That all sounds exactly right. Begs the sticky question of tenure. Also which sort of institution do these observations apply to? They seem spot on for top 50 R1 universities. But there are far more jobs (?) at the remaining 1-2,000 other colleges and universities. Is the story the same there?
I have to confess that it’s too long for me to digest. But let me say one observation as a female who has done a PhD. I’ve seen many women earning their phds while having kids. Some even gave birth to 2 before finishing her PhDs in 5 years! Who the heck says that you’ll have to wait until having a tenure to have kids in the US? In fact, health insurance was the best when you’re a student. And when kids are at young age, it doesn’t cost much to raise and there’re lots of government subsidies for kids. Hence, I’ve seen more and more postdocs in biology or chemistry (yep, most of them will never be able to get out and become a tenure track professor if you know how competitive those fields are) got kids before they realized they would have to come out to industry to make more money. And, economics is still a really good major to get hired in industry. Even Amazon hires economists with a good salary. I think a better solution, probably is, to have more graduate student social events so to help female PhDs to find partners.
The book, "Dr. Mom" (1986) by Marianne Neifert MD, is in part a memoir by a physician, who had several children while in medical school. I knew her husband at the time ('80s). Neifert demonstrates that it's possible to be pregnant/have children while having serious and time-consuming academic commitments. Trade-offs and having a resourceful husband helps, while postponing pregnancy until after some intermediate career objective may leave the potential mother without motherhood. The constant cheerleading that women "can have it all" is a disservice to the reality that no one--women included--can. Cheers.
Not to mention getting out of grad school doesn’t make it easier searching for a partner. I wish I would have known this earlier rather than listening to all the feminist narratives saying issues would automatically get resolved once I was done school and started to have some stable income. And egg freezing is just close to a scam. Has anyone ever done any research what the successful chance is of getting frozen egg to get conceived? It’s in the low 30%. Frozen conceived embryos have much higher successful chance though. So, at the end of the day, having a partner is way more important no matter which way you look at it
There's also the idea that postponing decisions and commitments (marriage and children) while devoting a single-mindedness to finishing the current objective means that you'll have the time and energy to devote to a partner and children later on. Time is the one thing you cannot get back. Lost time cannot be made up. Once past, it is expired, irretrievable.
Ah, "adult babies." Many years ago, in NYC's Central Park. I spied a man amongst a family group (adults and their children) wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, "I'm done adulting for the day." A proud display of immaturity. I'll leave it there. Cheers.
I think you have good point but in current political climate it is not viable. Any dating within your own profession is now looked at with suspicion especially if you attend the same university or do the same work.
One doesn’t need to date within the same program. Organizing more social events among different PhD programs so it’s much easier for the female phds to find husbands from other programs. It’s that simple. These days grad schools didn’t even offer student dorms so students can mingle. Everybody is so isolated and has no support system if things happen. Of course women especially don’t want to be in such an environment
Economics is fascinating and a main, if not the main driver in human history. Still, we don t really need that many university economists. So much of what fills economic or finance journals is useless, pointless, repetitive blabla.
Solution is to admit fewer people to PhD programs - or eliminate tenure.
Problem is none of the top programs want to under admit for a variety of reasons (including what a crime it would be if a grad from a second tier institution got the tenure track job instead of a top tier grad).
MBA and law programs overproduce grads, but not even every graduate of a top program expects they will be nearly guaranteed a lifetime of success due to their degree (unlike grads in guilds like medicine).
Problem is academia comports itself as a guild but it doesn’t have jobs.
Thank you. I’m a 5th year PhD student in economics in a top 5 program. I got married in my third year and really wanted to have a child in my fourth. I think my department is lovely and would have been deeply accepting of it. However, I still chickened out. It felt like career suicide to be pregnant and have a baby when everyone was in a frenzy to write more and more papers. I was too and now I have a bunch of drafts on topics I find interesting and cool. However I’m on the verge of quitting academia. While I was able to make it this far and love what I do, I feel exhausted by the prospect of feeling this same way for the next 8-odd years on tenure track. I want to have many children, I want a stable job, I want to stop working at 6pm and give my time to my future babies. That seems impossible on the tenure clock. It is what it is. I don’t begrudge people whose preferences allow them to spend 18 hour days on research. I can’t. So I’m taking myself out of the race.
