Every year, the CEPS hosts an annual mandatory invited lecture on ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ to raise students’ awareness of the subject and initiate discussion. We are delighted to announce that this year the lecture will be delivered by Sahar Parsa from New York University.

Abstract: 

Women’s entry into academia, a critical milestone in the pursuit of gender equality, continues to be hindered by persistent gaps, particularly in STEM fields and quantitative disciplines like Economics. These gaps manifest in underrepresentation, limited career advancement, and unequal mentorship opportunities. We examine how the presence of female professors impacts graduates from top-50 U.S. economics PhD programs. Combining rich data on advisor-advisee relationships and career trajectories with a research design leveraging quasi-random sabbatical timing, we find gendered effects. The absence of a female professor decreases third-year female Ph.D. students' likelihood of publishing papers and securing academic positions. Conversely, male Ph.D. students in the same cohort benefit from this absence, seeing an increase in their publishing and placement prospects. These divergent outcomes can be explained by gender homophily in mentorship, with female students 51 percent more likely than male students to have a female advisor. One additional female senior professor in each top-50 economics department would close one-third of the gender gap in representation among assistant professors at top-25 schools.

Location:

ENS Paris-Saclay
4 avenue des Sciences, 91190, Gif-sur-Yvette