Women (In) Economics
FemWealth #15
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
A record-breaking number of women are in leadership positions at some of the most powerful global and national financial institutions:
Jannet Yellen, United States Secretary of the Treasury
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization
Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
Mairead McGuinness, European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Capital Markets Union
Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank
Yet women worldwide are still vastly underrepresented in senior positions, both in the public (financial institutions, ministerial-level) and private sector (in banking, financial, and insurance industries).
Only two of the 86 Nobel Prize Laurates in Economics are women: Elinor Ostrom (2009) and Esther Duflo (2019). In the US, women are one-third of undergraduate students, yet only 14 percent of full professors in PhD-granting departments
In many countries, unpaid work mainly performed by women is the largest single sector in the economy yet is invisible in the economic measurements, such as the GDP. Let’s also not forget the gender pay and wealth gaps. Furthermore, in times of crisis like the coronavirus pandemic, women's participation in the economy is disproportionately affected.
It gives me hope to see significant progress in female leadership and the inclusion of women in economics as active contributors and shapers of economic science and policies. Meet some of the pioneers who are moving the needle:
Esther Duflo, Development Economist, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Paris School of Economics, Co-founder at Poverty Action Lab
I studied economics because I wanted to give something back to society .
When you accumulate data from dozens or even hundreds of experiments, you start seeing a more comprehensive image of how everything works and what needs to be changed,” she said in the interview with Le Monde. “It’s far more effective than developing policy based on broad principles.
A poverty expert who prioritizes fieldwork over theoretical research, Esther Duflo is the second woman to have won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
A gifted student, she joined the selective Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) at the age of 19 while taking classes at the Paris School of Economics. She continued her studies in the US, where she worked with development economists Daniel Cohen and Jeffrey Sachs. But the most significant impact on her economic thinking came from her Ph.D. advisor, Indian-born American economist Abhijit Banerjee (they are now married with two children).
In 2003 they founded the Poverty Action Lab, an MIT-backed research center that studies poverty by applying experimental methods inspired by randomized control trials in the pharmaceutical industry. In her research, Duflo seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor and help design and evaluate social policies. Her body of work spans health, education, financial inclusion, environment, and governance.
📖 Esther Duflo, a Hands-On Economist
📖 If we can vaccinate the world, we can beat the climate crisis
🎥 "Do what you love and love what you do." Esther Duflo & Abhijit Banerjee, Prize in Economic Sciences
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization
There has to be equitable access to medicines and the WTO could be part of the solution to that. The WTO has to programme the rules of trade in light of Covid-19.
Women have the qualifications and the experience but remain a sparse species in leadership circles. Look at heads of state: how many of them are women, just a handful? How many women are chief executives? A handful.
Women face a glass cliff: they are given leadership roles only when things are going really badly.
On March 1st, 2021 Dr. Okonjo-Iweala became the first woman and the first African to be chosen as Director-General of the WTO. She is a global finance expert, an economist, and an international development professional with over 30 years of experience working in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America.
Nigerian-born Okonjo-Iweala studied economics at Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). At the age of 25, she started working for the World Bank, rising steadily up the institution's hierarchy to ultimately become Managing Director, Operations, no 2 in the organization's leadership. Okonjo-Iweala served twice as Nigeria's Finance Minister (2003-2006 and 2011-2015) and briefly acted as Foreign Minister in 2006, the first woman to hold both positions.
She was recently appointed African Union (AU) Special Envoy to mobilize international financial support to fight against COVID-19 and WHO Special Envoy for Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator. She is the co-author, together with Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, of the book Women and Leadership: Conversations with some of the world's most powerful women.
🎥 Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to make the WTO "an organisation that achieves results"
🎥 Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: Women and Leadership
🎧 Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Julia Gillard on women and leadership
📚 Women and Leadership: Conversations with some of the world's most powerful women by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Julia Gillard
Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
What we do now will not only reshape our economies and societies ; it will also reshape humanity's future on this planet, a' green recovery' is our bridge to a more resilient future.
Kristalina Georgieva has served as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund since October 1, 2019. She is the first person from an emerging economy to lead the IMF. Previously she was CEO of the World Bank from January 2017 to September 2019 and for a brief time Interim President of the World Bank.
Her leadership career includes important roles such as European Commission Vice President for Budget and Human Resources - overseeing the EU’s €161 billion (US $175bn) budget and 33,000 staff, as well as the EU’s response to the Euro Area debt crisis and the 2015 refugee crisis -, and Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response.