Can anyone be productive 18 hours a day? After 4 or even 6 I am just producing gibberish. "Frenzy to write more papers" sounds like the core of the problem. How about "passion to write one good one?" This paper number competition is a very single-male oriented game.
My advice. Go for a top 50 program instead when you leave. My sense is people are able to punch out at 6pm and most people (including women) in our department have kids (including pre tenure).
I think the pressure at the top must be incredible. Is it worth the stress just to be "at the top" of a field, making a bit more money while working longer and more stressful hours? At a top 50 department like Oregon where you don't need a top 5 (much less dozens) I can credibly expect to published 1-2 papers a year in field journals occasionally hit above that, make a good salary, afford a home, and have great recreation options nearby.
This would also be an argument to take a govt job too though (with even greater ability to punch out at 5pm).
This is exactly what I was going to say. I'm at "the other U of O" (Oklahoma) and can confirm the working conditions are nearly identical. [Although we are more top 75 than top 50.]
Also, when you're "at the top" you have to do loads more traveling. Which spreads family time even thinner.
This is amazing that you addressed! When I entered to PhD they asked me not to get pregnant even before admission- on top of that it is not about job requirements go to women I understand when you are women you will graduate 👩🎓 later than MEN when you have male supervisors !!!!! and as long as you need their reference letters.. you have to respect and listen… this is totally unfair… and make me to think about industry rather than academia …
Realistically, working in the private sector provides its own constraints - a professional doesn't work fewer than 60 hours/week and never stops at 6pm.
This modest proposal strikes me as sensible. My wife opted to leave a technical career field to have children. I greatly respect the personal and professional sacrifices she made over the years as a result. However, I sometimes wonder what professional impact she might have had if she would have taken a career-and-mom approach as she is a very sharp lady. My best to those contemplating such trade-offs.
I wouldn’t have worried about that. The impact as a good wife and a good mother in a household is always way larger to the society than the impact at work. Trust me, most companies view their employees replaceable and the truth is, employees are pretty much replaceable. There’re only very few can become Elon Musk
Reading this makes me wonder - why would anyone put him/herself through the wringer for an academic career? I was in an MBA program in 1991, and one of my professors suggested I might be interested in the PhD program instead. I could only laugh at the prospect of entering the academic mill, and this was before so much of the workload went to adjuncts who have no career prospects.
Women in the military have similar issues. I have personally watched excellent female officers and enlisted personnel leave the military due this exact issue, when will I have time to raise a family. Just the opinion of an old hermit.
WWII really saw the transition from women on the sidelines in the labor market to full on supporting it. We're not on wartime footing anymore - or are we, but with a different existential threat(s)?
Kill the American PhD. Try the English (not British) system. 3 year undergraduate, 3 year PhD. Done and dusted by age 25. After all, if you can't produce one good paper in 3 years then perhaps academia really isn't for you (as it wasn't for me, I'm well outside the system).
A fairly brutal prescription but one that would actually work.
The way most US econ programs are set up, most students haven't even started writing a real paper after two years because they're (still) burdened with classes that emphasize problem sets and cramming for exams. At best they'll have some lit reviews and maybe a proposal or two.
But Europe has this problem too—it just involves longer postdocs with much less independence. European schools (especially in the UK) have also responded by ratcheting down salaries significantly (in real terms) in a way that the US has not.
Unfortunately, the UK is following the US in the duration of PhD programs. I managed to complete a PhD in two years in the 1970s (including a couple of papers published in top journals). Now, a generation later, my daughter-in-law took five years to complete here PhD (also in a top UK university). It's obviously advantageous for supervisors to have cheap labour for five years, and for the institutions. It's far from obvious that it is remotely in the interest of the students.
OK, both I and my d-i-l worked in STEM subjects, but it is iniquitous that economics should be so different.
I agree. At least it won’t produce products like me who aren’t really that talented and who probably shouldn’t have been in that system. I mean, we don’t really need so many phds in academia. Somehow they recruit those phds just to get cheap labor to be university TAs and to ask for more government fundings
Well, I will come out of this from left field (or the bleachers. Maybe the parking lot).
First, too many educational programs have become self-referential.
Really, we can't have first-rate AB in law or business programs, followed by one- or two-year paid apprenticeships, and then you pass the bar or some sort of business-school test, get your LLB or MBA and that's that?
