Women have been carrying the world on their shoulders through this pandemic,” states Anita Bhatia, Assistant Secretary General and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women. “The burden of care issue means that whether women are losing jobs or keeping jobs, the amount of work that they have to do that is unpaid has shot through the roof because of the gendered roles that women have in society. It may not be employment, but it is work, and it requires compensation.”
As a young woman wanting to pursue the study of economics, I ask myself; how has this become to be? In the workplace, men and women should be considered equivalent in terms of rights, benefits, obligations, and opportunities. However, in all fields of economics, women only represent 19% of the workforce on average worldwide.
The importance of Economics in today’s world, the amount of resources available to us is reducing each day. This condition will progressively become worse if we keep using our resources with low efficiency and effectiveness. Economics provides a mechanism for looking at possible ways to optimise resource utilisation and reduce wastage. Without the study of Economics and the insight of Economists we would almost be blind as to how to guide our economy.
A statistical approach Gender differences affect both developing and developed economies. Globally, over 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. Of 189 economies as of 2018, 104 economies still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs.
Moreover, if we examine shares of paper by gender composition, we see that in Economics, women publish on average less papers than men. Economists have studied this difference and have shown that women are held to higher editorial standards than men in Economics.
Over recent years, Economists have slowly started to develop an interest in the gender gap in the Economic field. Data has shown the existence of a ‘leaky pipeline theory’ - women struggling to advance in Economics because of the constant barriers they face.
The ‘leaky pipeline’ theory explained The metaphor ‘leaky pipeline’ describes the way in which women almost ‘disappear’ from some careers in particular STEM orientated professions. It details that if you pour water (young women) into a pipe and it leaks along its journey of the length of the pipe (young women exiting at different times due to obstacles faced) there will in majority of cases only be a small amount of female leaders emerging at the end of the pipe because of previous losses from the leaks. It could also be argued that without these leaks (obstacles) being patched only then will this repeating cycle on gender injustice be resolved.
Female faculties The share of female faculty decreases with rank, as in most academic disciplines, Economics remains solidly within the lowest group in terms of female faculty.
In many academic disciplines, women have fewer publications than men - a hypothesis for the lower productivity of female academics is that women have more intense domestic responsibilities, such as motherhood.
As a society we should all be granted the opportunities to maximise our potentials in the industries of our passions , barriered away from the injustices of the world ,after all if Economics is a way of life, can the study of it be justified if there isn’t fairness and justice within its walls?