She holds a Ph.D. in Economic Science and a M.A. in Political Economy and Sociology from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia, where she was an Associate Professor (1977 -1993). Georgieva was also a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
🎥 IMF's Georgieva: Poorer Nations Hit by Climate, Pandemic
🎥 The David Rubenstein Show: IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva
📖 Kristalina Georgieva: ‘We are in a resilient place but cannot take stability for granted’
Dame Marylin Waring, Founder of Feminist Economics, Human Rights Activist, Former Politician
As a policy maker, you cannot make good policy if the single largest sector of your nation’s economy is not visible.
I want to challenge the dominant Western way of thinking about economy, gender and environment to be inclusive and respectful of all Pacific cultures and customs.
At the age of 23, Marilyn Waring became the youngest person ever to be elected into New Zealand's parliament in 1975. She served for nine years and during this time she sought to represent the views of women and youth on contentious issues such as abortion, rape, and New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance. She retired from politics in 1984 but continued her advocacy for women's rights.
Waring obtained a D.Phil in political economy in 1989 and built a career in academia. Best known for her seminal book If Women Counted, in which she analyzed economics from a feminist perspective, Waring is an outspoken critic of the concept of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), an economic measure that became a foundation of the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA) following World War II. The GDP system 'counts oil spills and wars as contributors to economic growth, while child-rearing and housekeeping are deemed valueless’.
Waring has over 40 years of international experience working throughout the Pacific, focusing on governance and public policy, political economy, gender analysis, and human rights. Her work has influenced academics, governments, and United Nations policies. She is a Professor of Public Policy at the Auckland University of Technology.
🎥 The Unpaid Work That GDP Ignores and Why It Really Counts
🎥 Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics
📚 Still Counting – Wellbeing, Women's Work and Policy-making
Linda Scott, Emeritus DP World Chair for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Oxford, Founder of DoubleXEconomy
Women’s work has always been important to the development of national economies, but it is seldom noticed in practice and is usually ignored by historians.
A society structured to prevent mothers from providing and to keep fathers away, as the postindustrial society is, undermines humanity’s evolutionary advantages.
Professor Linda Scott is one of the leading voices for women’s economic empowerment. She is an Emeritus DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, at the University of Oxford, and Senior Consulting Fellow to Chatham House, the Royal Institute for International Affairs.
Best known as the author of The Double X Economy, Scott describes the global economy of women in both the developed and developing world, and the roles of women not only as consumers, but as investors, donors, and workers.
She is the founder of several organizations for women’s economic empowerment, including DoubleXEconomy LLC and The Power Shift Forum for Women in the World Economy. Scott works with multinational corporations, international agencies, national governments, and global NGOs designing and testing programs to better include women in the world economy.
Her current research focuses on women and entrepreneurship, particularly the potential for market-based approaches to provide economic empowerment and entrepreneurial opportunities for poor women in developing nations.
🎥 Women and the Double X Economy
🎥 Linda Scott on Powering Women's Potential
🎧 Prof Linda Scott: Why is there still economic inequality between men and women?
Learn more about feminist economics and women in economic sciences:
Claudia Goldin | Women in Economics
Why are there so few women economists?
Feminist economics is everything. The revolution is now! | Lebohang Pheko | TEDxLytteltonWomen
WOMEN DON’T UNDERSTAND THE ECONOMY & OTHER MYTHS WITH LINDA DAVIES & KATRINE MARCAL
In Pursuit of Equality, French Cities Adopt Gendered Budgets - Lyon is the largest city in France to implement a gender-sensitive budget, designed to ensure that funds are spent equally between men and women.
Christine Lagarde Prescribes Grit, Quotas and Smiles for Women in Finance
Christine Lagarde’s uphill battle for ECB gender equality
Here’s How Much Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Is Worth
FemWealth Curated Content
Victoria’s Secret Swaps Angels for ‘What Women Want.’ Will They Buy It?
How To Build Your Business Around Your Life
‘60 Minutes’ ran an episode about algorithm bias. Only White experts were given airtime.
Hormonal birth control can be a struggle. Could this new gel be a ‘game changer’?
FemWealth Recommended Events
📆 #ProductCon: The Largest Product Management Conference [June 24]
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Wish you a relaxing Sunday and a productive and fun week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer @FemWealth