In econ, maybe the field needs to be restructured, so it is four-years heavy on econ to an AB, and then a two-year plan to the Phd. Or even less.
I wonder what fraction of coursework is ever used later in life.
And four-year programs in all fields need need to think about cutting down to three.
Many men also spend years and years in Phd-job hunting limbo developing depressions, unable to attract mates, or worse.
BTW, if the US has "labor shortages," then keeping millions out of the work force but in dubious college courses or graduate programs...might not be a good idea.
Last crack: Sometimes I see Phds and other papers on the web. No one ever reads them. Isn't this a big waste of time?
"This is a case where coordinated effort and norm-building is useful, not just throwing up our hands at market forces."
Why is that, because econ departments are non-profit and/or otherwise don't "truly" compete against each other? (Not a rhetorical question.) If econ departments compete against each other, even if just for non-pecuniary "prestige", then why wouldn't they reform their own career track norms to attract the best women economists to gain a competitive advantage over other departments, regardless of what other departments do? (What would Gary Becker say?) It seems like the lodestar for guiding all the issues raised --- admissions, hiring, and tenure criteria; quality vs. quantity of papers; predocs, masters; weeding out grad students; years before tenure decisions --- should be, "What allows the department to attract and develop the best economists?" What is the market failure here or is it simply that non-profits don't face the right incentives?
Also, how should econ departments "coordinate" with Silicon Valley and Wall Street to ensure that the "right" number of women become economists instead of data scientists? If econ depts coordinate amongst themselves but don't include Silicon Valley and Wall Street, then don't we run the risk that econ becomes so attractive to women that we end up with too many women economists and not enough women data scientists, AI engineers, and Wall St derivatives specialists?
Not trying to be snarky here, but just trying to understand the "Economics of Women in Economics".
I would love to see what economist Emily Oster says about this post because she has written so well about women and children. My kids (daughters) who are in their early 30s and both have babies (one today Mar 9) used her book on pregnancy as a guidebook. Neither are academics, though one is an attorney. It seems like law firms have figured out how to handle childbirth/child rearing.
One issue I am seeing that is especially difficult for women is everyone is getting married later. That means child birth years are in their 30s, often late thirties. Many of my daughter's friends are even having trouble finding a person to marry. Males don't commit....frustrating. At the same time, women are excited to walk down the aisle either. Childbirth is falling pretty rapidly in all Western Democracies.
It frustrates me that these days men don’t commit. Or commit but don’t really play the role of husband or father, not play the role of the leader of the household. Seems like a product of liberal education when religion is absent
Thank you for this post - came because I (like many others) saw the beginning tweet and had mixed feelings with it. Your post highlighted many of the things I've experienced as a woman in a top 5, who would in an ideal (or different) world would start to have kids about now, but in reality it won't happen for 3 years or more). The reasons, as I see it, are:
(1) My partner is doing a PhD across the country. I know many other female doctoral students in similar situations.
(2) The few women who had kids during the PhD in my program had a rough time, especially so in one case where there was a divorce involved. They had poor market outcomes.
(3) Momentum of research starting 3rd-4th year; I want to sustain at least through going on the market next year rather than have to stop and start
The first reason is pretty intractable. The second and third seem addressable in theory, but it's hard to imagine this changing soon. Although my university has relatively generous policies for students who have children, it's unthinkable (to me and, well, my committee) to have to "stop" and have a kid ... just as the job market is about to hit. Maybe if I knew someone who managed to have a kid within 2 years of successfully going on the market I'd feel more optimistic about this? But I've never heard of this.
The reality is that this dilemma affects women throughout the work world where there are "greedy" or, if you prefer "needy", jobs. I have always argued that those sorts of jobs do not favor men - they favor robots. The market of employment does not care if the employee has children, it cares if you are maximally productive (however they define that - papers or widgets).
That all sounds exactly right. Begs the sticky question of tenure. Also which sort of institution do these observations apply to? They seem spot on for top 50 R1 universities. But there are far more jobs (?) at the remaining 1-2,000 other colleges and universities. Is the story the same there?
