叠测听 and听Casey Buchholz

In the wake of the current uprising in support of Black Lives Matter, there has been increasing interest in the use of mainstream empirical methods in economics — like randomized control trials (RCTs) and administrative data evaluation — to address issues of racism and violence in the institution of policing. These interests are well intentioned, but similar to prior debates, we are reminded that about the relevance of these approaches amidst a mass movement calling for deep structural and institutional change. In just two weeks, mass protests have sprung up across the U.S. and the world calling for the defunding, disbanding, and abolition of police as well as the dismantling of white supremacy. This moment has the potential to bring about an institutional and structural shift in our politics, society, and economy. Given this, we will echo many of the concerns shared by economists about the limits of some empirical methods, the biases embedded in administrative data, and the relevancy of these approaches to the current moment calling for immediate change.听

Impoverished Economics and the Limits of RCTs

Since the beginning of the Minneapolis uprising, experimental literature on the supposed efficacy of police reform has been within the economics discipline. The experimental approach to police reform relies largely on RCTs as well as administrative data evaluation, both methods are applauded for their 鈥渙bjectivity鈥� and in some cases ability to design credible research implementations for causal inference.听

The most recent debate over RCTs occurred after the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Esther Duflo along with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer. As Ingrid Kvangraven explains in her critiquing the use of RCTs in the field of development economics, the approach assigns specific interventions to a randomly selected group, and then compares how specific outcomes change in the recipient group versus those who did not receive the treatment. For example, with respect to police reform, a popular research design is to randomly select officers to undergo procedural justice training and then compare the likelihood of arrest and use of force in civilian encounters for officers who received training versus those who did not receive training. Similar to how the RCT literature in development economics intends to alleviate poverty through simple interventions, the RCT literature on police reform views the issue of reducing or eliminating police violence simply as a matter of identifying and re-training a 鈥渇ew bad apples鈥� (see, for example,; and). While this approach to research 鈥渕ay seem harmless, if not laudable鈥� Kvangraven correctly points out 鈥渢here are many reasons for concern.鈥澨�

The RCT approach to police reform that is being promoted is concerned with the activity of individual police officers, not the police as an institution. By design, the RCT approach is rooted in methodological individualism which obscures the roles of institutions and politics, and renders discrimination a matter of individual behaviors and beliefs. In this way, the RCT approach to police reform accepts the institution of policing as a constant and, in doing so, fails to even consider the possibility of institutional transformation as a necessary step towards eliminating police violence. The emphasis on small, technical interventions at the individual-level also loses sight of the ways in which the institution of the police is implicated in broader political and economic dynamics, like anti-black racism, nationalism, militarism, and capitalism. Small interventions may generate seemingly positive results at the micro-level, but do little to challenge the organized forms of power and authority that produce the problems policing simultaneously addresses, creates, and perpetuates听

Consider, once again, procedural justice training programs. Procedural justice asks the question 鈥淗ow do law enforcement agencies convince the public that they are benevolent and trustworthy, while making arrests and using physical force?鈥� (see, again, Owens et. al, 2018) The procedural justice model, therefore, focuses on the way in which an officer conducts themselves in the course of taking an action as opposed to the outcome of an action. So, rather than asking why arrests are being made in the first place or why police are given the authority by the state to inflict violence against people who are not allowed to fight back, the RCT approach to police reform naturalizes these conditions and forces us to accept them as immutable.

Methodological Individualism is Blind to Racial Capitalism

The RCT approach to police reform amounts to a perverse exercise in methodological individualism. As discussed above, proponents of the approach argue that the problem of police violence can be solved by correcting cognitive biases and changing the behavioral patterns of individual police officers. However, the RCT approach fails to consider the conditions in which individuals are compelled to make decisions and take action. Individuals don鈥檛 exist in a vacuum. Individuals are compelled to act according to the mandate of the institution they serve and, as such, fulfill the purpose of that institution in society. Thus, to paraphrase Karl Marx in the to The Critique of Political Economy, the police officer is a social role that the individual enters into, and, in doing so, dispenses of their individual will. So, then, what is the social role of the police officer? In the United States, policing originated as an institution designed to protect the human property rights of enslavers. Despite the abolition of chattel slavery, the institution of policing has lived on under American capitalism, operating primarily to protect the private property rights of capitalists. It therefore follows that the police officer is required to enforce private property rights in service of the institution of policing.

