Gender and the Dynamics of Economics Seminars

This paper reports the results of first systematic attempt at quantitatively measuring seminar culture within economics and testing whether it is gender neutral. We collected data on every interaction between presenters their audience in hundreds research seminars job market talks across most leading departments, as well during summer conferences. find that women are treated differently than male counterparts. Women asked more questions a likely to be patronizing or hostile. These effects not due presenting different fields, series, topics, our analysis controls for institution, JEL codes associated with each presentation. Moreover, appears there important differences by field these uniformly mitigated rigid formats. Our findings add an emerging literature documenting ways which economists men, suggest yet another potential explanation under-representation senior levels profession.