I have to confess that it’s too long for me to digest. But let me say one observation as a female who has done a PhD. I’ve seen many women earning their phds while having kids. Some even gave birth to 2 before finishing her PhDs in 5 years! Who the heck says that you’ll have to wait until having a tenure to have kids in the US? In fact, health insurance was the best when you’re a student. And when kids are at young age, it doesn’t cost much to raise and there’re lots of government subsidies for kids. Hence, I’ve seen more and more postdocs in biology or chemistry (yep, most of them will never be able to get out and become a tenure track professor if you know how competitive those fields are) got kids before they realized they would have to come out to industry to make more money. And, economics is still a really good major to get hired in industry. Even Amazon hires economists with a good salary. I think a better solution, probably is, to have more graduate student social events so to help female PhDs to find partners.
The book, "Dr. Mom" (1986) by Marianne Neifert MD, is in part a memoir by a physician, who had several children while in medical school. I knew her husband at the time ('80s). Neifert demonstrates that it's possible to be pregnant/have children while having serious and time-consuming academic commitments. Trade-offs and having a resourceful husband helps, while postponing pregnancy until after some intermediate career objective may leave the potential mother without motherhood. The constant cheerleading that women "can have it all" is a disservice to the reality that no one--women included--can. Cheers.
Not to mention getting out of grad school doesn’t make it easier searching for a partner. I wish I would have known this earlier rather than listening to all the feminist narratives saying issues would automatically get resolved once I was done school and started to have some stable income. And egg freezing is just close to a scam. Has anyone ever done any research what the successful chance is of getting frozen egg to get conceived? It’s in the low 30%. Frozen conceived embryos have much higher successful chance though. So, at the end of the day, having a partner is way more important no matter which way you look at it
There's also the idea that postponing decisions and commitments (marriage and children) while devoting a single-mindedness to finishing the current objective means that you'll have the time and energy to devote to a partner and children later on. Time is the one thing you cannot get back. Lost time cannot be made up. Once past, it is expired, irretrievable.
In fact, postponing commitment won’t help with any personal growth. That’s why these days we see so many adult babies.
Ah, "adult babies." Many years ago, in NYC's Central Park. I spied a man amongst a family group (adults and their children) wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, "I'm done adulting for the day." A proud display of immaturity. I'll leave it there. Cheers.
I think you have good point but in current political climate it is not viable. Any dating within your own profession is now looked at with suspicion especially if you attend the same university or do the same work.
One doesn’t need to date within the same program. Organizing more social events among different PhD programs so it’s much easier for the female phds to find husbands from other programs. It’s that simple. These days grad schools didn’t even offer student dorms so students can mingle. Everybody is so isolated and has no support system if things happen. Of course women especially don’t want to be in such an environment
Economics is fascinating and a main, if not the main driver in human history. Still, we don t really need that many university economists. So much of what fills economic or finance journals is useless, pointless, repetitive blabla.
That's true of pretty much every field, even STEM.
Solution is to admit fewer people to PhD programs - or eliminate tenure.
Problem is none of the top programs want to under admit for a variety of reasons (including what a crime it would be if a grad from a second tier institution got the tenure track job instead of a top tier grad).
MBA and law programs overproduce grads, but not even every graduate of a top program expects they will be nearly guaranteed a lifetime of success due to their degree (unlike grads in guilds like medicine).
Problem is academia comports itself as a guild but it doesn’t have jobs.
No one in the real world gets tenure anymore. Time for academia to get real.
Thank you. I’m a 5th year PhD student in economics in a top 5 program. I got married in my third year and really wanted to have a child in my fourth. I think my department is lovely and would have been deeply accepting of it. However, I still chickened out. It felt like career suicide to be pregnant and have a baby when everyone was in a frenzy to write more and more papers. I was too and now I have a bunch of drafts on topics I find interesting and cool. However I’m on the verge of quitting academia. While I was able to make it this far and love what I do, I feel exhausted by the prospect of feeling this same way for the next 8-odd years on tenure track. I want to have many children, I want a stable job, I want to stop working at 6pm and give my time to my future babies. That seems impossible on the tenure clock. It is what it is. I don’t begrudge people whose preferences allow them to spend 18 hour days on research. I can’t. So I’m taking myself out of the race.
Thank you for writing. This is exactly what we must fix!
Can anyone be productive 18 hours a day? After 4 or even 6 I am just producing gibberish. "Frenzy to write more papers" sounds like the core of the problem. How about "passion to write one good one?" This paper number competition is a very single-male oriented game.
