Incredibly frustrating data, shocking annecdotes. Corroborated by

Chen, Kim, and Liuy (AER Conference Paper 2016), who find that, relative to males in the same cohort, female economists are less likely (by 9.6%) to have received tenure and promotion during the first eight years since graduation.

Antecol, Bedard, Stearns (AER 2018), who find that, using data on all(!) assistant professor hires at US top-50 economics departments from 1985-2004, the adoption of gender-neutral tenure clock stopping policies substantially reduced female tenure rates while substantially increasing male tenure rates.

Of course there is also the long legal history between Columbia and Graciela Chichilnisky, that started while I was in NY. At the time the rumor at Columbia was that the University had problems establishing the absence of wage discrimination because there were no other female professors (to establish wage comparisons) at any other Ivy League econ department.

In our department, I very much hope Judy Thornton, an absolute trailblazer of (tenured) women in economics, will write her memoirs to report on the situation starting in the 1950s. She shared with me that at Harvard she had to sit outside the door of Schumpeter’s lecture hall to hear his class (as women were not admitted to sit in class) and upon arriving at the UW in the early 1960s she reports that “one of the full professors patted me on the head and said ‘we needed a cute little instructor’.”