Index
The Women in Economics Index
Tracking Progression in Economics
Increasing transparency and raising awareness on the state of women in the economics profession is one of our core missions at WiE.
This goal encompasses both highlighting
women's contributions to economic research and its application as well as
women's representation in the profession, in particular, in leadership positions.
Monitoring the presence of women economists in leadership positions…
The WiE Index records and monitors the presence of women economists in senior positions in key academic institutions and in the private and public sectors across Europe, the OECD and globally.
… across the academic world. the private and the public sector.
The WiE Index rests on the three pillars described above representing three professions where economists are employed or parts of our societies where economic research or its application has an impact:
The WiE Index captures the representation of women in the senior and accomplished positions in a given year by investigating a set of relevant variables and aggregating them into an index.
In each pillar, for all indicators measured, we ...
1. take the arithmetic mean and compute the difference to parity (50% / 50%).
While this is not supposed to imply that parity should be the necessary goal for each individual role, it helps illustrate strong gender imbalances and in particular low representation of women economists in some fields.
2. The WiE Index is scaled such that a value of 100 represents full parity, while a value of 0 represents a share of 100 % men or women across the relevant indicators. The WiE Index works both ways, penalizing deviations from parity in either direction.