My advice. Go for a top 50 program instead when you leave. My sense is people are able to punch out at 6pm and most people (including women) in our department have kids (including pre tenure).
I think the pressure at the top must be incredible. Is it worth the stress just to be "at the top" of a field, making a bit more money while working longer and more stressful hours? At a top 50 department like Oregon where you don't need a top 5 (much less dozens) I can credibly expect to published 1-2 papers a year in field journals occasionally hit above that, make a good salary, afford a home, and have great recreation options nearby.
This would also be an argument to take a govt job too though (with even greater ability to punch out at 5pm).
This is exactly what I was going to say. I'm at "the other U of O" (Oklahoma) and can confirm the working conditions are nearly identical. [Although we are more top 75 than top 50.]
Also, when you're "at the top" you have to do loads more traveling. Which spreads family time even thinner.
This is amazing that you addressed! When I entered to PhD they asked me not to get pregnant even before admission- on top of that it is not about job requirements go to women I understand when you are women you will graduate 👩🎓 later than MEN when you have male supervisors !!!!! and as long as you need their reference letters.. you have to respect and listen… this is totally unfair… and make me to think about industry rather than academia …
Realistically, working in the private sector provides its own constraints - a professional doesn't work fewer than 60 hours/week and never stops at 6pm.
This modest proposal strikes me as sensible. My wife opted to leave a technical career field to have children. I greatly respect the personal and professional sacrifices she made over the years as a result. However, I sometimes wonder what professional impact she might have had if she would have taken a career-and-mom approach as she is a very sharp lady. My best to those contemplating such trade-offs.
I wouldn’t have worried about that. The impact as a good wife and a good mother in a household is always way larger to the society than the impact at work. Trust me, most companies view their employees replaceable and the truth is, employees are pretty much replaceable. There’re only very few can become Elon Musk
Reading this makes me wonder - why would anyone put him/herself through the wringer for an academic career? I was in an MBA program in 1991, and one of my professors suggested I might be interested in the PhD program instead. I could only laugh at the prospect of entering the academic mill, and this was before so much of the workload went to adjuncts who have no career prospects.
Women in the military have similar issues. I have personally watched excellent female officers and enlisted personnel leave the military due this exact issue, when will I have time to raise a family. Just the opinion of an old hermit.
It's two stickey wickets, John:
1. The demand for temporal flexibility.
2. The OC of having an additional (or even one!)
child.
WWII really saw the transition from women on the sidelines in the labor market to full on supporting it. We're not on wartime footing anymore - or are we, but with a different existential threat(s)?
Kill the American PhD. Try the English (not British) system. 3 year undergraduate, 3 year PhD. Done and dusted by age 25. After all, if you can't produce one good paper in 3 years then perhaps academia really isn't for you (as it wasn't for me, I'm well outside the system).
A fairly brutal prescription but one that would actually work.
I like it. But maybe even shoot for two years and two years, all done in four years.
Learning is a joy, and one can do it all through life, easier than ever now with the internet.
The way most US econ programs are set up, most students haven't even started writing a real paper after two years because they're (still) burdened with classes that emphasize problem sets and cramming for exams. At best they'll have some lit reviews and maybe a proposal or two.
But Europe has this problem too—it just involves longer postdocs with much less independence. European schools (especially in the UK) have also responded by ratcheting down salaries significantly (in real terms) in a way that the US has not.
Unfortunately, the UK is following the US in the duration of PhD programs. I managed to complete a PhD in two years in the 1970s (including a couple of papers published in top journals). Now, a generation later, my daughter-in-law took five years to complete here PhD (also in a top UK university). It's obviously advantageous for supervisors to have cheap labour for five years, and for the institutions. It's far from obvious that it is remotely in the interest of the students.
OK, both I and my d-i-l worked in STEM subjects, but it is iniquitous that economics should be so different.
I agree. At least it won’t produce products like me who aren’t really that talented and who probably shouldn’t have been in that system. I mean, we don’t really need so many phds in academia. Somehow they recruit those phds just to get cheap labor to be university TAs and to ask for more government fundings
Well, I will come out of this from left field (or the bleachers. Maybe the parking lot).
First, too many educational programs have become self-referential.
