Gender and the Dismal Science: Women in the Early Years of the Economics Profession

Author:   Ann Mari May
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231192903


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   05 July 2022
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Gender and the Dismal Science: Women in the Early Years of the Economics Profession


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Overview

The economics profession is belatedly confronting glaring gender inequality. Women are systematically underrepresented throughout the discipline, and those who do embark on careers in economics find themselves undermined in any number of ways. Women in the field report pervasive biases and barriers that hinder full and equal participation-and these obstacles take an even greater toll on women of color. How did economics become such a boys' club, and what lessons does this history hold for attempts to achieve greater equality? Gender and the Dismal Science is a groundbreaking account of the role of women during the formative years of American economics, from the late nineteenth century into the postwar period. Blending rich historical detail with extensive empirical data, Ann Mari May examines the structural and institutional factors that excluded women, from graduate education to academic publishing to university hiring practices. Drawing on material from the archives of the American Economic Association along with novel data sets, she details the vicissitudes of women in economics, including their success in writing monographs and placing journal articles, their limitations in obtaining academic positions, their marginalization in professional associations, and other hurdles that the professionalization of the discipline placed in their path. May emphasizes the formation of a hierarchical culture of status seeking that stymied women's participation and shaped what counts as knowledge in the field to the advantage of men. Revealing the historical roots of the homogeneity of economics, this book sheds new light on why biases against women persist today.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ann Mari May
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231192903


ISBN 10:   0231192908
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   05 July 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Preface 1. Current Challenges, Historical Origins 2. The Political Economy of Gender in the Halls of Ivy 3. A Liminal Space: Graduate Training in the Dismal Science 4. A Membership Beyond the Professoriate 5. A Natural Constituency 6. The Trade in Words: Gender and the Monograph 7. Trouble in the Inaugural Issue of the American Economic Review: The Monograph and the Review 8. Gender, the Old Boy Network, and the Scholarly Journal 9. Not a Free Market: Women’s Employment After the Doctorate 10. A Destiny Fulfilled: Defining the Professional Economist Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

Bravo to Ann Mari May for recovering and assembling novel data sets to buttress Gender and the Dismal Science's persuasive narrative of the experience of women-both black and white-in the early days of the profession and the construction of the field as a quintessential old boy network. -- Cecilia Conrad, Pomona College In Gender and the Dismal Science, Ann Mari May confronts the contemporary challenge posed by the masculinist nature of the economics profession in the U.S. by offering its history. The result is an incisive, well-documented, and thoroughly readable account of the educational opportunities and professional experiences of women economists in the U.S. -- Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, author of <i>Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s</i> Gender and the Dismal Science combines careful archival research, innovative empirical work, and a compelling narrative to tell the story of the barriers that women economists have faced since the birth of the field. With an accessible and compelling voice, May ensures this history of the hidden half can now be seen. -- Justin Wolfers, coauthor of <i>Principles of Economics</i> Tackling the issue from a modern and historical perspective, Ann Mari May reflects back on the historical and institutional trends, choices, rules, and behaviors that shaped the economics discipline in the first half of the twentieth century. Frankly, I don't know anyone else who could do a better job. -- Marianne Johnson, secretary of the History of Economics Society A rich historical narrative on the long-standing sources of such gender gaps. * Finance and Development * By examining the early days of the profession, May sheds light on some roots of the issue...Recommended. * Choice *


Tackling the issue from a modern and historical perspective, Ann Mari May reflects back on the historical and institutional trends, choices, rules, and behaviors that shaped the economics discipline in the first half of the twentieth century. Frankly, I don't know anyone else who could do a better job. -- Marianne Johnson, secretary of the History of Economics Society


Tackling the issue from a modern and historical perspective, Ann Mari May reflects back on the historical and institutional trends, choices, rules, and behaviors that shaped the economics discipline in the first half of the twentieth century. Frankly, I don't know anyone else who could do a better job. -- Marianne Johnson, secretary of the History of Economics Society In Gender and the Dismal Science, Ann Mari May confronts the contemporary challenge posed by the masculinist nature of the economics profession in the U.S. by offering its history. The result is an incisive, well-documented, and thoroughly readable account of the educational opportunities and professional experiences of women economists in the U.S. -- Helen Horowitz,


Author Information

Ann Mari May is a professor of economics with courtesy appointments in history and women’s studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She was a founding member of the International Association for Feminist Economics. She is the editor of The “Woman Question” and Higher Education: Perspectives on Gender and Knowledge Production in America (2008) and coeditor of the three-volume Feminist Economics (2011).

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