Gender gaps in economics and finance academia
Gender gaps and gender bias appear on 60 recent papers, and board gender diversity on 67 more, but only 13 gender papers concern academia or research. Women remain a minority among economics and finance professors and authors in top journals. Where in the pipeline do they drop out, and how do refereeing and citations treat their work?
What prompted this#
Since October 2025, 185 papers carry a gender-gap, gender-bias, gender-diversity or women-in-science keyword (54 in economics journals, 51 in finance): "board gender diversity" on 67, "gender diversity" on 33, "gender gap" on 32, "gender bias" on 28. Only 13 concern academia, publication or research (women in science 3, research productivity 3, academic promotion 2), although the journals tracked here are themselves the stage.
Questions#
- In the tracked journals, what share of authors are women, by field and journal, and has it changed since 2015?
- Are papers by women cited less within the same journal and year, after accounting for topic?
- Do women's papers spend longer in review, and does double-blind review change that?
Data that could help#
Author names with inferred gender (with known limits) from OpenAlex, citation counts, journals' editorial data where shared, and survey data on promotion.
Next step#
Estimate the share of female authors by journal and year in this site's archive and compare citation counts of comparable papers.