In fulfilling the social role of the police officer, the personal intentions and attitudes of the individual cease to be relevant. Of course, if called to a retail store to deal with the use of counterfeit money by a customer (as in the case of), the officer has the ability to make the decision to not kill the person in question. Sure, the RCT literature shows it is possible to train police officers to kill less or only kill when it is 鈥渏ustified.鈥� That said, the RCT approach fails to consider the fact that enforcing the material insecurity that is inherent to and characteristic of capitalism is still inherently violent. In addition, the RCT approach also fails to consider the question of why police officers have the discretion and power to take someone鈥檚 life. Moreover, it is only within the range of violence that spans from depriving someone of the means of survival to depriving someone of life itself that the individual-level decisions and actions of the police officer are able to operate. So, in a material sense, does it really make a difference if the police officer is 鈥渞espectful鈥� or 鈥渃ourteous鈥� in the course of arresting a shoplifter or drug-user? Empirical methods like RCTs are completely incapable of capturing this range of violence, and, as such, limited to proposing 鈥渞eformist reforms鈥�: reforms that do not substantially alter the status quo but do legitimize its inherently violent nature.听

But, it鈥檚 important to take note of the fact that American capitalism is not capitalism in the abstract. American capitalism is racial capitalism. The term, coined by Cedric Robinson in his classic text,, refers to 鈥渢he development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society鈥� along racial lines (p. 2). Meaning, as says, racial capitalism is a specific ordering of capitalism predicated on the 鈥渙n-going murder鈥� of subjects constructed as Black as well as the 鈥渢heft of black labor and indigenous lands鈥� (p. 1093). The systematic devaluation of Black life and Black labor is, therefore, essential to the accumulation of capital under racial capitalism. Which is to say that laborers constructed as Black subjects receive less in exchange for equivalent amounts of labor time relative to laborers constructed as non-black subjects in addition to comprising the most precarious sections of the working class by being afforded the least amount of job security and, therefore, by extension, most likely to make up the reserve army of laborers. Taking into consideration the relationship between private property and police violence elaborated on above, it follows that policing is inherently anti-black. Policing under racial capitalism is designed to systematically deny Black subjects the means of survival, and, as such, force Black subjects to participate in a political economic system organized around and animated by their unpaid labor and unwaged existence. The final words of George Floyd and Eric Garner — 鈥淚 can鈥檛 breathe鈥� — articulates the essence of this reality to us in clear terms: racial capitalism is a political economic system organized to deny Black subjects of the ability to live.

In this sense, the RCT approach is, as would say, completely blind to the economics and 鈥減olitics of crime data鈥� (p. 247). Crime is not a neutral category. It is a political and economic category rooted in anti-blackness. For instance, in her book,, Elizabeth Hinton details the politics surrounding the construction of the poor Black subject as a criminal, which, once formed, provided the basis for the aggressive expansion of the police state into poor black urban neighborhoods (Hinton, 2016). Thus, returning to Wang, it鈥檚 clear that the models used by the RCT approach 鈥渁re only as good as the datasets they use鈥� and the question of 鈥�who collects data and how it is collected鈥� is vitally important [emphasis original] (p. 247). The RCT approach might find benefits from cognitive bias training for police officers working in 鈥渉igh crime鈥� areas, but it is unable to disclose the reasons why an area is so heavily policed and regarded as a 鈥渉igh crime鈥� area in the first place.

Administrative Data is Subject to Power and Bias听

What if we think beyond RCTs and towards just administrative data evaluation? As many have pointed out, analysis of administrative data is fraught with issues. First, the data are collected from law enforcement agencies themselves. The data then reflect the power relations of policing and embody such bias. pointed out that we need to be careful about what gets recorded as 鈥渢ruth鈥� and. Further, this reliance on so-called objective data collection obfuscates the role, positionality, and gaze of the researcher as well, which too often perpetuate the the multiple racialized and gendered hierarchies of white supremacist capitalism. In fact, these issues of positionality and gaze should be a topic of discussion and questioning within the field of economics. Both of these issues are akin to the feminist critiques raised by Julie Nelson in. Perhaps most importantly though, the timing of this call appears to undervalue and deflect the voices of Black Lives Matter calling for abolition and a complete dismantling and rethinking of institutions that uphold white supremacy, as well as the voices from within economics providing important critiques.听

