Carlo Schwarz (Bocconi University) (webinar)

“Gender Gaps in Academia: Global Evidence, 1900-1969”

Abstract: Based on a new, hand-collect database of around half a million university academics in all academic disciplines covering six cross-sections from 1900 to 1969 for an almost comprehensive set of universities in a large set of countries, we document gender gaps in academia in hiring, publications, citations, and promotions. We show that the worldwide share of women in academia rose from less than one percent to about 12 percent in 1969 with large variation across countries and subjects. The United States and Anglo-Saxon countries, more broadly, have been at the vanguard of hiring women, while Germanic and Scandinavian countries have lagged behind substantially. We further document a negative gender gap in publications of about 0.2sd, which is stable across time. The publication gap varies substantially across countries and is smaller, or even positive, in countries with very low shares of women. We also document a negative gender gap in citations, even after controlling for characteristics of papers using text-based machine-learning techniques. Finally, we show negative gender gaps in the probability of promotion, even after controlling for publications and citations, with particularly negative gender gaps for the promotion to full professor.

Join with Alessandro Iaria and Fabian Waldinger.