Working Paper: NBER ID: w27070
Authors: Valentina A. Paredes; M. Daniele Paserman; Francisco Pino
Abstract: Recent research has highlighted unequal treatment for women in academic economics along several different dimensions, including promotion, hiring, credit for co-authorship, and standards for publication in professional journals. Can the source of these differences lie in biases against women that are pervasive in the discipline, even among students in the earliest stages of their training? In this paper, we provide evidence on the importance of explicit and implicit biases against women among students in economics relative to other fields. We conducted a large scale survey among undergraduate students in Chilean universities, among both entering first-year students and students in years 2 and above. On a wide battery of measures, economics students are more biased than students in other fields. Economics students are somewhat more biased already upon entry, before exposure to any economics classes. The gap is more pronounced among students in years 2 and above, in particular for male students. We also find an increase in bias in a sample of students that we follow longitudinally. Differences in political ideology explain essentially all the gap at entry, but none of the increase in the gap with exposure. Exposure to female students and faculty attenuates some of the bias.
Keywords: gender bias; economics education; sexism; Chilean universities; implicit bias
JEL Codes: A13; A14; A22; J16; J71
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| exposure to female peers and faculty (I24) | mitigated bias (D91) |
| political ideology and religiosity (Z12) | gap in bias at entry (I24) |
| political ideology and religiosity (Z12) | increase in bias over time (D91) |
| gender bias (J16) | economics students vs other fields (A12) |
| economic training (A29) | increased gender bias (J16) |