Empirical Methods for Abolition

Our critique is not to say empirical methods are completely useless. Novel approaches to empirical economics can be useful in many contexts, especially when ethically designed or following a big change. Take, for example, that analyzes an aberration in NYPD strategy, in which NYPD officers coordinated a work slowdown by limiting foot patrols, criminal summonses, and low-level arrests. The authors find that civilian complaints of major crimes (such as burglary, felony assault, and grand larceny) decreased during and shortly after sharp reductions in proactive policing. The findings of Sullivan and O鈥橩eefe both challenge and disrupt common sense understandings that police deter crime and keep us safe. Thus, empirical methods and data collection can be powerful tools for guiding democratic, transformative, and liberationist struggles so long as they do the work of undermining the forms of organized power and authority the movement is interested in dismantling.

is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In Fall 2020, she will join the Economics Department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges as an Assistant Professor. She tweets at .

Casey Buchholz is a PhD student, Department of Economics at UMass-Amherst. He tweets at .

Photo by .

The debate in Higher Education (HE) in the UK is slowly starting to recognise that inequality in education is both the cause and consequence of societal elitism. As a result, there is an increasing debate about widening access to academia, and more and more newspaper

On the 17th of May 2019 the and working group organised a on economic pluralism, teaching and research. I was chairing the panel on 鈥淐hallenges and Opportunities for the Economics Curriculum Around Decolonisation, Gender and Diversity鈥� which included brilliant contributions from Dr Meera Sabaratnam (SOAS), Dr Lucia Pradella (King鈥檚 College), Dr Ingrid Kvangraven (University of York) and Ali Al-Jamri (Rethinking Economics, Diversity Campaign Manager). They addressed various political, historical and cultural听 issues around neocolonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism and gender segregation in HE at large and in the economic discipline in particular. Considering the potential great complementarity of the topics, I thought it was relevant to bring in the class dimension in the discussion. I noticed that while the marginalization of women and people of color is rightly getting increasing attention, the class dimension is sometimes forgotten. Indeed, although class remains a crucial lens to untangle injustice and exclusion in the HE industry, it isn’t dealt with with as much urgency. Maybe also because it’s a bit less visible. Indeed, last week I was discussing this issue with another 鈥榓cademic migrant鈥� from Southern Europe, and he suggested: 鈥淧anels should ask 鈥渨hat do your parents do/did for a living?鈥� during job interviews.

To prepare my presentation, I approached a couple of 鈥榙ata intelligence鈥� offices in UK universities asking for facts about the class dimension of access to higher education in the UK. I was pointed to the , which is a new resource that enables us educators, but also students, to look at various key bits of data on the university sector as a whole, and on individual universities. A very useful resource indeed!听

So here is what I found, and the results are pretty discouraging.听

There is a general concern about students鈥� retention across UK HE institutions. According to data presented below based on and , findings seem to support such concern, across disciplines. Figure 1 below shows the years in the degree on the Y axis and three indicators on the on the X axis:听

1. Course completion: where 1 corresponds to full completion of a non-medical degree, and 0 if students did not complete their courses in the period;听
2. Dropout: where 1 is if they went to university but dropped out of HE completely within two years of initial entry, and 0 is if they went to university but did not drop out;
3. First or 2:1: where 1 corresponds to going to university full-time to study for a non-medical first degree, successfully completing their degree within five years of entry and graduation with a first or a 2:1 as their degree class, and 0 if they went to university full-time to study for a non-medical degree and successfully completed it within five years of entry but did not graduate with a first or a 2:1 as their degree class

Figure 1: Distribution of the likelihood of dropping out within 2 years, completing a degree within 5 years and graduating with a first or 2:1, by university course

Source: .听

When looking at the determinants of such outcomes, the trends seem quite unanimous. From a recently published dataset from ONS it is that 鈥淵oung students from disadvantaged areas are more likely to drop out, less likely to gain a first or 2:1, complete their degree within 5 years or find graduate employment compared to their more advantaged peers鈥�, which confirms what is summarised in figure 2 below.

