it.

A directory of famous female economists has been put together and uploaded on the Women in Economics webpage. This may help organisers to find female speakers to attend their events.

Retention strand

As above, the focus of the retention strand has been to build the evidence base in relation to why women join, stay in, and leave the GES. The survey will be completed with desk research. Following this evidence-gathering phase the group will look at interventions to improve retention.

New structure

In June 2019, we have agreed to restructure the initiative by merging some of the strands into three main ones:

1. Research: encouraging a deeper understanding of the root problems and solutions across the GiG initiative;
2. Partnering and Outreach: encouraging women’s interest in economics as a university of choice and in a career within the GES explicitly;
3. Retention & Progress: increasing the progression and retention of female economists by sharing best practice across departments, identifying and nurturing talent, and improving networks/support systems across HMG.

Additional to the 3 Directors (senior sponsors), the Secretariat and Strand leads, Laura Webster is joining the initiative as our ambassador outside of London, as an attempt to reach GES members working in other parts of the country.