The Study of Economics: A Feminist Critique
分析经济学领域女性学生和教师代表性不足的原因，指出传统经济学的狭隘方法和偏见内容才是关键，而非数学要求或性别歧视，并展望女性在经济学中的进步前景。
The small representation of women and minorities among students of economics has been noted for some time. While the proportion of B.A.'s earned by women in psychology rose from 36.7 percent in 1949-1950 to 70.8 percent in 1988-1989, in sociology from 50.6 percent to 68.8 percent, and even in mathematics from 22.6 percent to 46.0 percent, in economics it has increased from only 7.6 percent to 32.5 percent. The share of Ph.D.'s earned by women in 1988-1989 was 56.2 percent in psychology, 50.9 percent in sociology, 26.6 percent in business, 19.4 percent in mathematics, and 19.0 percent in economics. Hence, general sexism in the classroom1 does not appear to be the main culprit, nor do the explanations that mathematics requirements inhibit women's entry into economics or that women are uninterested in business-related fields seem convincing. Instead, one must look to factors specific to economics. Evidence that women students do not perform as well as men in introductory economics courses (John J. Siegfried, 1979; Gordon Anderson, et al., 1994), although they have higher grades overall, further adds to this conclusion. For these reasons there has been considerable interest among feminist economists in the chilly classroom climate, for women and minority students in economics courses. In this paper, the focus is on the small representation of women among economics faculties, the biased subject matter, and the narrow approach of traditional economics. The number of women faculty can only be increased gradually as their representation among graduate students and new faculty hires increases. However, the subject matter can be changed more rapidly, as the consciousness of instructors and authors of textbooks is raised, and the challenge to the traditional economic approach appears to be making more progress than most of us dared to hope only a few short years ago. Thus, in spite of the remaining problems, there is reason to believe that in economics, as in most other disciplines, women's progress will eventually accelerate.