Celebrating Women in Macroeconomics in Cambridge, UK. Rebuilding Macroeconomics joins the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science again this year. We will discuss the contribution of women to macroeconomics and scrutinise the barriers that female economists face in universities and policy institutions.

We are pleased to hold this year’s event at the University of Cambridge in Girton College, the first college in Cambridge to admit women in 1869, held at the Stanley Library.

The event will be free to attend, and complimentary refreshments and lunch will be provided. Prior registration is required, and we will release details on how to register shortly. We thank Carolina Alves for organising the event with us.

Background

There is a lack of involvement of women in economics. As of May 2019, macroeconomics is one of the most male-dominated fields with just one out of five new papers being published by females (Repec, 2019). There is a heated dispute among the well-known hypotheses explaining why women are poorly represented in economics. Arguments range from a hostile and non-supportive environment for women, to a matter of choices and preferences.

However, a much less contested debate is about the consequences of this gender unbalance for our field. The gender of those making policies matters, as several studies have shown how males and females have different policy preferences. For instance, male economists express greater opposition to mandating that employers provide health insurance than female economists (May, McGarvey and Whaples, 2014).

The conference expects to celebrate women in macro offering a space where brilliant female macroeconomists can expose their work while sharing and reflecting upon their own experiences as women in the field. A constructive and interactive dialogue with the general audience is intended, where this audience can contribute to the discussion with their own perception of what macroeconomics is (or should be) and their intuition about possible consequences of the lack of woman in macro.