Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Mentoring women assistant professors of Economics: an RCT (and some thoughts on the word "mentor")

From the NBER:

Can Mentoring Help Female Assistant Professors in Economics? An Evaluation by Randomized Trial
Donna K. Ginther, Janet Currie, Francine D. Blau, Rachel Croson

"Women continue to be underrepresented in academic ranks in the economics profession. The Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession of the American Economics Association established the CeMENT mentoring workshop to support women in research careers. The program was designed as a randomized controlled trial. This study evaluates differences between the treatment and control groups in career outcomes. Results indicate that relative to women in the control group, treated women are more likely to stay in academia and more likely to have received tenure in an institution ranked in the top 30 or 50 in economics in the world."

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There is probably no appropriate place to bring this up, but the word "mentor" always seemed to me to be faintly inappropriate in the particular context of addressing the difficulties associated with doing economics while female.

In Homer's Odyssey, Mentor is a man. But in fact, it is the goddess Athena who (in Alexander Pope's translation) " took Sage Mentor’s form, and thus like Mentor spoke." That is, often the advice that appears to come from (male) Mentor, in fact came from (female) Athena, disguised as Mentor.

So maybe female mentors of female economists should be athenas?


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