Gender Representation in

Economics Textbooks
Betsey Stevenson* and Hanna Zlotnick
*University of Michigan, Visiting faculty University of Sydney,
CEPR, CESifo, and NBER
Today’s talk
 My goal today is to systematically analyze the principles of
economics textbooks that students learn from to assess the
roles of men and women
 What do we find?
 Principles of economics textbooks are full of men
 That men are three-quarters of the people in economics textbooks
is not because they are economists
 Women in examples take fewer actions, are more likely to be
involved in food, fashion, or household tasks
 Men are more likely to be in business or policy
 Economists that appear are mostly men, but not because they are
historic male figures (it’s not the men you are thinking of)

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Status of women in economics
 The pipeline is stuck in economics, while growth is
occurring in other stem fields
 “For every female economics major today there are almost
2.9 male majors nationwide” Goldin (2015)
 Roughly 40% of students in economics principles classes
are women
 Since the mid-1990s women have averaged 57% of college
enrollments

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Intro classes by field at University of Michigan
 The sciences are attracting more women to their ranks.
Biology
 Economics has been less successful in recent decades and has a
smaller share female graduates than math or biology. Chemistry

Physics
Math
Economics
Engineering

“Interventions to Increase Women Concentrators in Economics

at the University of Michigan.”  Angelucci, et al, 2017

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Role Models Matter
 Role models can be brief encounters
 Porter and Serra (2017) show female Principles students are
much more likely to continue if exposed to a female alum
 Similar findings in physics and computer science on exposure to
non-traditional role models
 Two aspects:
 Is this about the gender of the role model?
 Or that they break stereotypes about the culture of the field?

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Ratio of “He” to “She” in Principles Textbooks

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Male and female professors think that women learn differently

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Professors think that students learn by example

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Data
Textual analysis of leading Principles of Economics textbooks:
1.Acemoglu, Daron, David Laibson, and John A. List. Economics. 2nd ed., Pearson,
2017.
2.Hubbard, Glenn P., and Anthony Patrick O’Brien. Economics. 6th ed., Pearson,
2015.
3.Krugman, Paul, and Robin Wells. Economics. 4th ed., Worth Publishers, 2015.
4.Mankiw, N. Gregory. Principles of Economics. 8th ed., Cengage, 2018.
5.McConnell, Campbell R., Stanley L. Brue, and Sean M. Flynn. Economics:
Principles, Problems, and Policies. 21st ed., McGraw Hill, 2017.
6.Parkin, Michael. Economics. 12th ed., Pearson, 2015.
7.Schiller, Bradley R., and Karen Gebhardt. The Economy Today. 14th ed., McGraw
Hill, 2015.
Code every mention of a person (real or made up) in each
textbook

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From text to data…
Textbook

Data
- Book: Schiller Gebhardt 14th edition, The Economy Today
-Gender: male
-Name: Kerry Skeen
-Type of person: real business leader
-Action: making decision
-Occupation: manager
-Setting: business
-Setting’s gender orientation: blue
-Number of women in example: 0
-Number of men in example: 1
-Numerical example: no

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Coding the Data: Example

― Book: Hubbard & O’Brien, Economics

- Gender: male
- Name: Bill Parker
- Type of person: made up
- Action: making a decision
- Occupation: farmer
- Setting: food
- Setting’s gender orientation: neither blue nor pink
- Number of women in example: 0
- Number of men in example: 1
- Numerical example: yes

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Coding the Data: Example

― Book: (Hubbard & O’Brien Economics)

- Gender: male
- Name: Tom Brady
- Type of person: famous public figure
- Action: no action
- Occupation: athlete
- Setting: business
- Setting’s gender orientation: blue
- Number of women in example: 0
- Number of men in example: 1
- Numerical example: no
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Total Male and Female Mentions

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Male and Female Mentions By Text

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Male and Female Mentions By Category of Person

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Economists
 Economists are 30% of the people mentioned in an economics
textbook
 Women are outnumbered by men 12 to 1
 No woman dominates the list, no woman appears in every book;
 Few men appear in every book, the list of economists are not
famous historical economists
 Eliminate economists from the analysis….

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All people except economists

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What about ordinary/made up people?
 Authors have most freedom with made-up name
 Some authors explicitly use “he or she” or “his or her”
 15 percent of made up or ordinary people are made
explicitly gender neutral
 Among the remaining, 59 percent are male
 Some economist textbook authors may purposely choose
male examples; for others, it’s likely implicit

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From the preface to A Course in Game Theory 

A course in game theory. Martin J Osborne, Ariel Rubinstein.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. 

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What do women in examples do?

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Settings in which men and women appear

Men
Women

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 Men are:
Women are:
accountant  gas station attendant
analyst
analyst  graphic designer
author
architect  Inventor
blogger
assistant  Investor
director
author  Lawyer
farm worker
banker  Manager
housekeeper
biologist  mayor
lawyer
bureaucrat  Musician
manager
businessman  Philanthropist
model
columnist  policy expert
musician
consultant  portfolio manager
professional shopper/reseller
director  real estate
researcher
ecologist  Reporter
service representative
engineer  Researcher
superviser
entrepreneur  Salesman
vetrinarian
executive  taxi driver
farmer  teacher
fisherman
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Few Female Business Leaders Mentioned
There are only 11 across 7 books
Diane von Furstenberg 
Mary Anderson 
Mia Bauer 
Sally Smith
Virginia Rometty 
Angela Ahrendts
Annie Young-Scrivner
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
Marissa Mayer
Penny Stafford
Sheryl Sandberg

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Male Business Leaders Mentioned in Any Text
 As with economists, some are well-known but most are not

The overreliance on business leaders is related to a similar

challenge with business school case studies
 11% of business school cases have a female protagonist
 Harvard Business School has pledged to double that share
by 2020
 Women own 36 percent of businesses
 Women are now the majority of workers in management,
professional, and related occupations
 In 2015, 28 percent of all CEOs were women, up from 23
percent in 2008.

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Male Inventors

Example of a
list of
inventors in
Hubbard &
O’Brien
(Economics)

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Policy Makers: Janet Yellen!
 6 percent of policy makers listed in textbooks are female
 Janet Yellen is the dominant mention and appears in all
books and is 55 percent of mentions of female policy makers
 The other 7 women mentioned across the five books are:

1. Hillary Clinton
2. Lucy Koh
3. Margaret Thatcher
4. Margrethe Vestager
5. Nancy Pelosi
6. Sandra Day O'Connor
7. Theresa May

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Male policy makers

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Most Economists Appear in Only One Book

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Female economists by book

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Conclusion
 Principles of economics textbooks are full of men
 That men are three-quarters of the people in
economics textbooks is not because they are
economists
 Women in examples take fewer actions, are more
likely to be involved in food, fashion, or household
tasks
 Men are more likely to be in business or policy
 Economists that appear are mostly men, but not
because they are historic male figures (it’s not the
men you are thinking of)

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