Figure 2: % of HE participants dropping out within 2 years, completing a degree within 5 years and graduating with a first or 2:1, by socio-economic backgroundPercentile of SES distribution (1=least deprived, 100=most deprived).听Source: 听.听

The most advantaged students tend to dominate the proportion of 18 years old in England with a place of HE. Students with lower socioeconomic status – from disadvantaged classes – are more likely to leave university within 2 years, complete their degree within 5 years and less likely to graduate with a First or 2:1. The report notes that while 鈥渓ess than 10% of the least deprived state school students drop out of university within two years, over 80% complete their degree within five years and nearly 70% graduating with a first or a 2:1, more than 20% of the most deprived state school students drop-out, less than 60% complete their degree and less than 40% graduate with a first or a 2:1鈥� (p. 16). In the below figures 3-4, the same kind of stratification is observed when looking at a mix of indicators that describe the degree of 鈥榩rivilege鈥� or 鈥榓dvantage鈥� of students in universities. These are spatial disaggregation and multiple equality measure (which include sex, ethnic group, where people live, secondary education school sector (state or private), and income background (as measured by whether a person was in receipt of free school meals (FSM), a means-tested benefit while at school).听

Figure 3: Proportion of 18 year olds in England with a place in higher education, by educational disadvantage in their local area听Source: UCAS 2017, End of Cycle Report

Figure 4: Proportion of 18 year olds in England with a place in higher education, by UCAS multiple equality measureSource: UCAS 2017, End of Cycle Report

Based on the above evidence we now have an idea of what the main determinants of retention and success in higher education are. The intersection of gender and race with class and economic privilege is still important for understanding the inequality in achievements of the student body. Yet, university managers and policy makers seem unable to identify and implement counter policies to combat the polarizing outcomes. As a result, we are not going in the right direction: marketization and fees increase, scholarships are scant, the de-finincing of the welfare state and austerity persists, and the 鈥榗lass鈥� gap is not narrowing (figure 5).

Figure 5:听Proportion of full-time, first-degree UK domiciled entrants to HEFCE-funded higher education institutions in England who leave during or after their first year

Source: Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), based on POLAR3 measure of educational disadvantage

This discussion raises a further point, which is about how the elitist turn of higher education perpetuates its internal institutional dynamics. The close association between class and student academic performance should make us reflect on who is and who is not going to become an academic and what the consequences of that are. If disadvantaged students are unlikely to finish their degree or obtain high marks, they will not manage to enrol in a PhD program. Thus, who will ultimately become a professor? In the end, will the academic body be able to reflect and inspire a wide range of voices to find answers to questions and challenges society needs to address?听听

Inequality of opportunities, enabled by unequal power relations in society, is reinforcing the lack of diversity in academia, including in terms of class. That will hamper socio-economic and political participation, and ultimately socio-economic mobility at all levels, inside and outside academia. We are at a crossroads between the opportunity of transforming education into an open, nurturing and inspiring space, and the danger of failing as a society to do so. Academics have a responsibility to advocate towards the right direction.听

Lorena Lombardozzi is a Lecturer in Economics at The Open University in the UK. Photo by .

I recently read Claudia Sahm鈥檚 on why there are very few female economists in the blogosphere. As a blogger herself, as someone who is active on Twitter, and as a follower of approximately eighty blogs, she states with no hesitation: 鈥淚t’s true, very few female economists blog. Period.鈥� For her, three hypotheses may explain this absence: women with opinions are not well received, women are busy with other forms of service, and women underestimate what they would contribute by blogging. But aren’t these actually manifestations of a deeper issue?

Surprisingly, the absence of expert women鈥檚 voices from the economic blogosphere seems to have caught Sahm鈥檚 attention only recently when Miles Kimball listed his in the blogosphere and all of them were men. Kimball quickly cobbled an addendum listing , , , and , but the question on the male dominance in the economic blogosphere did not go away. One could argue that Kimball is referring only to the female bloggers he interacts with, but, for the sake of the argument, if we focus on numbers for a bit, we can also bring into the discussion the . Disappointingly, but not unexpectedly, the list contains merely three women bloggers: , and听.

