The BJP has come up with a new election slogan, Nari Shakti. That’s good. Women are far better than men in anything that involves brains and tact. They also have a better sense of balance in all but one life situation.

But as usual the BJP has stopped with just the slogan, its standard shoot-and-scoot technique. Instead, it should have bolstered its argument by providing some data about female representation in various professions.

Thus, if nothing else, the CSO or someone could check how many women there are in economics in India and in all other disciplines. They will have to define ‘economist’, of course.

Why start with economics? Because American female economists have been grumbling for several years that they don’t have enough representation. And it’s true that globally there are very few women in economics compared to men but, happily, that’s not the case in India.

In the US the ratio is as small as 10:90, as some American studies have found. You can see it everywhere in western universities, think tanks, banks, governments, corporations etc.

A Bloomberg report has this to say: “The underrepresentation leads to a culture that then fosters bias and discrimination and harassment,” said Anusha Chari, chair of the AEA’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession.

There is also a 2023 report on the status of women in economics by the American Economic Association also. It’s quite an eye-opener in terms of the data it has collected.

Anyway the clincher is that so far only two women — yes, two — have managed to ‘win’ the ‘Nobel’ prize in economics. Why?

There’s absolutely no provable answer to this. One reason is as good as any other. You can believe what you want to believe.

The important question

The more important question is would economics be different if there were more women in it. If so, in what way? I simply can’t think of any.

If economics isn’t going to be different, what then is the fuss about? It probably boils down to jobs and promotions. The AEA paper shows this. Women aren’t preferred candidates either for recruitment or for promotions in the US. They keep losing out to men who might be less suitable.

India is different. There are plenty of women in economics. They are present in all sorts of places like government, academia, banks, corporations etc. What’s more, they are as good or bad as any male economist.

Sampling bias

But interestingly, when the IMF put out a list of women in economics three years ago, it had only one Indian woman on it, Rohini Pande of Yale University. That, I think, is what’s called sampling bias.

Be that as it may, the question remains: if men and women were 50:50 in professional economics, what difference would it make to the discipline? I mean, if half the world’s airline pilots were women, would it make any difference to aerodynamics?

So the issue is about under-representation. So, as often when this is the main focus, the discussion becomes political. Politicisation is doubtless necessary to achieve gender parity but it comes with the accompanying risk of doing something only because of the positive optics.

However, the real reason for having better representation should not be jobs and promotions. Those are important but not overwhelmingly so.

Instead we have to ask if a better gender balance will make a difference to economic theory and practice. And here lies the problem: until representation improves we can’t find out. And when it does, we will probably find that it doesn’t.

It’s the good old chicken and egg problem.

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