Thread by @ShellyJLundberg

Many of you have seen this devastating essay on sexism in the academy, but here's a thread. It's interesting, and more forthright and radical on the topic than we are accustomed to in economics. nplusonemag.com/issue-34/essay…

Overall, women's progress in the academy has stalled, and the proportion of black women among tenured US faculty has fallen since 1993, according to one study.

The author: Misogyny is only part of the problem, the rest is the "banal sexist practices" of 3 groups of men: male scholars, male students, and male romantic partners.

Mechanisms in the scholarly disadvantage of women: men's preference for men (as colleagues, coauthors, mentees, etc), male skepticism about women's abilities, sexual harassment.

Women (especially black women) are constantly required to "prove it again", held to higher standards in publication, funding, and teaching, and see their work go un-cited.

An aside: Important to note that we (and the author) are not speculating here. There is a large body of rigorous empirical research supporting the existence of pervasive gender discrimination in the academy. The work of @HeatherSarson, @erinhengel and other econs are cited here.

Male students demand extensive preparation and maternal attention from female instructors, settle for charisma from male teachers. Asian women are punished most harshly for providing insufficient mothering.

Male partners prioritize their own careers at the expense of their partner's, are seldom willing to sacrifice to promote her success, refuse to share domestic responsibilities, but "exploit well-intentioned policies for young parents."

Solutions? Exhortations, training, or calls for increased awareness are unlikely to be successful in the face of deep-rooted, largely unconscious (and unacknowledged) sexist behavior.

Author calls for quotas (an efficient way to enforce equal opportunity when discriminatory personnel practices are imperfectly observed) and institutional change that disrupts the operation of exclusionary informal networks. jstor.org/stable/2937919…

Disrupting networks is difficult: putting women in more powerful positions helps, but leads to increased workload for women and the devaluation of roles that are interpreted as service providers rather than power sources when held by women.

"Power seems to follow men, whose informal networks easily slink into the shadows."

Conclusion: Excess female attrition from the academy is not just a loss of "intellectual capital" but a nexus for intense individual suffering for those being forced to relinquish a dream. Worth a read by all.