Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Strategies for Making Economics Work for Women at Every Stage

Abstract

While women comprise over half of all undergraduate students in the United States, they account for less than one-third of economics majors. From there, the proportion of women at each stage of the academic tenure track continues to decrease, creating a “leaky pipeline.” In this paper, I provide a toolkit of interventions that could be implemented by individuals, organizations, or academic units who are working to attract and retain women students and faculty at each stage of this pipeline. I focus on smaller-scale, targeted interventions that have been evaluated in a way that allows for the credible estimation of causal effects.