When #EconTwitter users were followed by an Econ PhD student, they were much more likely to follow back if she was female, at a high-ranked university and white.
Even if the black Econ PhD student was at a top university, they were still less likely to be heard.
This is such a brilliantly clever research design!
Following back may sound minor but it echoes a famous essay by Gayatri Chakravorty,
She argued that the question is not “Can the Subaltern Speak?” but “Can they be heard?”
Do people listen to their ideas & analysis?
If the EconPhD is systematically less likely to be followed back because of their gender/ institution/ ethnicity, then no matter how productive, innovative and creative, then others will not know, will not provide support or critique.
Social capital remains hugely important.
I do not know how exactly we should interpret (predominantly male) Economists’ readiness to follow young women..
Does this reflect declining sexism or just sexual interest?
It would be useful to know what happens next,
Eg do they then click & read their research papers?
Catherine Hakim argues that women can exercise ‘erotic capital’, ie leverage their sexual attractiveness in order to advance their own agenda.
I’m sceptical.
Wider research suggests that when heterosexual men are thinking about a woman’s body they ignore 90% of what she says…
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“All of the epistemic institutions controlled by the white bourgeois are addressing the wrong questions. They are managing the results of a tension they can never resolve” .
US teenage girls are inheriting a world where they can be richer, more senior, more vocal, and less discriminated against than ever before.
And yet so many want to kill themselves.
It’s a good reminder that “despair” isn’t necessarily shaped by equality or economics.
Jordan Peterson could definitely cite this data and say, “look girls are inheriting a much more gender equal world and yet they want to kill themselves, because they are stressed about their appearance.
All the opportunities & yet aesthetic insecurity is what wounds”.
A girl I knew well was so mentally unwell that she was institutionalised for months.
She was bright, bubbly, and from a loving, affluent family.