US treasury secretary Janet Yellen is the the first woman to head the position and the first to chair the Federal Reserve. Picture: BUSINESS DAY/FREDDY MAVUNDA
There seems to be a lot to celebrate on International Women's Day in the field of economics. Women head the IMF, the World Trade Organization , the US Treasury and the European Central Bank . However, more broadly, women remain a small minority in a field that is still seen by many as being dominated by men in suits and churning out policy divorced from the real world.
“There are no women in the textbooks and most big names in economics are men,” said Sandra Kretschmer, economics researcher and member of the Women in Economics Initiative. Janet Yellen, the first woman to head the Treasury and chair the US Federal Reserve, makes frequent reference to the issue. At a banknote printing event last December she said more progress was needed.
Guido Friebel, from the Goethe University Frankfurt, said another factor could be the culture. “There is an extremely competitive culture in economics; it’s aggressive,” he said. “We need more women choosing economics as a major, but we also need to keep these young women in the field,” Goethe Professor Nicola Fuchs-Schuendeln said. “Greater diversity would diversify the questions we ask as social scientists.”
Women are very loud & vocal in the world of business, what are y’all talking about