INTRODUCTION / THE STATUS OF WOMEN ECONOMISTS IN US UNIVERSITIES AND THE WORLD / THE STATUS OF WOMEN ECONOMISTS IN UK UNIVERSITIES / THE STATUS OF WOMEN ECONOMISTS IN CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES / THE STATUS OF WOMEN ECONOMISTS IN CHINA'S UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

These Explorations, by eight authors from Canada, China, the US, and the UK, examine the current status of women in economics (with an eye mainly toward their status in the academic branch of the profession). The four sections of the work analyze results of surveys that show the distribution of academic positions among women economists in universities in Canada, the UK, the US, and China. The work also provides a short history of the development of committees and groups interested in furthering the status of women in the economics profession and suggests ways to improve the efforts of such groups and the status of women economists.     

Ethnic and Other Minority Representation in UK Academic Economics

Using a survey questionnaire of academic economists in the United Kingdom, we examine the representation of ethnic and other minorities. We find that nearly 12% of UK-employed academic economists are of ethnic minority origin. However, only 1% of the sample are UK-born ethnic minority. Controlling for individual and workplace characteristics, there is no significant ethnic minority effect on academic rank. However, there is a significant negative earnings effect. Further, 41% of ethnic minority economists feel that they have suffered workplace discrimination.     

A Picture of Male and Female Unemployment among Britain's Ethnic Minorities

Using a sample of around one million observations, formed by combining two micro datasets from the 1991 Census of Population, the paper explores male and female unemployment differences across Britain's ethnic minorities. The large sample size allows a detailed multivariate analysis of females for the first time. Unemployment differences are not simply the result of characteristic differences or discrimination by the white majority. The empirical work shows that there are equally wide discrepancies in female unemployment rates, compared with males, between the white majority and the non-white ethnic minorities. Of particular interest is the comparison between UK born and foreign born ethnic minorities. Unemployment rates among the former tend to be considerably higher, but this is accounted for by characteristic differences. Thus there is no evidence that the UK born are doing worse, as the raw data suggest, but they do not seem to be becoming better assimilated either.     

Is There a Public Sector Training Advantage? Evidence from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey

Using matched employer–employee data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (2004), we find a significant training ‘advantage’ exists for public sector workers over private sector workers even after accounting for differences in the composition of the two workforces. This finding is robust to all but one change in specification, designed to account for worker sorting effects which can lead to unobserved workplace‐based effects being correlated with individual worker characteristics. Using the average characteristics of workers within an establishment as a control for these sorting effects all but eliminates the estimated public sector training advantage, which has otherwise been an empirical regularity of many individual‐based training models.     

What Difference a Wife Makes: The Effect of Women's Hours of Work on Husbands' Hourly Earnings

This paper investigates the relationship between a wife's work-hours decision and her husband's hourly earnings. It is found that, among men in Managerial and Other Manual occupations, having a working wife significantly reduces the husband's hourly wage rate. The findings are robust to various estimation techniques and imply for these cases that productivity or discrimination effects associated with a wife working 40 hours per week lead to a reduction in the husband's hourly earnings of around 15 per cent.     

White/ethnic minority earnings and employment differentials in Britain: evidence from the LFS

It is 20 years since Britain passed legislation to combat racialdiscrimination. Despite this, evidence presented in this papersuggests that Britain's non-white ethnic minorities still donot appear to face a level playing field in the UK labour marketand their relative position does not appear to have improvedsince the 1970s. Native ethnic minorities also appear to befaring little better than their parents. It is in gaining employmentthat the situation is particularly acute.