Really, we can't have first-rate AB in law or business programs, followed by one- or two-year paid apprenticeships, and then you pass the bar or some sort of business-school test, get your LLB or MBA and that's that?
In econ, maybe the field needs to be restructured, so it is four-years heavy on econ to an AB, and then a two-year plan to the Phd. Or even less.
I wonder what fraction of coursework is ever used later in life.
And four-year programs in all fields need need to think about cutting down to three.
Many men also spend years and years in Phd-job hunting limbo developing depressions, unable to attract mates, or worse.
BTW, if the US has "labor shortages," then keeping millions out of the work force but in dubious college courses or graduate programs...might not be a good idea.
Last crack: Sometimes I see Phds and other papers on the web. No one ever reads them. Isn't this a big waste of time?
"This is a case where coordinated effort and norm-building is useful, not just throwing up our hands at market forces."
Why is that, because econ departments are non-profit and/or otherwise don't "truly" compete against each other? (Not a rhetorical question.) If econ departments compete against each other, even if just for non-pecuniary "prestige", then why wouldn't they reform their own career track norms to attract the best women economists to gain a competitive advantage over other departments, regardless of what other departments do? (What would Gary Becker say?) It seems like the lodestar for guiding all the issues raised --- admissions, hiring, and tenure criteria; quality vs. quantity of papers; predocs, masters; weeding out grad students; years before tenure decisions --- should be, "What allows the department to attract and develop the best economists?" What is the market failure here or is it simply that non-profits don't face the right incentives?
Also, how should econ departments "coordinate" with Silicon Valley and Wall Street to ensure that the "right" number of women become economists instead of data scientists? If econ depts coordinate amongst themselves but don't include Silicon Valley and Wall Street, then don't we run the risk that econ becomes so attractive to women that we end up with too many women economists and not enough women data scientists, AI engineers, and Wall St derivatives specialists?
Not trying to be snarky here, but just trying to understand the "Economics of Women in Economics".
These are good points. I thought about both, but didn't have anything good to say.
I would love to see what economist Emily Oster says about this post because she has written so well about women and children. My kids (daughters) who are in their early 30s and both have babies (one today Mar 9) used her book on pregnancy as a guidebook. Neither are academics, though one is an attorney. It seems like law firms have figured out how to handle childbirth/child rearing.
One issue I am seeing that is especially difficult for women is everyone is getting married later. That means child birth years are in their 30s, often late thirties. Many of my daughter's friends are even having trouble finding a person to marry. Males don't commit....frustrating. At the same time, women are excited to walk down the aisle either. Childbirth is falling pretty rapidly in all Western Democracies.
It frustrates me that these days men don’t commit. Or commit but don’t really play the role of husband or father, not play the role of the leader of the household. Seems like a product of liberal education when religion is absent
Thank you for this post - came because I (like many others) saw the beginning tweet and had mixed feelings with it. Your post highlighted many of the things I've experienced as a woman in a top 5, who would in an ideal (or different) world would start to have kids about now, but in reality it won't happen for 3 years or more). The reasons, as I see it, are:
(1) My partner is doing a PhD across the country. I know many other female doctoral students in similar situations.
(2) The few women who had kids during the PhD in my program had a rough time, especially so in one case where there was a divorce involved. They had poor market outcomes.
(3) Momentum of research starting 3rd-4th year; I want to sustain at least through going on the market next year rather than have to stop and start
The first reason is pretty intractable. The second and third seem addressable in theory, but it's hard to imagine this changing soon. Although my university has relatively generous policies for students who have children, it's unthinkable (to me and, well, my committee) to have to "stop" and have a kid ... just as the job market is about to hit. Maybe if I knew someone who managed to have a kid within 2 years of successfully going on the market I'd feel more optimistic about this? But I've never heard of this.
The reality is that this dilemma affects women throughout the work world where there are "greedy" or, if you prefer "needy", jobs. I have always argued that those sorts of jobs do not favor men - they favor robots. The market of employment does not care if the employee has children, it cares if you are maximally productive (however they define that - papers or widgets).
Academic women are about 90% to 95% Communist, so great news they are NOT having children.
Marianne Bertand and Emily Oster would like to have a word.
I’m sure in the Econ departments this ratio would be smaller, but probably not much smaller going forward lol
lol