Call for proposals: Evidence papers on women in economics The International Economic Association (IEA)

Terms of Reference (ToR)

The International Economic Association is commissioning seven independent studies for the following countries: Argentina, Colombia, Ghana, India, Mexico, Senegal, and South Africa with a view to build a comprehensive data base on women in the economics profession, including subfields that might exist as separate departments, such as agricultural economics. The studies are part of the IEA’s Women in Leadership in Economics initiative (IEA-WE). Studies can be undertaken by individual researchers or by a team of researchers for each country.

Each study should include two parts:

1. Numbers and shares of women at all levels in the economics profession across the full range of academic tiers: from undergraduate students to full professors, including leadership positions such as department heads/chairs, university or college administrators.
2. A quantitative assessment of women in academic research and publishing.

Specifically, each paper should include:

1. A review of existing evidence and research on the women in economics in the country, including any relevant quantitative evidence, evidence on barriers facing women in economics, and evidence concerning interventions aimed at advancing women in economics.
2. Data on the male/female break up of total positions across institutions in the country of study (Argentina, Colombia, Ghana, India, Mexico, Senegal, or South Africa), starting with the latest year for which data are available from the institutional website, going back as many years as is possible. This data should be sourced from one or more sources, e.g., the institutional website, administrative records, surveys etc. (It is possible that there are no older records, but older data should be included if available). The positions/tiers are defined as follows: undergraduate students, Masters or Ph.D students; early career faculty; senior faculty using the designations relevant for the specific country in question, e.g., assistant, associate and full professor OR lecturer, reader, professor.
3. We would like this data to be further sub-classified, if possible, into categories such as race, ethnicity, region/province/state, public versus private institutions and other categories relevant to the specific country in question.
4. The study should compile data on academic research and publications by female economists working in the country in question with male statistics for comparison. This should be based on CVs and publications posted on RePEc, institutional websites and/or personal webpages. This data should also be sub-classified by categories mentioned on #2 whenever possible and by field of study.
5. Microdata: Typically, academic CVs are posted on university websites which give detailed information about the individual’s career trajectory. For instance, the university where the individual completed graduate studies, years since graduation, job history, grants received etc. The CVs can also be used to look at the types of journals that the individual has published in. To the extent possible, we would like to collate this microdata, including building an indicator of the quality of publications.
6. The study should consider adding other elements to the extent feasible. For instance: (i) As we center our attention on leadership, it may be worthwhile to request a compilation of the involvement of women in the National Academy of [Economic] Sciences if such a body exists in the country. For instance, in Argentina, the proportion of female members in the Academy is less than 10% (2% in the whole history).

(ii) Data on the extent of female economist participation in the main national economics conference (and role), or the proportion of female economists presenting at departmental seminars (at least for the last 2 or 3 years).

7. The applicant should submit a short plan of action including as many elements after a preliminary scoping of the data sources. Some of this information would require scraping and other ML techniques, a brief description of which the author should submit in the proposal.
8. The author should include a concise summary report of the findings at the beginning of the main paper.
9. The chosen author (or team) will be given a lumpsum payment of USD 20,000 in four installments (detailed below) which includes personal honorarium, and will cover all costs, e.g., hiring a research assistant, travel, equipment, and materials etc.
10. All data collected for this paper will be the property of the IEA.
11. Authors will be free to use their research as they wish, with proper attribution to the IEA for financial support in the context of the IEA-WE initiative.

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