----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- This should probably be given a new thread title, [See http://www.eh.net/lists/archives/hes/oct-2003/0103.php] but the problem of "missing women" in the history of economics is an interesting one. A serious question to raise is the extent to which this is still a problem in economics today. My sense is that it is much less so, at least in the area of publication. There certainly are no constraints against husband-wife teams publishing today that I am aware of. However, this does not mean that there does not continue to be gender discrimination at higher levels regarding recognition or crediting of women economists. One matter that has been pointed out to me recently is that there are very few women serving as editors or coeditors of economics journals (they are better represented among associate editors, but even there the numbers look disproportionately and inordinately low). The other obvious area is in receiving Nobel Prizes. OK, one can argue that somehow very few have made contributions at that level yet, although I hear several names of possible candidates bandied about here and there. The one clear omission was the late Joan Robinson (honoring the centennial of the birth of whom a conference was just held at the University of Vermont last weekend). I remember hearing a very prominent economist on an elevator at the 1974 AEA meetings saying that they would give it to her for her _Economics of Imperfect Competition_ and that she would then refuse it out of pique and protest. They never did, although from what I hear this was not so much a matter of gender discrimination as from fear of her increasingly fierce and combative heterodoxy and of what she might say in an acceptance speech. An outrage in any case, nevertheless, that particular omission. Barkley Rosser ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]