Noah Smith uses no such restraint. In his latest post , he takes Ginther and Kahn's cautious and nuanced results, and leaps to the conclusion that economics "seems to have a built-in bias that prevents women from advancing."

Ginther and Kahn never use the word sexism. They only use the word discrimination to question its existence, saying their results suggest "women’s entry into tenure-track academia is dominated by choice rather than by any discrimination at hiring." They do find their results, "deeply troubling."

Economics is the one field where gender differences in tenure receipt seem to remain even after background and productivity controls are factored in and even for single childless women.

Donna Ginther and Shulamit Kahn have just published a paper that tracks thousands of American academics from the time they first get their PhDs through to their tenure and promotion decisions. They conclude:

I have never seen a woman denied tenure when a man with similar number and quality of publications was awarded it. I don't deny Ginther and Kahn's findings, but might there be a non-discriminatory explanation of the fact that a woman in economics with X number of publications is less likely to receive tenure than a man with X publications?

The limitations of Ginther and Kahn's data mean that they are not able to control for publication quality. One of the ways that economics differs from other disciplines is in its extremely hierarchical journal rankings: no number of blog posts, magazine articles or publications in unknown journals can ever compensate for the absence of a top publication. Yet the number of top journals in economics is tiny relative to the number of people who would like to publish in them, hence top journal publication is a risky and competitive game. As Rachel Croson and Uri Gneezy describe here, women tend not to like or thrive in this kind of cut-throat competition. Suppose a typical women pursues a publication strategy that will lead to five publications in mid-ranked journals with a fair degree of certainty, whereas a typical man pursues a publication strategy that will lead either to five publications in top journals or no publications at all. The few men who are actually successful in getting published will have, on average, publications of higher quality than those of women. Hence they would, conditional on the number of accepted publications, have a higher probability of achieving tenure than women. (Indeed, earlier work by Kahn found that men had, on average, higher quality publications than women.)

It also appears that Ginther and Kahn are not able to control for employer quality (see footnote 5 here). Suppose that, instead of there being bias against women in the tenure process, there is actually bias in favour of women in the hiring process. If universities engage in some kind of affirmative action then, all else being equal, women would end up being hired by higher quality institutions - and institutions with higher tenure standards - than comparable men. A woman with five publications might find herself at a university that demands seven publications, while her male counterpart is at a university than demands four. Hiring preferences for women would be expected to lead - given equal productivity and gender-neutral tenure standards - to a higher rate of tenure denial for women. I should note that this interpretation of the evidence is speculative - Ginther and Kahn also look at hiring, and find no evidence of discrimination in favour of women.

I've seen a number of negative tenure recommendations over the years. Most follow a familiar script. Someone is appointed young, fresh out of graduate school, with no time to gain experience with the publication process. They take on adminstrative duties, labouring under the misapprehension that being nice and helpful will get them tenure. They may have children while on the tenure track. They pursue bad publication strategies, for example, they sit on revise and resubmits. They generally have some bad luck - for example, a journal that dithers with their submission for years. And they typically lack strong and effective advocates, either within or outside their departments.

Noah Smith ends his article by saying:

... it’s time for economics to acknowledge that it has a sexism problem and to fix it. The American Economic Association, and other powers that be within the profession, need to start working to make the field more welcoming to women.

It's not up to the "powers that be" to fix the problem. Yes, there are a few things that the American Economics Association could do. For example, I would like to see double-blind refereeing reintroduced into the AEA journals, and attention paid to the representation of women - and people from smaller universities, and other under-represented groups - on the program for the AEA meetings. Providing leadership and guidance on ways to make hotel room interviews more comfortable for interviewees would be a good idea.

Unfortunately, when the "powers that be" decide it's time to start working on gender problem, the solution generally involves getting women to sit on committees. Not only does this take away from women's (professionally rewarding) research time, there is a distinct lack of evidence to suggest that, say, having a woman on a prize committee leads to a higher probability of said prize being awarded to a woman. Any proposed solution that adds to the typical woman's administrative workload will increase, not decrease, the gender gap in academe.

"Sexism" is not the result of some high level conspiracy. It is the product of millions of every day actions by thousands of ordinary people. Let's get back to tenure decisions. Tenure denials are never made arbitrarily. If a man with 5 publications gets tenure while a woman with 5 publications does not, there must be a reason: either the man has higher quality publications, or higher impact publications, or more evidence of national or international reputation, or better letters of reference.

But a scholars's reputation and impact is determined by the decisions of others: who they choose to acknowledge, who they choose to network with. Every single active academic can, through the citation and other decisions they make every day, influence other academics' reputations - and thus the probability that they will receive tenure or get promoted.

Who do you cite? If you're like most people, you're more likely to cite the seminal work of some well-known male academic than the work of a female scholar. Certainly Noah Smith is - his plea for less sexism references seven men and five women. If women aren't cited, their papers will be seen as lower impact/lower quality publications.

Do you give women credit for their ideas? Just about every woman has had the experience of sitting in a committee, saying something, and having her contribution ignored. A man will then restate her point, and he is listened to, and receives credit for the idea. Here's an example: GInther and Kahn's paper concluded by arguing that "...the results indicate that professional development efforts such as the [American Economic Association's] Committee on the Status of Women in the Economic Profession’s CEMENT mentoring workshops remain necessary." Noah Smith ends his article by making a very similar point. Who is getting credit for the idea on social media? Noah. The point is: if women's contributions are appropriated, the impact of women's work will be underestimated, and women will have a lower chance of progressing in academic careers.

How do you word your letters of reference? Do you use the same adjectives to describe women and men? Or are women delightful, pleasant, conscientious and hard-working while men are strong, original, insightful and persistent?

Who do you invite to present at conferences or departmental seminars? If a man, do you turn down invitations to participate in conferences with all-male line-ups (see the gendered conference campaign)? Do you make it easy for female colleagues to come for a drink in the bar after a seminar by corralling them into the bar-going group?

The economics profession is far from perfect. I personally don't find it any worse than the world of media (that the Globe and Mail paid Stephen Gordon more than me still burns), or the world of academic administration. But it could be better - and the power to change it lies within every one of us.