To be fair, some of the blogs in the Intelligent Economist鈥檚 list rely on a group of economists. So, out of curiosity, I had a quick look at the blogs that list their contributors[1]. Interestingly, a few more female names popped up. Betsey Stevenson and Megan McArdle from the Bloomberg View economics blog; Carmen Dorob膬葲 from the Mises Wire blog; Melody Barnes, Heather Boushey, Janet Currie, Laura D鈥橝ndrea Tyson from the Equitablog; Eileen Norcross and Emily Washington from the Neighborhood Effects blog; Julie Hotchkiss, M. Melinda Pitts, Paula Tkac, Lei Fang, Karen Kopecky, Jessica Dill, Pam Frisbee and Sandra Ghizoni from the Macroblog; Rania Antonopoulos, Lekha Chakraborty, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Yeva Nersisyan, Pavlina Tcherneva and G眉l 脺nal from the Multiplier Effect blog; Frances Woolley from the Worthwhile听Canadian Initiative blog; Adrianna McIntyre from the Incidental Economist blog; Joanna Shepherd from the Truth on The Market blog; Lynne Kiesling from the Knowledge Problem blog; Eileen Appelbaum, Deborah James, Cherrie Bucknor, Laura Jung, Tillie McInnis, Dawn听Niederhauser, Becca Watts from the CEPR Blog; and Susan Ariel Aaronson, Asha Abdel-Rahim, Arnelyn Abdon, Yukiko Abe, Laura Abramovsky, Abigail Adams, Malin Adolfson, Al铆cia Adser脿, Gara Afonso, Sagiri agiri Kitao, Swarnali Ahmed Hannan, Rahel Aichele, Anna Aizer, Kehinde Ajayi, Stefania Albanesi, Cinzia Alcidi, Mariya Aleksynska, Michelle Alexopoulos, Laura Alfaro, C茅line Allard, Ingvild Alm氓s, Mary Amiti, Elizabeth Ananat, Maria Victoria Anauati, Siwan Anderson, Mitsuyo Ando, Svetlana Andrianova, Marianne Andries, Emilie An茅r, Chiara Angeloni, Shamena Anwar, Chie Aoyagi, S贸nia Ara煤jo, Eva Arceo, Cristina Arellano, Janine Aron, Nava Ashraf, Katrin Assenmacher-Wesche, Bettina Aten, Maria Attinasi, Britta Augsburg, Emmanuelle Auriol, Susan Averett, Meghana Ayyagari and Ghazala Azmat from the VOX 鈥撎鼵EPR鈥檚 policy portal blog [2].

Okay, wipe the grin off your face. The number of names above should be taken carefully. Scrutinising the list of contributors of some of the 100 top Economics blogs clearly shows more female names, but an accurate conclusion on the gender balance in the economic blogosphere would demand a look at the proportion of women bloggers compared to the total number of bloggers. Just to give you a little taste, the VOX 鈥� CEPR鈥檚 policy portal blog indeed presents an impressive number of 45 female contributors. Nevertheless, this number becomes much less impressive when considering that the total number of contributors for the VOX 鈥� CEPR鈥檚 blog is 219. Unfortunately, similar imbalance is witnessed in the CEPR Blog, which contains only 8 women out of a total of 20 contributors.

We can keep looking at the numbers for as long as we want to expose the gender imbalance in the economic blogosphere, but it is unlikely that Sahm鈥檚 conclusion is wrong. Still, I just can鈥檛 understand why people seem surprised to find out that there are very few female economists blogging. Unfortunately, Amanda Bayer鈥檚 study on has already provided ample evidence that Economics is a male-dominated field (see also )[3]; the gender gap in Economics is also documented by a recent paper , and this gap gets larger at each stage of the profession according to (see also ,听听and ). So why wouldn鈥檛 the economic blogosphere reflect the male dominance in the field? It is crucial that we openly acknowledge the gender imbalance in the Economics profession before raising hypotheses on why there are so few female economic bloggers. Otherwise, we are not able to tackle the key issue in this discussion, i.e., sexism in our society and in our field.

In this sense, a clarification is in order when Katie Evan stresses that the “.” The blogosphere definitely perpetuates male bias, but it is the male dominance in Economics that makes the economic blogosphere a job for boys in the first place. This is not about being picky. It is about recognising that the key issue is not 鈥榦h women do not blog, men are taking over again’, but rather the fact that women are still a minority in this field, and the male-dominated environment plays out in a number of ways that add up to a huge overall damper on the number of women who try to make it to the higher ranks of the discipline. Why is it that The Economist鈥檚 recent list of did not include a single woman? Shouldn’t we confront the lack of women in the economic blogosphere as Miles Kimball and an anonymous writer bluntly did when asking: Why are top-notch female economists not being taken seriously? The list of issues women in Economics face that their male colleagues might not be aware of is long and includes enduring misogyny on the virtual domain (see ). See for the long journey for a female economist to become tenured full professor. See also and for the extent to which sexist ideas and prejudices find a refuge in Economics that they do not find elsewhere in academia, apparently. In other words, patriarchy and sexism are pretty much alive in Economics, and the blogosphere is not exempted from its effects.

It seems obvious to me that the answer to the question why are there so few female economic bloggers? should start by acknowledging that the limited number of female bloggers is evidently linked to the limited number of female economists in the first place. We must then go through the inhibitions and oppression that a male-orientated environment means for the women in the field, which in turn involves addressing an extremely relevant point already raised by Noah Smith: Finally, the male-orientated sexist field of Economics does not exist in a vacuum. We do live in a patriarchal society whose values and beliefs, sometimes at an unconscious level (see ), negatively affect female economists who, for example, are often absent from media debates and academic events (see , , and ). We should stop pretending that our modern times are 鈥榚mancipated鈥� times, and speak about sexism more openly and directly in our profession and society.

Regarding this last aspect, i.e., patriarchal society, I want to raise a specific point. In some areas of the globe, a considerable share of women has acquired some degree of professional and financial independence. However, we still struggle to have support in order to perform this independent and relatively new role and, at the same time, perform the 鈥榯raditional鈥� role of being a wife and a mother (see , , and ). There’s a huge amount of anxiety that goes with this situation, and pressures to play those roles, whichever they are.

In academia, for example, that men鈥檚 academic career is actually bolstered when they have children, but the same is not true for women. The findings actually show that 鈥渕en’s academic careers receive additional support by their (non-academic) wives in a way that’s not true for academic women with academic partners鈥� (see also ).

Blogging is another job that requires time, but how does it fit in the traditional family structure? I will risk saying that the nuclear family division plays a massive role in freeing time for male bloggers, while the same nuclear division probably stops us, women, from blogging, I suppose. See for a very interesting account on the nuclear family in contemporary society. I suspect that a questionnaire on how many female bloggers, excluding the ones whose job involves daily blogging, are married, married with young children, married with grown-up kids, and how many are single may also contribute insights into understanding why there are so few female economic bloggers. What if many of us are not blogging or tweeting late at night in order to spend time with our kids or do the housework?

Claudia Sahm鈥檚 hypotheses explaining the absence of women in the economic blogosphere are interesting, valid and, despite not being acknowledged by her, certainly related to the gender division of work, gender intimidation, and the glass ceiling. But without contextualising these issues within structures of patriarchy and sexism, they become shallow, and addressing these issues alone is unlikely to 鈥榝ix鈥� the problem. I do agree with her final observation that 鈥渢he reason why there are few women blogging is probably a complex mix of factors鈥�. However, there is enough evidence out there showing that the great majority of these factors, if not all of them, come down to sexism and its intersection with other forms of inequality like class, race, sexuality and education. I am disappointed that Sahm鈥檚 piece does not directly and categorically address what seems to be the core and the root of the problem leading to the lack of female economist bloggers. My concern in this case is particularly related to the pressures we keep piling onto ourselves without confronting, discussing, and changing the structural conditions that put us, women, in such situations in the first place.

We should be very cautious to not strengthen the type of feminist argument. If the key issue was that any woman willing to work hard can climb the [corporate] ladder all the way to the top (in this case, any woman willing to blog more can help to correct the gender imbalance in the economic blogosphere), we would not be talking about very few female economists blogging or none making the list of the most influential economists in the first place. Otherwise, we better just assume that we didn’t want it badly enough. We should also always ponder our personal experience and remember that privileged white women are quite often the beneficiaries of solidarity and understanding from their male colleagues, while women of color, women without financial privilege, and women on the LBGTQA spectrum are not (see and and ). Further, individual success stories and experiences, showing hard work and perseverance, will not alone challenge the white supremacist patriarchal structure that is in place right now. The idea of 鈥榯rickle-down feminism鈥� might be very comforting, but it’s never borne out in reality (see and ). Lean in feminism is a convenient faux empowerment idea for a tiny number of women, often based in developed countries and/or from a privileged social positions, but rather damaging for the majority of us (see the excellent bell hooks ). By no means we should give space for it or let our personal experience validate it.

Blogs of female economists:

黑料社区

[1] I did not have access to the WSJ-Real Time Economics blog and The Economist Free Exchange blog.

[2] These are just the bloggers starting with the letter A.

[3] Bayer鈥檚 research is, in fact, much broader than the question of gender inequality in the economic profession. Her concern is about the lack of diversity in economics, in particular women and members of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups. She makes a strong case that the economics profession could benefit from more diversity (see ).

Thanks to Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Feyzi Ismail and Pedro Mendes Loureiro for helpful comments. All remaining errors are my own.

Carolina Alves is a PhD student in Economics at SOAS.